Amen Fire

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If the Wasteland album is accomplished, that shouldn't surprise anyone. Enough people have heard I-Sound and DJ Scud music over the years: the former most famously in collaboration with To Rococo Rot and from his own labels Transparent and Full Watts, the latter from his own label Ambush and perhaps the new retrospective on Rephlex. The surprising part isn't how good the music is, really. Nor how distinctive and original it is, either. I guess the surprising part is that it's all of these things at the same time; fully-formed with a maturity beyond the youthful years of the artists themselves, incorporating an impressive array of influences into a completely fearless creature with its own life force. This record doesn't just take you there, it lives on its own planet. A bubbling, sliding, breathing space inhabited entirely by machines that are constantly evolving into something even more beautiful and deadly than they already are. Wasteland is an inescapable groove lined with the most fearsome sounds, creating a kind of concrète dub jungle. Perhaps intimidating to ears accustomed only to softer tones, it is nonetheless purposeful and tightly controlled, and powerful as a result.