Box of Dub: Dubstep and Future Dub (Soul Jazz)

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In the recently released, revised edition of his history of dance culture, "Energy Flash", chronicler Simon Reynolds defines dubstep as a darker, taciturn and more experimental brother of grime and 2step, all of which are shoots off the UK Garage tree. However, he also criticizes it for having the temerity to call itself a genre while lacking that one, new, relevant idea that would distinguish it from everything else.

Perhaps Soul Jazz´s Box of Dub is the remedy, placing the "new" sound in a dub reggae continuum by including "future dub"- quite simply new directions in the genre - in the mix. As a way of distinguishing itself from the raft of dubstep compilations currently pouring out of the English capital, Soul Jazz has thought outside the box and ended up inside it.

Either way, what is indisputable about dubstep is that it has captured many an imagination over the past two or three years; is musically characterized by a tense, tinny beat and rich bass with a reggae subtext; is undoutably a grandchild of jungle but also has a close if long distance relationship with its German cousins at Chain Reaction; and has its most immediate origins in the soulless cemet suburb of Croydon, south of the Greater London Area. Unique for a nominally "dance" music, dubstep is all about tension without ever offering release. It mediates a web of complex feelings about its sterile and flawed home ground.

For this unique project by this leading archivist label, Soul Jazz commissioned exclusive tracks by most of the best-known names associated with the genre alongside some of the new and most original dub and reggae proliferating. Two "boxes" (actually just single CDs) have been released in rapid succession.

On the first, Digital Mystikz open with the full, throaty skank of "I Wait", coupled with sheets of electronic percussion, followed by Paul St. Hilaire accompanied by Sub Version (from Berlin, confirming the Continental connection), finding himself in much more angular territory and on unsteadier footing than he is used to, though his rasta faith remains unshaken. Slightly later on, Tayo meets Acid Rockers Uptown, who then introduce some "typical" traditional licks, albeit comprised of atypical video game electronic jabs and stabs; Skream, a leading name in dubstep production, also puts much more Jamaica into the bowl later on with "Irie".

Scuba´s synthesized bass puts a pleasureable, fat squiggle up your spine on "Subaqueous" until Kode9 (Hyperdub label boss who introduced wunderkind Burial to the world) guides us through the desexed, ambivalent and barren environs of ”Magnetic City”. Nearing the end, Digital Mysitikz featuring SGT Pokes´ stripped, strangled, slo-mo and claustrophobic "Guilty", with its clipped vocal syllable ejaculate, embodies the aesthetic of indeterminacy and moral neutrality characteristic of this genre.

Opening the second box is the juxtaposition of the dehumanized pointillism of Ramadanman with the familiar (if digitized) mindlessly reassuring reggae dance song, "Step 2 It" by Pinch (breaking the London line-up via Bristol) with vocalist Rudy Lee. Cult of the Thirteenth Hour is serious as cancer as it preaches ´gainst "Wickedness", a Linton Kwesi Johnson for the noughties. But Coti lightens things right back up again with his collage of sitar, Mr. Oizo, plundered American B-movie samples and tiki music bird screams. The Digital Mystikz soon lead us through a faux Persian market - or maybe it is a brightly-decorated, Iranian-run corner shop - on "Thief in Da Night", a little while later smartly hijacking a string quartet to counterbalance all the bleeping. Coti´s "Let Go Mi Shirt" is classic, horn-driven dub reggae with electronic artificial flavouring and a motormouth vocalist. The excellent finale is Skream´s "Too Much Sushi", actually a very tasteful fusion of deep bass rhythm with distant looped horn stabs.

Two distinctive and necessary collections.