L. B. Dub Corp - Roar

  • The always-excellent Luke Slater turns to house.
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  • Talking to RA in 2013, Luke Slater defined his L.B. Dub Corp alias in terms of the things it rejected. "Needless synth rises, drum rolls; dry compressed, pin-accurate production; sticking a stab in for the sake of it." This strip-it-back ethos isn't necessarily the first thing you hear in a lot of the house music released under the name. But on this record, for Stroboscopic Artefacts' new Totem series, it's fully audible. The 10-inch is led by two slow, spartan bruisers that do lots with a little. "Hard Wax," a broken-beat drum track that slugs along at 120 BPM, might be too frills-free. Its heavily saturated drums are weighty but not particularly groovy. "Roar" is stronger, thanks to its sly grumbling bassline and an acrid synth stab that kicks up a psychedelic dust cloud in the breakdown. Rounding off the record, "Step Sure Dub" reverts to a fuller Dub Corp sound. Slater spices the Chicago flavour of the drums, pert bassline and organs with snatches of speech and mock animal calls (a favoured effects of his). He saves a sudden burst of synth, the EP's only flamboyant moment, for the final minutes. Slater has history with Stroboscopic Artefacts, even appearing on a 2014 record alongside a Lucy & Speedy J cut called "Totemism"—a seed, perhaps, of the Totem concept. Roar gives the label one of his most distinctive recent records.
  • Tracklist
      01. Roar 02. Hard Wax 03. Step Sure Dub
RA