- Brilliant uptempo club music on dBridge's label.
- While many associate Canada's dance music scenes with the zonked-out house of Mood Hut or the breaky, trancey rush of artists like Priori or D. Tiffany, Shaun Lodestar represents the country's long-standing interest in drum & bass, jungle and other uptempo genres. It's a tradition that goes back decades, especially in Western Canada, where his HomeSick alias started. Initially making waves (and dutifully handing out USBs at shows and festivals across Alberta and British Columbia) as a footwork acolyte, lately Lodestar has settled in the purple patch between styles that has been connecting North America, the UK, Japan and Europe over the past few years: not quite drum & bass, not quite jungle, not quite footwork, but rather all of these things at once.
1000dB Stare, HomeSick's debut for Exit Records—a key source of this in-between sound—is produced immaculately. The hardcore rave stabs on the title track are almost hi-def, and the white space around the lashing breakbeats makes everything feel grand and sharp. "1000dB Stare" also highlights Lodestar's focus on melody, with a motif reminiscent of someone chanting or scatting in the place of where a swelling synth might go. Vocal grunts dot the soundscape on "Rune Faucet," which sounds like an unruly 303 chasing an antagonist down an alleyway, only growing rougher and squelchier as the pursuit continues.
The flipside zeroes in on powerful rave pastiche. Lodestar teams up with Vancouver vet Taal Mala for evil UK garage on "One Second," where the drums sound as if they're trying to drill through your skull and the Hoovers swarm like angry hornets. The appropriately titled "Hardcore!" is built around old-school breaks and volatile Hoover stabs, threading everything—zippy acid, sparkling sound design, more shouting vocals—into a neat but explosive encapsulation of the whole EP. It's retro, but the production values are modern, and everything is dialed up to 11 without sounding crowded or claustrophobic.
Tracklist01. 1000dB Stare
02. Rune Faucet
03. Hardcore!
04. One Second feat. Taal Mala
05. Plebuary
06. Angel