- Fierce dubstep techno fusions.
- Laksa's return to Ilian Tape begins by shrouding you in a tornado of hand percussion and doesn't let go until the final seconds of the closer, "Enjoyment." The UK artist hasn't released on the Zenker Brothers' label since 2018, and while his music has gotten more adventurous since then, there's something straightforward, almost primordial, about Voices—like when the snares first start falling in a dubstep pattern on the incredible opener "Tech Steppas." It's unapologetically huge, made all the bigger by the thick atmosphere that gums up the soundstage of every track, like a cloud of smog passing across the horizon. "Tech Steppas," with its malfunctioning tuned snares and electrified tendrils of midrange frequency, is the easy highlight, but all of Voices counts among Laksa's fiercest work yet.
Only "The Art Of Slip" hints at techno, its lumbering kick pattern beset by trippy FX and more dense loops of hand percussion. The other two cuts wobble with the thwacking dubstep rhythm of the opener. "LEO" fast forwards from 2006 to 2010 with its broken beat, odd yelping samples and an absolutely monstrous bassline, like a demo of an early Swamp 81 record. "Enjoyment" offers more of that humid, claustrophobic funk, this time with the bass concentrated into punctuating whomps at the end of each bar. Balancing brute force and a wall-of-sound attack with effortlessly clever drum programming, Voices shows that there are still new wrinkles of dubstep to unfold in the genre's ongoing revival.
Tracklist01. Tech Steppas
02. LEO
03. The Art Of Slip
04. Enjoyment