- Bristol's Immerse Records certainly isn't the flashiest label around, nor the most lauded of the more progressive British "dubstep, etc." imprints (I'm thinking here of Hyperdub, Hotflush, Hessle Audio et al.). Nevertheless, in probing a fertile, often melancholic grey-area somewhere between chunky breakstep, haunted post-garage and skeletal electronica, its output has been consistently on-point, and often quietly boundary pushing. This release, which chronicles the development of two nascent but increasingly confident producers, proves no exception.
A-side "Separation"—jointly produced by London's Sigha and Bendigo's Spherix—is a slippery piece of music, at once too considered to be written off as just another passable dubstep/techno hybrid, but wholly paradigmatic of what that crossover has come to represent. It's a simple track, all gentle swabs of bass, glacial pads and microscopic licks of percussion which congeal around a muted woodblock shuffle like honey over a spoon. As with Surgeon's recent stepping workouts, the marriage of elements takes place at a genetic—rather than aesthetic—level, and makes for a structurally cohesive end product which, clocking in at over eight minutes, will appeal as much to 4/4-minded "downpitchers" as it will to die-hard breaks heads.
Over on the flip, Spherix goes solo with "Lesser People," a growling, bass-heavy half-step roller that lands up somewhere between cv313 and Breakage. It's everything that the A-side isn't: taut, driving, snare-driven and a just little bit evil—a generous gift to DJs probing the deeper side of dubstep for whom dancefloor functionality remains paramount. Granted, it won't win any end-of-year awards (it's far too faceless for that), but at 4 AM on a big rig, it'll have dancers locked.
Tracklist A Spherix & Sigha - Separation
AA Spherix - Lesser People