- When you give away music for free, where does the devaluing occur? Is it in the music being given away, or is the music that still has a price tag attached rendered irrelevant? Does it imply the music is not worthy of proper commercial release? Essentially a collection of dubplates of various vintages, Voids One and Two was released for free last month by San Francisco dubstep producer DJG. This is no tossed-off junk heap, though. Split in two, six tracks each side, it has a thematic continuity that most "real" dance music albums lack.
Voids One, for the ravers as Grenier puts it, showcases the businesslike side of North American dubstep, all clean lines and polished metal. These tracks entangle and intertwine elaborate drum loops, an incorporation of junglist aesthetics that comes from a completely different angle than, say, the Bristol community. Sometimes they're swung at right angles ("We Don't Go Home") and other times they're set out to skip on the surface like rocks on the surface of a lake (the irrepressibly bouncy "Doodlebug"). Regardless of how they move, there's always discrete space in DJG's music, an overwhelming and humbling chasm left behind as the resonating frequencies spiral out of earshot.
Voids Two pulls together the unfurling, diasporic tangents of what used to be dubstep, taking cues from any number of post-genre electronic music touchstones. He translates rather than plagiarizes, though, always expressing things through his own gently industrial soundscapes. The haunting plucked strings of "BC3" play furiously like a panicked Four Tet. The emotive "With U" combines mournful pads and tracked-on-rails rhythms ala ASC, while the militant 2-step of "Round" takes future garage cliches and coats them in sexy chrome. The collection climaxes with the tremulous "Bare Hands," a kind of insidious anthem where an unforgettable melody lurks in the periphery, sliding back and forth as the heaving beat weighs down either side and eventually bullies it into silence.
While the nearly relentless clank of Voids One can be exhausting, taken as an album, Voids' bipolar existence allows DJG to explore contradictory sounds without sprawl. Where else are you going to hear nervy industrial drama like "Chronicles" rubbing shoulders with the rustic guitar swells of "Lichen?" It's partly a result of a North American dubstep scene which places as much stock in early, prime-era drum & bass as it does techno. The lightly psychedelic and gently austere style is shared by producers as diverse as XI, Distal, Sepalcure, Daega Sound and Jus Wan. Based on Voids, DJG may just be the most promising of all.
TracklistVoids One
01. We Don't Go Home
02. Chronicles
03. Diffraction
04. Doodlebug
05. Apophenia (VIP)
06. Lost Time
Voids Two
01. BC3
02. With U
03. Lichen
04. Round
05. Bare Hands
06. Plant Food