West Norwood Cassette Library - Mrs Fingers

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  • While dubstep producers have been finding common cause with up-tempo house of late, Bob Bhamra as West Norwood Cassette Library has been finding ways to apply deep house aesthetics to a dubstep template. His debut single "What It Is" was a backward-looking masterpiece of scene-spanning ingenuity, what you might imagine someone taking an Underground Quality record and building a syncopated rhythm at 140 beats per minute. Bhamra is far from a dubstep purist; an unreleased VIP remix sees a floaty rework of "What It Is" at a more house-friendly tempo (which provided an answer to the titular question: "house music" ). More recently, his Seoul Power mix has him combining classic house with his own tracks, shedding a good amount of light on where his slightly dusty sound comes from and revealing British bass music's unexpected rapport with names like Anton Zap and Kerri Chandler. "Mrs Fingers" takes "What It Is" one step further and constructs a dubstep tune out of vintage Trax records rather than UQ. This one is a halfstep monster that culminates in distinctly liquid crashes, oversized raindrops that wobble and shatter on impact. Coupled with shimmering chord stabs and an ever-present electrical hum, it balances dubstep, deep house and even dub techno in a sonic palette that sounds right out of the early '90s. Capitalizing on these dub-techno hints, Quantec jumps in for a midtempo remix, turning the shimmer into smooth, lockstep-linear opacity. At 127 BPM, it's not exactly slow house but it feels like it's stuck in some purgatorial stasis.
  • Tracklist
      A Mrs Fingers B Mrs Fingers (Quantec Remix)
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