Up until now Untold has escaped my attention. Over the past few years I’ve been on the sidelines of the dubstep scene, looking in occasionally to see if it’s become interesting again and for this reason I became ignorant of the latest movers and floor shakers. But in the current demilitarised zone of dubstep/grime/funky border dispute that we’re living in at the moment I’ve been exposed to hitherto unknown names.
It all started with Anaconda.
Anaconda, with its bombastic bass stab, brash yet cheeky synths and room filling handclaps, has the sparseness and full-tempo intensity of golden-era instrumental grime. Hearing Anaconda in the mix is reminiscent of when Pulse X first applied its disintegration ray on the unsuspecting skippidy-dippity 2-step which preceded it.
So when Untold did a mix recently for FACT magazine I jumped on it eager to hear if Anaconda had some nastier siblings. I wasn’t disappointed. Well, there weren’t exactly nastier siblings, but some great tracks with a clear family resemblance.
Tracks like "Never went away", "You didn't win the holiday" and "Stop what you're doing"*, with their uni-directional bass pulses, cold stand-alone synths and sparse percussion programmed in a way to give that feel of regimented syncopation, bring back those feelings of engaged alienation I had back in 2002 and 2003. But this isn’t nostalgic paleo-grime (it's aware of dubstep's legacy), it's fresh material which applies grime’s aesthetic to today’s musical landscape.
*Track names were guessed from the tracklist so there could be some error
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Nice post! I was suspicious of Untold when I first heard Anaconda, thought it was too much of a jokes thing, but since then all of his stuff has just grown and grown on me. So much energy and invention in every track.
ReplyDeleteI take it that you've read the interview with him on Blackdown's blog. It's weird, dude's been hanging around in the background for fricking years, but only recently started seriously making and releasing tunes.
Cheers! Yeah I clocked the interview but only just after I wrote the post. Blackdown basically pre-empted everything I said except I was thinking Pulse X rather than Icerink ha ha. In the interview Untold says he binges on a certain sound then moves on. It's a shame he has to move on after binging on Wiley.
ReplyDeleteHe did seem to just come out nowhere didn't he. According to FACT he quit his job to make tunes so that's probably why.
not entirely convinced eh...
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