TKG Music 003- Kuma: Of Silence and Secrecy (Digital Version)
a) Kuma- Of Silence and Secrecy
aa1) Kuma- Of Silence and Secrecy (Flippo's Omega Point Remix)
aa2) Abunaii- Angels (Motomasamix)
d1) Kuma- You Don't (Woodhead Remix)
d2) Kuma- Of Silence and Secrecy (Flippo's Heat Death Remix)
After ten years of booking shows with the likes of Alex Paterson, Kode 9 and DJ /rupture, being the first North American booking agency to embrace dubstep and helping to pioneer modern bass culture in North America alongside Dub War, Mashit and Smog, the Konspiracy Group's TKG Music label delivers their first vinyl release. The end result of a decades worth of sitting in the bassbins with a middle finger raised.
Following the success of Kuma's debut 12” on Bristol's Immerse Records, it makes sense that the first slab of wax on the TKG Music imprint should feature beats frm its founder.
Recalling the shattered rhythms of early Tempa releases as much as it does the tribal atmospherics of Dead Can Dance, Of Silence and Secrecy is an ethereal floor-killer. If ever psychedelic garage was to be tossed around as a description, it's here, as lush strings and neck snapping snares set you moving. But then again, that's before the bass drops. When the bass kicks, its a full on future-garage excursion as tribal horns of war call the way to the dance floor. Alien voices and turntable scratches hasten the journey, but in the end, it's the overwhelming presence of a bassline that is enough to remove the filings from your teeth and send you on your way. Paying just as much reverence to the Croydon godfathers as it does to Ivo Watts and 4AD, this is dubstep unlike anything else, born to move both the mind and the waist.
On the AA-side, Australian dubstep progeny Flippo returns to wax after his releases for Pressing Issues and Formant Recordings only to take the blueprint handed to him and burn it to ashes. Invoking the beatless garage legacy of Wiley's Devil Mixes and Kode 9's Sine of The Dub, he builds the track from lush, narcotic ambience into the kind of tune Godspeed You! Black Emperor would write if they ever went to FWD. A crescendo of live drums and epic swathes of distortion create a monster that both Skream and Steve Albini could love. Dubstep? Yeah, it's dubstep, just happens to wobble different bits than usual.
Then there's Candian house veteran, Motomasa and his versoning of Abunaii. Slowing down the original drum and bass track's metallic sonorities to a narcotic 808 led skank, these Angels end up somewhere between the Loefah's minimalist half-step destruction and the wonky lazer bass currently being spearheaded by the like of Megasoid and Rustie. With a production background wedged deep in the hip-hop mecca's of Detroit and Atlanta, Motomasa has turned a drum and bass nightmare into a low-slung killer, slinging distorted riffs over Miami bass and the fire and brimstone mutterings of the last man standing at the Bar.
The bonus beats for this digital package are very special.
Woodhead has been a mainstay of the Vancouver scene for as long as we can remember, if not for his mobile sauna antics then his excellent selections and a DJ and producer. He's taken Kuma's unreleased digi-stepper "You Don't" and gone straight to the dance floor with it. Dropping the tempo but not the intensity, he's gone and turned out a techy stomped that would fit into any number of techno, house or even UK Funky sets. Like the sample says "You don't have to run.."
Then there's Flippo again. Not content to literally rip up "Of Silence and Secrecy" the first time, our jaws spent a wee bit of time on the floor after he sent us a second remix. Physics and specifically Thermodynamics defines Heat Death as the condition of any closed system when its total entropy is a maximum and it has no available energy. If the universe is a closed system it should eventually reach this state. Stripping Kuma's Of Silence and Secrecy to the bone, he's turned a few key elements into their own basics loops and allowed them to feast upon each other, creating a digital conundrum. Where does it all begin and end?
Five tracks, one vision. When you've been fighting conservative thinking in electronic music for as long as we have, the weapons have to be this sharp.
TKG003D: Kuma: You Don't (Woodhead Remix) by TKGMusic
TKG003D: Kuma: Of Silence and Secrecy (Flippo's Heat Death Remix) by TKGMusic