Artista: Zomby

Album: Ded­i­ca­tion

Label: 4AD

Anno: 2011

Down­load album:

Ded­i­ca­tion — Zomby

ITALIAN VERSION

Just enter­ing Other Music, a record store in Man­hat­tan spe­cial­ized in indie and elec­tronic music (if you ever come to New York go and visit it, 15 E 4^th St), you can see a big black­board writ­ten in chalk, with the Top 20 albums of 2011most appre­ci­ated by the staff of the store, two cheer­ful guys eager to talk about music.

In the first place there is Kurt Vile album, while the sec­ond is Ded­i­ca­tion by Zomby. “This is bass music, but softer, more ele­gant and, most of all, he’s really smart”: this quick descrip­tion explains very well one of the best recent exam­ples of vis­ceral, under­ground bass music, with no com­pro­mises, that the past year has given us.

Zomby started its pro­duc­tion in 2007 pub­lish­ing for Hyper­dub, head office of the greater dub­step british pro­duc­tions. It’s in 2008 when it is noticed for Where were U in ’92?, col­lec­tion that rep­re­sented bass style rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of rave sound of 90s. This is the work that has pro­gres­sively made it cred­i­ble in dub­step world.

In 2011 released for 4AD (his­tor­i­cal label of british elec­tronic sounds) a record that gives up the rave sonori­ties in order to devote itself to bass music (a kind that begin­ning from garage and 2step now includes grime, dub­step as well as urban music). Ded­i­ca­tion, pre­ceded from the sin­gle “Natalia’s Song”, is an ele­gant, inti­mate, seri­ous dub­step. Techno for atti­tude than for rhyth­mic, it wraps the lis­tener up in an elec­tronic steam fog, deep bass lines, bro­ken rhythms, synth of crys­tal sounds.

“Witch Hunt” intro­duces the mem­ory of a dead per­son to whom the album is ded­i­cated, like an elec­tronic funeral march marked by claps, shots, round syn­thetic notes. “Natalia’s Song” is a won­der­ful upbeat dub­step with elab­o­rated voices that remind Bur­ial, whose spirit, we must say, is hov­er­ing over the entire album. “Black Orchid” takes the breath away with its pace of sym­phonic key­boards, as a black mass, soon joined by wrap­ping bass lines. It is all dark, urban, very british, but with a light­ness that other pro­duc­ers do not reach.

I sug­gest you to lis­ten to “Rid­ing With Death”, where the bass lev­els chase each other and leave a sense of expec­ta­tion, as if the aliens of Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind were about to land on earth. The con­fir­ma­tion of the prox­im­ity between urban sound and cur­rent psy­che­delic rock extrem­i­ties is evi­dent in the mantra of “Things Fall Apart”, in which the voice of Panda Bear says It all.

The level of the album is so won­der­ful to shame dread­ful rock­ers that we still fol­low too much. Urban, deep, dirty elec­tronic music; this is the future of rock, that comes from no-rock.

Luigi Zampi

Trans­la­tion: Vale­ria Zampi

Down­load album:

Ded­i­ca­tion — Zomby

TRACKLIST

1. Witch Hunt

2. Natalia’s Song

3. Alothea

4. Black Orchid

5. Rid­ing With Death

6. Vor­tex

7. Things Fall Apart

8. Sala­man­der

9. Lucifer

10. Dig­i­tal Rain

11. Van­quish

12. A Devil Lay Here

13. Flo­rence

14. Haunted

15. Basquiat

16. Mozaik

LINKS

Myspace: www.myspace.com/zombyproductions

Face­book: www.facebook.com/pages/Zomby/260117424964

Label:4ad.com/artists/zomby

Other Music: www.othermusic.com