Amit - 9 Times

While the popped collars, golf caps and spray on tans revel in how 'filthy' their new-found fad is, Amit returns with his first new album in over five years. I'll put this plainly, this is d'n'b but it is not the style of old, it incorporates many new facets to the overall sound. Major shifts have gone on in the tempo department with more emphasis on glitchy hooks being inserted in between thundering bass and a rhythmic foundation that is menace personified. If you don't feel uneasy, if it doesn't bring the chills then you're not going to be going along on this ride.

And what a ride it is, brutally toying with your emotions through the usage of absolutely ruthless beat combos that'd knock the wind out of a hurricane. He's still relatively unheard of but this will no doubt change once people are exposed to the infectious style he's brandishing. I dug his debut and played the hell out of it, this one builds upon the elements of paranoia and bitterness to reveal the sort of landscape most would not want to be caught dead in. This is what you hear out back on the loading docks at 6am when the world is just beginning to wake up but you've already been there a couple of hours. People around you have their forms but their voices just sound like static discharge, so you gaze out at the grey horizon shrouded in ominous clouds and watch your breath as you exhale. It's not for everyone, it may not even be wise to expose yourself to this record for long periods of time but I've gone ahead and done it so it's too late for me.

There is hardly any room to breathe as everything is wound so tightly on '9 Times' and despite how much spite comes across there's a lot of precision manipulation of sounds and tones which denote that this album surely was a labor of love for it's creator. I'd been waiting for something in this style to kick me in the ass again the way Teebee or Sinthetix did way back in the 90s and now, all these barren years later here it is. There have been some murmurs in the world of drum and bass since the year 2003 when Technical Itch completely lost it with those goddamn Penetration singles -we won't even touch the trainwreck which 'steps'- but I'm feeling a groundswell of a new movement in the style thanks to the viciously hewn dagger which this record surely is.

This is confrontation on a whole new level, boys and girls, it's not some passive bunch of morons in gasmasks putting numbers in their name apeing Suicide Commando either; Amit have done an incredibly dark set here, this is outright wicked to listen to. The cold, digital precision of a well oiled machine which once activated runs on pure adrenaline, don't bother with a seat belt. Thank you, Amit for injecting the aggression back into the proceedings, it was getting far too complacent for much too long. Label boss Klute has his work cut out for him trying to match the unadulterated brilliance his signee has sealed onto this disc although his latest 12" is bad to the gnawed off bone so who knows what's going to happen next. I'm just glad that things are getting brusque again, give me that edge boys. This style when done correctly fires one up like nothing else so here's to the next phase commencing soon via this evil gem. Evil, yes but so beguilingly beautiful. Oct 10 2011