FFFF: Braiden - The Alps

I don't mean to post harsh and fast as lightning black metal for each of the Fast and Furious Friday Features
 but that's the way it usually goes, but I;m changing things today, even if the bpm of this is about 100 below what I usually post, doesn't mean it's got no momentum. Braiden's track the Alps has been on constant rotation at mine for months and I've overlooked it for too long.  If your ears are anywhere near the bass ripples of the dubstep scene then you'll know what this already - released in November on Joy Orbison's Doldrums label; If this is all news to you, you're in for the treat of your winter. The way the elements of the track keep building up, overlapping, multiplying sends the brain into a twitching hyperactive trance.  Imagine this pouring out a wall of speakers. IMAGINE!

Joy Orbison - BB/Ladywell

Joy Orbison, releases his new single today on his own Doldrums label, and it continues his flawless 12" career with two more nostalgia imbued strands of smoothly flowing dubstep (for want of a better term).  Liquid basslines, rich heartstring tugging chords and ephemeral vocal samples combine in both tracks to differing effect.  BB has more of a straight forward 4/4 pulse and thrust, letting itself flex a little wilder like HYPH MNGO, then Ladywell keeps things that much more restrained, bottling up all the sexual tension into a steaming locomotion that has sensual samples of feminine coos fluttering around it, more in keeping with The Shrew. Along with James Blake I think this is about as beautiful as dance music gets right now

Juche - Tropical Space Garage!

Just as I was thinking I'd been missing the dubstep that all this witchhouse has displaced of late, along comes Juche, and it seems a bit too good to be real.  I get a friend request from this artist who made his MySpace page only today.  There's this strange green mine/virus image where a head should be (I took the blue one from his pics because I prefer it). His top 4 friends were all Warp artists, he only had 20 in total with 16 page views and I just doubled his play count in the last 20 minutes. The full text on the page reads

i am Juche from north korea. i make tropical garage bass. all praise to the dear leader. i do not play but if you like tunes i give them to you.

There are only two tracks on the player, Again and Through Blood and Bone. Both sound like a lot of the dubstep artists with some funk soul in their beats; that purple sound of artists like Guido, Joker, Gemmy, Ginz; In Again the bass is spread wide out when it comes in, filling up just the right amount of space for the drums and melodies to ride out on and it's tricked out with some 8-bit chatter strafed over the final push.  The second track has a huge, complex and intricate polyrhythm flexing and coiling around a supple soulful bassline that reminds me a lot of that hauntingly beautiful one from  Joy Orbison's The Shrew.

So this Juche just seems a little too perfect to be new into the scene, and from North Korea too?  I can't help but feel there's soemthing else to this  Too much going on in the sounds to be unschooled and untested.  If he is the real deal and only has two demos to his name well; consider my tiny mind blown with the potential here.


Find him here; immediately: http://www.myspace.com/jucheman