Duffstep - Together

Duffstep
Together
Join The Dots

Future Garage, Future Bass, Experimental-Ambient-Dubno…whatever you want to call it, there’s a fine line between pushing boundaries and just sounding downright messy. Duffstep knows exactly where that line is, and he treads it with ease with his newest release on Join The Dots.

Together is certainly more up-tempo and aimed more squarely at the dancefloor than some of Duffstep’s other material, but it retains his unmistakable penchant for proper dub production techniques/tricks, thick, full bass, vocal wizardry and sunny, pleasant harmonics. Skippy beats are mashed together with multiple layers of breaks and rolls which are deliberately placed slightly off the grid to create a loose, chaotic rhythm. This is offset by clean, heavy sub bass, rising synth stabs and heavily reverbed vocals, all of which are made as linear as possible, creating a charmingly confusing vibe.

Youandewan’s take on Together is a classy slice of dark, introspective dub, which fuses the summery, upbeat bass and vocals of the original with sparse, spacey beats, lots of tape hiss and reverb, and washy, grainy synths. Think Lee “Scratch” Perry if he was really depressed. Background Sound makes their remix even darker, weirder and more uncomfortable harmonically than Youandewan. It takes a special kind of talent to make disharmonic music actually listenable, and Background Sound has that in spades. The choppy, chaotic beats of the original are left pretty much intact, albeit stripped back somewhat, but the bassline is tuned down several octaves, the vocals are intentionally warped into haunting, detuned wails, and multiple layers of metallic clangs and echoes, warbled pads and filtered synths fade in and out of the mix.

Tracklisting: Duffstep - Together (Available on Whatpeopleplay here)
1. Original
2. Youandewan
3. Background Sound

Listen to Duffstep on Pulse Radio