SittingOvation

Lacood – Progressive Dubstep Vol. 1

Posted by alex on August 25th, 2008

You may or may not have heard of Lacood. I for one, hadn’t until this evening. Previously a drum & bass producer Lacood has been converted to the dubstep side of things for the 13th release on Synthactica records.

So SYN013 is currently sitting at 82 on the Juno dubstep chart, and has been around for just 4 days. If you’re quick you can jump on over to their site, and download the release for free (which might have something to do with the Juno chart position not being a little higher right now) you can probably sit and listen to it as you read the rest of this post – but if you miss their giveaway (looks like it’s just an August thing) then you can get it through Juno. Where you can at the very least stream a sample or two!

“Progressive Dubstep Vol. 1″ seems to live up to its name. I’d say progressive by track more than progressing the genre to its limits, but having said that the tracks are enjoyable to listen to, while not getting all up in your face, which is always a nice thing when you’re sitting in front of your hi-fi, and not standing in front of a 12 foot sub speaker in some dank grotty club.

The first track, “Soft Intro to Progressive Dubstep” is quite possibly my favourite. It has this really nice long synthed-out ‘arriving from space’ type sound alongside some traditional synth tones. The bass makes a few grumbles, and although one or two of which seem slightly out of place – you can feel the whole track building and building. Piano, some top-end percussion, and this wobbling low-end bring it to a peak, where it sits for a while, then flows out to leave you with “Dbstp Now” the second track.

“Dbstp now” feels like a stripped out drum & bass track. The filtered hi-hat sits over the track and pretends like it’s drum & bass, while the kick, snare and bass all try and convince it not to go quite so fast. Neither side end up winning, but That tinny hi-hat recruits some gorgeous synths, a vocal sample or two and really has a darn good shot at transforming the track in to something you might expect in a Hospital Records set.

“Silk” the third track on the release has this bassline sitting all the way through which sounds a little like a pitched-down mobile ringtone. This might sound like a bad thing – but personally, I’d say it works. It’s not the standout track on the EP, but when the sub rears its head every couple of bars, you remind yourself that the producer is more than just a repeating bassline. Yes there’s a good deal of thought gone in here, even if it might seem more evident on the other tracks in this release.

“Summer Calls” choosing to switch the tempo a little, starts with a drumloop not dissimilar to a breaks or old-skool hip hop track. Add some synths, a bit of ping-pong, a ‘wow’ sub, and a mid-range bass which kinda fluctuates all over the place and you’ve got yourself some sort of crazy hybrid dubstep/breaks thing going on. It’s not got the silly breakdowns you’d find in breaks, and it’s not quite got the agression you’d expect in a dancefloor-orientated dubstep track, but there’s definately something accesable here. It would quite probably be at home on some sort of cafe-del-mar compilation, but equally suited to a dubstep compilation. (I suppose this is just aswell, considering it’s location right now).

Having taken the whole release in, I’d say it’s rather good. One or two predictable sounds, and perhaps a little too much repeating, but then again if I could sum-up ‘Progressive dubstep’ as a sound, it would probably be slower to this than anything else.