Oris Jay vs J Da Flex - Future Garage/J Da Flex - 1 Xtra Anniversary Mix

Two interesting snapshot from 2003 of the then-nascent dubstep genre. The music was quite different from today's dubstep: there's no halfstep beats and none of the rhythmic sparseness, instead the music is still pretty strongly indebted to the dark garage it evolved out of. It's an intriguing blend actually, the bass-heavy minimalism and sinister ganja vibes combined with bustling and rattling percussion, harsh but often still quite slinky and 2step garage-y.

Future Garage by J Da Flex and Oris Jay was a covermount cd from the now defunct Sleazenation and it's a pretty great mix, especially the first half with Menta's remix of the Jammin' tune Tonka and Darqwan's (aka Oris Jay) delirious opium den fantasy Pipe Dreams. The whole mix is one single track, so here's the tracklist for you.

The second upload is a mix cd that dubstep don J Da Flex did for the first anniversary of BBC's damn fine urban music programme 1Xtra. It came free with the sadly departed Deuce Magazine which used to be my most important source of information on the whole UK garage thing and its various sub-genres, off-shots and mutations. Minimialist, dark, bass-heavy, yet still retaining something of a swinging groove (albeit in a pretty twisted way), this mix contains some fine tunes by heavyweights of the scene like Benga, Dub Child, Plasticman, Mark One and, of course, the man himself (see the tracklist here).

Future Garage

1Xtra Anniversary Mix

Jammer - N.A.S.T.Y. Mix

(Click on the picture to download.)

Some more griminess, this time courtesy of ex-N.A.S.T.Y. Crew member Jammer. This mix was also a cover cd of Deuce Magazine in 2003 and it's basically a showcase of Jammer's then-recent production work. Now I can't really claim to be an expert on the genre, but this is still one of the best grime-cds I've ever listened to, be it mixtapes, dj mixes or regular albums. The quality of the tracks is conistently high, and though I guess most people will prefer the first half with the vocal versions of classics like Kano's Boys Love Girls and Davinche's Grimey, I especially love the all instrumental second half.

It's without an MC to guide you through the tracks and provide vocal hooks that you realize how odd a lot of this music really is: all sparse, hyper-syncopated, spastic rhythms, blaring and squelching synth noises and eruptous bass lines, quite abrasive, yet weirdly catchy. There's a strange dichotomy between the roughness and sparseness of the sounds and the often bombastic arrangements, resulting in a kind of minimalist maximalism. Best of all are the parts where those pseudo-oriental, plinkety-plonkety synth strings come in, of which Jammer was obviously quite fond at the time. Fantastic stuff, this.