Son Raw really hated it when Canadian rappers said they were from the “North Coast”
Hyperdub, like Dr. Octagon, moves on to the year 3000. While the music press understandably wets its collective drawers for every Burial release, Kode 9’s label stretches miles beyond Will Bevan’s shadowy Garage by cultivating a balance between the experimentalist incubation of new styles and hard hitting plates refining those experiments into dance floor killers. Terror Danjah co-producer and affiliate D.O.K’s first single for the label falls squarely within this later camp with nods towards both the G-Funk era and Grime’s more recent past.
A-side and Danjah collabo “West Coast” initially slithers like a funky worm caught in an industrial processing plant, but that’s before things get glitchy and scratchy, updating the funk for the future. The V.I.P edit is even more hectic, combining the texture and tone of classic west side rider music to the jittery paranoia running through London like a mixed bowl of skunk and chronic or a post-Junglist take on the Ruthless Records catalogue. As for the high speed intensity and 808 claps of “East Coast,” few productions serve as a better reminder that before Dubstep or Grime even had genre tags in iTunes, London producers were creating mind-melting beats that put the electro-clash New Yorkers were going on about to shame. Makes you wonder what coast he’s referring to though because New York emcees could use a few more beats like this. West side up top, East side after the jump.
Download:
Buy: D.O.K – West Coast
