Son Raw really wants to tour Japan one day
With New Epoch, Japanese producer Goth-Trad has created a rare beast: an album providing plenty of top-quality DJ-food for selectors that also stands up as a straight-up front to back listen. It’s a tough trick to pull off as the extended intros and breakdowns inherent in EDM can make for repetitive listens at home but then again, you’d be hard-pressed to qualify New Epoch as ordinary club music – drawing on Goth-Trad’s past work in noise, jungle, Trip-Hop and UK Bass, it’s satisfyingly physical without bowing down to typical trends.
Much like contemporaries Shackleton and Pinch, Goth-Trad was part of a generation exploring Dubstep’s sonic territory before even being aware of the genre’s existence. Working out his native Japan, he’s since evolved into a respected scene player all while keeping his music from falling prey to the standardization that’s afflicted the genre in subsequent years. Take lead single Air Breaker: a heavy, grinding beast of a stomper, it’s the kind of ugly mutant that would leave both party-hearty brosteppers and effete gauzewave fans recoiling in horror. In other words, it’s the best thing ever. Dig a little deeper however and Air Grid & Cosmos explore the same feeling of dread while inverting the equation – here it’s the void of space that leaves an impact with sub bass so heavy it’ll collapse chest plates and leave a trail of broken, buzzing iPod ear buds in its wake. Listen to this on proper speakers.
In interviews, Goth-Trad mentioned the thematic impact of Japan’s Fukushima disaster on the album and it’s hard not to interpret the album’s dread bass as the soundtrack to the post-apocalypse. Though more conventional thanks to its wobbling undertow; Babylon Fall with reggae legend Max Romeo makes this explicit, the singer’s words of warning and prophetic chants floating over the track with baroque resignation. It all makes for a dark, uncompromising listen with few moments of light, though Mirage and the showstopping title track offer glimmers of hope through the detuned synths and squelching sub-frequencies. But perhaps the most surprising thing about New Epoch isn’t that the darkness works in a thematic context but that it absolutely slays crowds removed from it: drop pretty much any tune here for the right people and watch their faces scrunch up – always the sign of a good banger. That New Epoch succeeds as an expression of emotion and the catalyst for release stands as its strongest achievement.
A few years ago, New Epoch might have sadly gone by unnoticed, flooded as the world was with dark visions of dystopian urbanity. In 2012 however, now that the dust is clearing from the great recession and everyone’s ready to party to generic crap again, it’s easy to single out as a prophetic warning and a bracing listen, the rare auteurist statement in electronic music that also works on the dance floor. Though you won’t find any pitch-shifted R&B vocals, Juke rhythms or slow tempos on this release, you don’t necessarily need to be a regular Rinse.FM listener to get in on the action either: dark music fans of all stripes would be well advised to give it a chance as Goth-Trad twists and pulls a tremendous number of sounds into the 140BPM tempo. Coming on the heels of Pinch & Shackleton’s equally arresting collaboration album, New Epoch is a surefire sign that the state of the Dubstep union is strong though it’s best enjoyed through carefully considered material removed from the daily grind of disposable daily downloads.
Download:
MP3: Goth-Trad – Alone Warrior (Non album track, 320)
