Footwork supergroup The Era brings us COMBO PACK, a fresh EP with three new anthems plus Who Betta, the battle track with the triumphant hook Tell me who betta, which came out earlier this year as a single. Telling stories with their feet and the mic, they trade off giving you a deeper look into the Chicago underground. Effortlessly flowing in unison through a maze of drums, theyre creating a new mold for the future of footwork rap or, as they call it, Footwork with words to come. Produced by Teklife co-founder DJ Spinn and with the help of his protege Taso, they bend soulful samples and synths to fit inside the narrative that the Era paints with their words. Classic hip-hop production informed plenty of footwork in its early days, and here, they layer that past with the present, creating their own faster, more cut-up version of boom-bap. And just like the hypnotic repetition of a sample when it gets caught in a loop, their voices are similarly mangled to complement their verses. While they might be riding on top of the production, theyre also a part of it. The importance of storytelling in footwork is often overlooked, and we usually get the tale through the abstract. Vexing synths, unorthodox drum patterns, and stuttering words leave it up to our imaginations to assemble the puzzle pieces. The Era brings us a more concrete version of the allegory through their masterfully crafted bars. They employ themselves as narrators of the streets they walk and, in the process, are making new connections between the world of lyricists and their homegrown Chicago dance culture.

More Time Records Bass / Club

Gutterfunk Bass / Club

Sumoclic

Ghost Dubs, real name Michael Fiedler, aka Jah Schulz, announces a rebirth with 'Damaged', his first album for The Bug's PRESSURE label.. Having recently dropped two criminally overlooked, experimental dub LPs, with his 'Dub Over Science' LP series, the German producer/bass specialist, now stretches his own parameters of outwardness still further, with these twelve, fresh, explorations of dub deviance. For those who feel the fusion of dub techno and ambient drone had creatively ended with the demise of the short lived, Berlin based Chain Reaction label. Ghost Dubs now upgrades, and extends that legendary blueprint's abstract methodology even further and deeper, floating away upon a wonderfully warm sea of hiss and static bliss. This is dub so atomized that it disintegrates within your eardrums. Its music, where the machines take over and virtually all traces of humanity are erased. But thankfully, the warmest soul still oozes seductively from the pores of Fiedler's robo riddims. Relentlessly hypnotic, seriously sedated, 'Damaged' celebrates the point of departure within it's mesmerising low end grooves. Album opener 'Chemical', provides an opiated slo-mo skank, which sounds like Plastikman's 'Consumed' era pulsations drenched heavily in sub aquatic fx. A triumph of surface noise surfing and sub woofer testing relentlessness, it provides the perfect intro to this compellingly immersive album. For batty shakers and headtrippers alike, there's added thrills aplenty, as Ghost Dub's richter scale tremor rhythms remain impressively massive, and the atmospheric depths of 'Damaged' appear tantalisingly oceanic. Throughout the duration of the dreamy selection, there is an obsessive balance of bewitching ambience and heavyweight bassbin shaking. The lead single 'Thin Line' itself provides a missing link between African Head Charge's early percussive body probes and Rhythm & Sound's addictive radiance, with the slightest hint of Burial's doomed romantic hauntology added for good taste. Alternately, and no less gracefully, 'Dub Lobotomy' bizarrely resembles Miles Davis 'Get Up with it' chopped, screwed, and relocated to a futuristic Kingston Town. Impressive indeed, Fiedler's mastery of live dubbing on his mixing desk shines accross the duration, and gives the album an improvised edge, and sense of peripheral chaos. Elsewhere, spooked steppars ('Hot Wired'), haunting house ('True to life') and 4th World psychogeography('Undone'), combine to ensure there is a forever changing mixture of flavours percolating within the admirable consistency of the overall sound. With a tip of the cap, and nod of the head to Pole('Second Thoughts'), its no surprise then that PRESSURE would then turn to the great, Berlin based producer Stefan Betke, to master/cut this collection at his infamous Scape mastering room. And a fine job he did too, as high quality sound and levels are definitely maintained throughout. If you like your melodies submerged, your dub narcotic, your basslines obese, and your beats evaporating, 'Damaged' provides the perfect prescription and entry point into Ghost Dub's spectral soundworld. Dive in. Enjoy !

NQ Records Bass / Club

Delsin Records Bass / Club

On Albacete Knife Al Wootton offers up four hardware tracks of raw percussion and ambience dubbed out to infinity. Drawing on the Post-Punk elements of his Holy Tongue project and transmuting them for the sound-system deejays, the EP covers low slung steppers, trance inducing percussion trips, psyched out Goa beatdowns and mutoid hardcore reductions. Raw and bristling psychedelic techno dubs for out there heads and feet.

Tammo Hesselinks Naturally Occurring EP drops on Redstone Press like a plunge into a frozen lake, delivering a masterclass in ice-cold machine funk. It's evident throughout that Tammo has honed and refined every sonic element, resulting in tracks with clarity, poise and purpose. Semika opens the release with pure, heads-down, sound- system techno, equal parts heavy yet restrained. The weighty, rolling drums and pulsating sub-bass collide with layers of biting, strobing synths, creating an instinctive sense of dread that sets the tone going forward. The title track Naturally Occurring offers a brief respite in intensity, dropping the tempo and introducing calming, contemplative pads and metallic percussive elements. However, any semblance of tranquillity is swiftly shattered by the arrival of staccato vocal chops and a stripped-back dancehall-esque beat which exhibits Tammos flair for minimal yet deliberate compositions. Butter Hands is more ominous, with rolling sub-heavy kicks building into ethereal technoid synths and percussion that hover threateningly. The track is propelled forward with a broken-beat techno rhythm creating a hypnotic, paranoia-inducing and all-encompassing atmosphere. Lattice closes out the release with a more groove laden beat, accompanied by woozy, playful synth lines. The mechanical percussive elements evolve constantly, weaving intricate patterns and adding depth and complexity to the mix, all whilst retaining the weighty bass foundation and techno-bleeps found in the previous tracks. The EP finds Tammo in deadly form and showcases a producer with an innate talent for producing work that is both boldly minimal yet packed with detail.

TraTraTrax Bass / Club

Pineapple Records (UK) Bass / Club

A Long Strange Dream

Earth Kicks (UK)

RAM Records Bass / Club

Method 808 Bass / Club

Sub Basics delivers a 140 techno/dub album on his own imprint Temple of Sound. The first 4 tracks also available on a 12' vinyl record distributed by White Peach.

INSTINCT28 - DJ Crisps / Oldboy split EP

Moveltraxx Bass / Club

TraTraTrax Bass / Club

Turbo Recordings