Scuba’s always been a bit different, separate from the rest of his scene. He’s responsible for one of the most influential, revered, and consistent dubstep labels since the genre’s early days, Hotflush Recordings, but his own music has always strayed from the pack, taking more cues from techno than the typical reggae and dub influences of dubstep. Even when he did go in a dubbier direction (see 2006’s “Twista”), there was still something fundamentally different — his sound is clean, ruthlessly efficient, and quietly anthemic. Considering the stark, austere quality of his work, it’s no surprise that London’s Paul Rose moved to Berlin in 2007, entrenching his techno-infused sound and embracing his techno background all over again, somehow managing to land a residency at the techno mecca Berghain. His first LP, 2008’s A Mutual Antipathy, was a fine example of how to do a dubstep LP right, and last year’s Aesaunic EP showed he was on a different planet from everyone else entirely, a magnificently steely blend of disparate genres, clean spacious sounds that hit with the subtlety of an anvil. Following hot on the heels of his scene-defining SUB:STANCE mix CD, Triangulation is a fully-formed masterpiece, breathtakingly confident and uncompromising in its disregard for what anyone thinks dubstep should sound like.
Right from the opening moments, the scene is set. Clouds drift over the moon and we descend into darkness, walking beneath buzzing fluorescents into the damp concrete mouth of the tunnel. The chilly drone of the keyboards draws us away from the world we know and into the subterranean realms; the city beneath the city. And then “Latch” begins: with the crackling ambience, those caught-breath vocal samples and the shuffling percussion rattling below layers of murk. At this point, the B-word might be on some people’s lips; the same images may come to mind, of monochrome figures adrift in the lonely night, but the track’s misty embrace is so enveloping that you’ll be too transported to care. “Three Sided Shape” opens with whirring chords and the far-off industrial clank of the factory district, before he drops an echoing vocal sample into the void.
Launching head-first into the recesses of the album, “Minerals” dives into the fathomless deep, the bassline lumbering like a leviathan through tunnels far below, percussion dripping off the ceiling and hitting the ground with a distinctive plop, the droplets shattering and embracing the concrete floor. With “On Deck” Scuba takes the loose, swung beats of UK funky and cruelly repositions them, turning all the curves into straight ninety-degree angles for a funky house rave at a construction site. “Tracers” is a maze of intricate percussion, rattling around inside your headphones as droning swells rise from beneath, until it hits its stride with a steady beat before the swells loom below again, knocking the beat off of its axis into the imagined bottomless chasm below. It’s followed up by “You Got Me,” merciless metallic swing coasting on buttery, elongated organ chords. Like so many tracks on this record, it plays tricks, objects viewed in the night that aren’t what they originally seem: the organ disappears and we’re left with nothing but a cold, automated click track.
Elsewhere he shows absolutely no regard for convention. “Before” deals in scuffed R&B, percussion echoing off the walls of the tunnel, vocals passing through like airy spectres, mumbling something unintelligible but completely bewitching. It’s gloomy and moody, like Portishead refracted through Basic Channel sonics. Later on the album, “So You Think You’re Special” employs similar vocals, but the track itself is, to put it rather bluntly, mind-blowing. Crawling along at a ridiculous sub-90 BPM, the track drops some of the most amazing drum sounds in recent memory with an acute sense of drama and gravity, like the soundtrack to a movie far too perfectly realized to actually exist. The tweaked, rippling vocal refrain of “here, you’ll find the one” emerges completely naked, standing as the album’s glowing, redemptive center, a far cry from the revenant soul of the earlier tracks.
Closing track “Lights Out” opens with noise that sounds like applause, immediately ruptured by huge, throbbing bass notes, stretched-out chords slowing the gears of time like treacle. The beat is all heartbeat-throb, a constant pulse driving the whole construction forward, even while it spawns off sub-rhythms that chatter to themselves in the darkness. Along the way, there are brief glimpses of something brighter, big hazy chords daubed in light, like the power flickering back to life in the tunnel so accurately depicted on the cover. When the lights finally regain full power the track pulls a feint, briefly switching to 4/4 and providing the most satisfying moment of the techno-dubstep movement yet; it’s the moment an entire career has been building towards. It’s a thoroughly satisfying end to an immense record, and it knows it as it throbs mechanically, percussion dancing around it in a blatant showoff until we leave the tunnel and the pounding recedes behind us, out into the glorious light from whence we emerged. They’re the same gorgeous washes, only this time imbued with relief and wonder instead of tense, uncertain anticipation.
Triangulation is one of those albums where we want to wax rhapsodic about every track, to convince you that this grey, labyrinthine record is a masterpiece, one of those albums you’ll play over and over. You’ll want to return to that dark tunnel, to feel the smooth concrete walls against your skin, fumbling desperately to find some sort of imperfection in the mockingly uniform surface, some sign of humanity, and failing entirely. That’s the thing about this album: there’s just nothing wrong with it, at all. This album, almost too well-constructed to be human, sounds like it was made by the musical equivalent to Deep Blue — or maybe Scuba is just our Kasparov, beating the machine at its own game. It’s not even really a dubstep record; fittingly, Rose recently mentioned being inspired by Instra:mental and dBridge’s Automonic podcast series and it shines through here, his LP an equally fearless juxtaposition of genres and tempos. Scuba’s second is a truly remarkable album, and the last time a nominally ‘dubstep’ artist made a leap like this, it was called Untrue. But we’re in a new decade and we now have a new high-water mark with which to compare everything else. Get used to the title Triangulation because you’re going to be hearing it for years to come.
