The first album on French dubstep label 7even comes as the culmination of two years of fantastic 12″ records that went off like depth charges, heavy dubwise rhythms all creepy hollows and endless night. Along with fellow countrymen and bass technicians Likhan and Helixir, F (real name Florent Aupetit) was holed up in a lab halfway between techno and dubstep, cooking up a series of brooding metallic halfbreeds. Along the way, they’ve gotted mixed up with the Hessle Audio boys, with both Ramandanman and Untold providing remixes. There’s a shared approach here, particularly around their goal to bend minds wih beats, but while the good ship Hessle sails into freakier waters, F keeps things more on the classicist side. Stylistically, there are similarities to other European dubsteppers like Martyn and 2562, with all that meticulously swung percussive science. F may lean a little heavier on industrial hiss und clank adapted from the Chain Reaction playbook, but rather than being a simple Basic Channel acolyte, his steel-girder percussion gives it a tougher, more rhythmic slant.
From the moment in the “Intro” when the drums hit, you know this album is going to sound great. They’re so crisp and tight, these perfect hits that you can feel right through your body. Most of his sonic palette is laid out in those first few minutes: malevolent bass hum and synth hits that fall echoing into the center of the earth, all grounded by those drum hits. The beats are so immaculately formed, so rigid and intricately grooved, that it’s easy to get lost in the percussive matrixes he constructs and lose track of the melodic accents and highlights. Familiarity finds the surprising little moments lost inside the hall of mirrors, like the way the synths suddenly tweak up in “Shift,” a Middle Eastern melody winding out for a few seconds before chilly synth chords drop in again. Or the clockwork drum trickles and sinuous synth melodies that ooze out when “Another Place” breaks down midway through. And the percussion in “See the Light” is nothing short of astounding, intricately interwined rhythm patterns that roll and swell like the surface of the ocean, chords bobbling through it like flotsam. “Chillin” has this hip-hop-tinged beat, but one that hits over fathomless bass and metallic peelings of synthesizer, a burbling melody rising up in the latter half to provide the album’s funkiest track.
Taken as a whole, it feels like a perfect soundtrack for walking through the industrial district in the dead of night, where the factories clank and clatter in their mechanical slumbers, breathing out plumes of smoke into the cold air. The subterranean rumble of automatons makes the streets shake beneath your feet, the city and the world beyond it grinding and ticking in its endless cycles, the hum of an enormous machine. Indeed, like many records of this ilk, the album came alive for me in a new way when I took a walk with it, letting its beats and murk colour the world around me and pull me into its shadow. If there are quibbles with the record, they’re minor – it probably runs a little too long, although it’s hard to pick a particular track out as an obvious culprit. However, the record ends with probably the strongest pair of tracks in “Spacewalk” and “Perspectives,” the former sliding skittering beats under this fidgety synth melody that finally resolves into this Detroit-tinged garage rhythm that has that endless, silken night-drive feel that I adore. “Perspectives” brings in some billowing ambient keys and mournful vocals drifting up through the pulse of the beat. It’s quite a departure from the rest of the album and it works incredibly well – in fact, it’s so striking that I’d love to hear more in this vein.
It’s not a record that seems concerned with crossing over or being the token electronic record that people can slot in between Burial and Mount Kimbie. Instead, F has released an immaculately constructed electronic record for lovers of the form, for those who get lost in the spaces in between the beats, and it’s a wonderful album to fade into the night with.
