Scuba – ‘Triangulation’

Scuba – ‘Triangulation’
Hot Flush
March 2010
95%

I follow Scuba on Twitter (yeah, get me). Toward the end of last year, more than once, he tweeted about people going to see him who were annoyed at what they heard or who were making constant requests for more ‘dubstep.’ Philistines as those people are, they illustrate my leading point nicely: you never know what you’re gunna get from the man.

Known to his mother as Paul Rose, Scuba’s label, Hot Flush, is a label (along with Kode 9’s Hyperdub) which is often wrongly tagged as a dubstep outlet. From the boss’s own varied productions, through the beautifully balanced dub/house/garage of Joy Orbison, via compelling stuff from Vex’d and Mount Kimbie, the label offers many more sounds than could sanely be labelled dubstep. So, too, ‘Triangulation,’ Rose’s second full length.

What is more, despite one school of thought which predicted Scuba to become a leading proponent in the fusion between dubstep and techno (owing, in part, to the fact he runs a night at leading techno institution Berghain, which would have been the perfect testing ground) that’s not the case either. Instead, there are a whole range of flavours and textures on offer, from soundsystem inspired calypso beats, to weightless ambient via straight up house jams and, together, they make for an engaging and complete listening experience.

Opener ‘Descent’ does just that: after otherworldly ambiance swells and is interrupted only by what sound like sporadic breaking waves, your mind is deeper set than it was before the track started. When follower ‘Latch’ kicks in with its muted, radiant synths and underwater, air-bubble pops, you feel fully submersed in a deep sonic ocean and, as those bubbles continue to stream past, it feels like you’re plunging ever deeper into a watery abyss. No prizes for guessing why Scuba is called Scuba, then.

Far from the often dark and/or abstract moods which underpin the work of many leading bass men, there’s a palpable, organic edge and joyousness to Triangulation. From the drip-drop backgrounds to the wood block percussive foregrounds, the mental images these tracks conjure are of congas, rain on a window, tropical beaches and underwater coral parties– all real life, all vivid, all grounded in reality. (Well, in the case of underwater coral parties, almost.)

When more morose moments do come, there’s still a calm-after-the-storm beauty, crispness and delicacy to them. Heavier moments do exist, like the pounding, kinetic ass shaking wiggle of ‘Tracers,’ the rip-saw swagger of ‘Heavy Machinery’ and the introverted straining of ‘You Got Me,’ but it’s that balancing act between light and dark, weight and weightlessness, that keeps you hooked from start to finish.


01. Descent
02. Latch
03. Three Sided Shape
04. Minerals
05. On Deck
06. Before
07. Tracers
08. You Got Me
09. So You Think You’re Special
10. Heavy Machinery
11. Glance
12. Lights Out