Weekly Release Spotlight: The Bug

Posted on 8/11/2008

The Bug

London Zoo

[Ninja Tune]

South London DJ/producer Kevin Martin clearly prefers blunt symbolic nomenclature. Of his many electronic guises, the moniker always matched the music: Ice was his shivery hip-hop project, Techno Animal found him blasting the titular genre with a certain Muppet-like enthusiasm, and his omniscient wall-of-sound jazz side came out in God. The Bug, and his latest album under the name, is no different, except it could be interpreted a couple different ways. On the one hand, the rusty mechanical beats Martin constructs resemble a kind of dystopian robotic chigger as it bores under the skin of its subjects, signaling the caustic end of an era. On the other, a cast of expert vocalists shuffle their rhymes and toasts in a manner that makes the bustling mania on London Zoo a desired contagion, a new hybrid of noise and pattern that could easily catch fire across the pond as much as it already has in its homeland.

If it does, subgenres that are both constantly under the radar (dancehall) and slowly rising into a digital transformation of what they once were (dubstep) will get their ultimate due, and The Bug's third and most confident release is definitely not a bad place to start. Other dirtier British exports, especially those wearing the grime label with pride, have garnered attention in the recent past due to their vicious and shameless stage, street, and headphone presence, and Kevin Martin is ready to make DJ-oriented music as much a part of that limelight. The traditional elements are there: relentlessly chattering ragga pulses, cavalier and sportive low-end thrusts, but The Bug's signature move is the dark, moody, and ethereal atmosphere he places atop it all. Never does a punchy toaster come off as arrogant or boastful because of the care Martin places on his music's tone - he wants emotion and paranoia to be just as tangible in instrumentation as in the lyrics.

This is not to say it's the Kevin Martin show through and through. The project is clearly called The Bug with a more transferable and less individualized purpose in mind. The gorgeous instrumental "Freak Freak" is the only place where Martin's ambience is center stage; the record's remainder is a collection of appropriately gathered yet all clearly unique contributions, some that stop in for a brief appearance (Irie getting "Angry" at the beginning is startling and refreshing) and others that become mainstays throughout. Warrior Queen's amicable fierceness on "Insane" and "Poison Dart" is a notable double show-stopper in this latter category, but group efforts from others like Flowdan and Ranking confirm that The Bug will get caught and we will be feverish for a fourth helping very soon.

Written by Chris Polley, Radio K volunteer and host of Now Like Photographs.