Wen’s ‘Commotion EP’ sits about 10bpm below where you’d expect it to. Take the title track, shards of Dot Rotten vocal samples are strewn intricately alongside ray-gun pulses and snapping snares, but the undulating sub-bass and murky, looming atmosphere place this somewhere just outside the usual realms of grime.
Appearing on Martin ‘Blackdown’ Clark’s heavily London-centric Keysound Recordings, the EP is likely to leave you feeling the same way you did when Target first introduced you to his ends back at the start of Dusk + Blackdown’s highly revered ‘Margins Music’ LP.
‘Nightcrawler’ is UK funky on a diet of Dirty Sprite, the usual percussion slowed down just enough to be disconcerting rather than energetic. This wave of discomfort runs through ‘Spark It’, with its delightfully menacing vocal sample, and segues perfectly into the Trim-sampling ‘Road’, which goes one step further, its sudden horror-soundtrack crescendos bringing the EP to a nerve-shredding climax.
By Guy Rimay-Muranyi
Keysound Recordings | Released: February
