I LOVE the new Benga record! I especially love Benga’s particular twist on dubstep and the acid house influences that weave throughout this album. Listening to Diary of an Afro Warrior, I feel transported to a renegade soundsystem party, under the stars, listening to Benga create synasthaethetic stories on the fly! ([More →])

I now have more remixes for Benga & Coki’s “Night” than any other tune in the past year. M.I.A.’s tune “Paper Planes” was the most remixed tune on HearingTest for a while there, but now “Night” remixes have far outnumbered “Paper Planes” remixes. This latest one isn’t clearly credited, but the gory hyperbass lettering reeks of L-Vis 1990 and the user who uploaded it has almost the same name: sivl09.

Benga & Coki - ‘Night’ - SQUID ANIMATION Remix from L-Vis 1990

L-Vis 1990 music $pace

Benga & Coki’s original squid animation for “Night” debuted last week and I still get warm and fuzzy inside watching it. If you get tired of listening to “Night” try watching it with other spaced out electronica too. I recommend anything by Scuba or Nommo Ogo…

Benga & Coki - ‘Night’ - DUB SQUID ANIMATION

Classic Kode9 & the Spaceape tune and video. “Audio Addiction” vid directed by Mo Stoebe & Jasmin Jodry…

Kode 9 & Spaceape - Audio Addiction

Tempa just dropped the best dubstep video ever for Benga and Coki’s infectious anthem. Tempa rules! Turn the lights down low, light up a fatty and get lost in this:

([More →])

Audio from Kode 9’s SONAR set:

Burial - “Speedball2″:

Burial - “Stairwell”:

([More →])

Continuing with our REWIND! of 2007, here are the Top 10 Electronic Musings on ([HearingTest]) in 2007… All but “Lion” were released this year, and most of them can be found on BLEEP.com or Boomkat.com. 2007 was also a great year for watching the magic of electronic synthesis and we enjoyed watching loads of wonderful videos. I consider myself very lucky to have attended some of the Bay Area’s hottest live electronic music performances and somewhat capture them on video. It’s all here as we REWIND! 2007’s Greatest Hits! ([More →])

When asked to describe the sound of The Bug, Kevin Martin responds, “Beats, Bombs, Bass, Weapons, Congestion, Space, Concussion and Seduction.” !!Sounds Beautiful!! Martin [the man behind the bug] has refined an arsenal of tuff tunes (with Flowdan and Warrior Queen passing the mic) and wicked remixes (for Ghislain Poirier and Thom Yorke of Radiohead) into dangerous dubplate killahs! Perhaps the don of toxic dancehall finished construction on his urban-legendary soundsystem and now makes distorted ragga dubs on a barricade of bassbins instead of a pair of studio monitors! “Poison Dart” is The Bug’s most recent weapon of choice: a staggering riddim made razor-sharp by Warrior Queen’s defiant tongue. It’s a heavy tune that aches to be played BiG and LouD in an open space where the bass can unfurl into the wide wobbling synths that decay into long echoes.

HearingTest has the brand new video for “Poison Dart” and details on the remixes by Skream, South Rakkas Crew, Stereotyp and a Flowdan version that will accompany the originals to be released in December. I’ve even posted Warrior Queen’s lyrics for “Poison Dart” which aim Warrior’s wisdom at young shottas inna de dance. If your native tongue is more patio than patois, these subtitles might help. ([More →])

This week there have been a number of good interviews and articles posted online from stellar writers immersed in the UK music scene. Rather than rehash what’s already been said, I’ve decided to resurrect the Rewind! (Rewind! is simply a roundup of links to what’s good, what’s new, wha gwaan on the web, and it used to be a regular feature here on HearingTest.) This particular Rewind! features links to some great articles written by a few music journalists that I enjoy reading: there’s a T2 interview, a Durrty Goodz interview, Grimewatch, proof that Grime’s Not Dead, plus video of Skepta in the BBC radio studios with Mary Anne Hobbs, Wiley clashing Ghetto, and a dubstep documentary! ([More →])

Make a date with dubstep in December! Plastician, purveyor of fine dubstep music, announced a few US shows during the first two weeks of December! He also told Danny Walker in an interview for RWD Mag that his album has finally come back from the plant and will be available to the rest of us before the end of the year. ([More →])

Brit’s floor killers, Vex’d, stopped in SF and rocked a ridiculously packed house at Underground SF on Haight Street. It was bliss to hear Vex’d remixing their own music on the fly! This is just a lite review of their appearance in a room filled with old-school music heads from both sides of the Bay. It was a superb warm-up for the weekend of Halloween festivities still to come. ([More →])

Burial is such a unique artist and his music almost defies classification in any genre. His music hovers somewhere between dub, experimental electronica and psycho-acoustic phenomena. It leans more towards dub and dubstep, but often times sounds like dub played on a slow speed. Burial unearthed his sophomore album of experimental dubstep on Hyperdub last week, titled Untrue. His self-titled debut, released last year, was praised by music critics of all different tastes - even dubbed Album of the Year by The Wire magazine. ([More →])

This is the mix that Kode 9 made for Mary Anne Hobbs’ radio show featuring music from Burial’s new album Untrue.

([More →])

I just listened to the archive of the Mary Anne Hobbs show on BBC Radio 1 from last Thursday. It features a beautiful mix of exclusive tunes by Murcof. If you enjoy beautiful atmospheric electronica, definitely give this mix a listen. It will be available as streaming audio until the new show goes up late Thursday night/early Friday morning this week.

Mary Anne Hobbs page on BBC Radio 1

The show also includes plenty of other killer tunes by Terror Danjah & Durrty Goodz, Headhunter, Bola, Bob Marley and more. Tracklist for the entire show is also on that page.

Ninja Tune is planning another fantastic weekend of electronic mayhem for the Montreal area! On September 28th, they will have their Ninja Tune Clockout monthly with Ninja Tune artists from the UK vs. Ninja Tune artists from Montreal - plus “exceedingly special guests!” That’s all they are revealing at this time, but you can try to guess based on the following two days of festivities… ([More →])