For his debut follow-up, SKREAM is pushing the barriers of dubstep. Again.
Ah, the ‘difficult’ second album. Tricky little bugger. With some artists, it’s easy to predict where they’re going to go. Dubstep pioneer Skream, for example. Second album – hefty bass swells, huge kickdrums and menacing synth jabs, a la his genre-shaping debut. Job done. Correct? WRONG, actually. Now hush and take note.
Alright, it’s not bluegrass or anything, but ‘Outside The Box’ – the follow-up to the self-titled debut from Skream (Ollie Jones) – is vastly different to his previous work. Crudely put, it’s a more mellow affair than his first album back in 2006, when dubstep was still underground(ish), and a tad more scary and exciting.
There are a couple of experimentations with electronica (including the D‘n’B/8-bit crossover single ‘Listenin’ To The Records On My Wall’) a straight-up hip-hop track (featuring MURS of LA outfit Living Legends) and even a couple of songs which could justifiably be labelled as ‘urban electronic ballad’, skirting around the edges of Burial-esque territory.
Perversely poppy electro duo La Roux also return the favour (Skream’s heavy dub rework of their track ‘In For The Kill’ was a club and radio favourite and considerably upped the coiffured ones’ street cred) in the tribal euphoria of ‘Finally’, and – perhaps most interesting of all – ‘I Love The Way’ is essentially a dark, dubbed-out disco bastardisation, topped off by a pitched-way-down sample of modern soul/house singer Jocelyn Brown.
– – –
– – –
But rather than treading on the complete unknown, it seems that the direction of ‘Outside The Box’ is the purest personal representation of Skream yet, exploring the musical persona that he feels closest to – a fact which he isn’t shy about: “It’s a whole different approach,” says Ollie. “It’s just the kind of music that I really like. Not that I don’t like the other stuff, but this has a lot of the sort of stuff I’d listen to at home. There was no thought about clubs and the club environment, which was unusual for me. It’s kind of an in-look to what I can do.”
Skream getting all introspective? Perhaps, although it’s more an honest representation of the man himself, as opposed to a contrived image-shift. Kudos to him. It would have been so easy to make ‘Skream: Volume 2’ and keep the bass Nazis happy, but Ollie has instead focused on his own chops. “I’ve always tried to experiment,” he explains. “The kids who come and see me in clubs ain’t really gonna expect what’s on there. I’m excited by it, it’s a challenge. But I’m also trying to show people that it’s not all nasty aggressive music.”
But despair not, children of the eye-melting low frequency, for Skream has also included a few filling-rattlers on ‘Outside The Box’. In particular, the onomatopoeic ‘Wibbler’ has a jagged bass punch that will get the purists dribbling. And of course, this kind of mischief still pushes Skream’s buttons: “It’s fun. When you make a track and you see three thousand kids going absolutely nuts to it, it is a good feeling, but there’s so many people covering those bases at the moment. I’ve been doing that sort of stuff for ages.”
Indeed, sticking to just the one genre seems fairly limiting when you think about it – even if you do it pretty damn well – but more than that, Skream’s musical field of vision has been revealed as far wider than most of us could have imagined. “It’s a great time at the moment for music in general, not just dubstep,” says Ollie. “The line between genres has narrowed, and I really enjoy it because it means there’s just such a free range over what to do.”
Words by Tristan Parker
Read ClashMusic’s review of Skream’s new album ‘Outside The Box’.
 |
Clash Magazine Issue 53
|
–
