Kevin Martin has been re-interpreting street musics—mostly dancehall, but also grime and dubstep—for nearly 17 years as the Bug, one of many aliases he’s worked under in a long career in underground music. He’s proved himself the rare artist capable of placing these sounds into more outre contexts without sacrificing any of their ferociousness. His last album, 2008's London Zoo, was full of menacing, fevered ragga that helped make explicit the connections between dancehall, grime, and the still-burgeoning dubstep scene. It was an album that proved especially enlightening to non-UK audiences, putting a point on several elusive trends. He returns here with Angels & Devils, an album that retains the precise brutality of London Zoo but feels labored in comparison.
Martin works slowly in genres that move quickly, and Angels & Devils arrives as grime has once again taken root as both a commercial and underground force: London Zoo all-star Flowdan can now be heard regularly on stations like Rinse FM toasting over mixes by DJs like Elijah & Skilliam, while newcomers like My Nu Leng offer potent blasts. Dubstep is...well, no one really knows what dubstep is in 2014. Dancehall persists, perhaps juiced a little by a generation of adoring rappers. Martin is unconcerned. Angels & Devils, an uneven collection, continues to skew dancehall toward the vanguard of British electronic music, extending an artistic handshake that’s been in effect for more than 20 years (and longer, should you want to move past electronic music).
On Angels & Devils, Martin bifurcates his interests, offering six songs of muddy dirges and six tracks of raucous, MC-aided bangers that will be familiar to fans of London Zoo. Presenting oneself as two competing forces is an artistic gambit that runs roughly from Ancient Greek theatre through Nelly's Sweat/Suit, and Angels & Devils slides comfortably between those poles. The problem is that Martin divides the album exactly, offering first six slow cuts—"angels", presumably—and then the ruffneck "devil" cuts. As a conceit, it fails, stultifying the album's flow and condescending to listeners regarding Martin's range: of course he's capable of slower, foggier productions, but did anyone think London Zoo needed more ambient passages?
Of course, slo-mo, waterlogged ephemera—be it dusty takes on R&B or traipsing down dub’s ever-expanding wormhole—is a pervasive trend in current British electronic music, leading to a lot of limp-wristed trip-hop variations. Grouper’s Liz Harris opens the album with “Void”, her airy, tip-toeing vowels as far as you can get stylistically from Flowdan without phoning Josh Groban. Martin’s lurching bass and gunmetal snares threaten, and Harris proceeds unaffected, as neither artist knows what to do with the other. Gonjasufi, meanwhile, sounds all too comfortable on “Save Me”, offering up the kind of moaning, industrial balladry you might find on a Liars album. It's not all bad: avant-chanteuse Copeland's lemon-sucking croon is fine foil for Martin’s bass rattle, and Miss Red proves that even on softer material, a Jamaican patois bests offsets Martin’s bouts of heavy, as she turns “Mi Lost” into a sonorous sendup.
The album’s second half is more familiar, and better. We’re treated again to three Flowdan cuts, and once again the combination of Martin’s fury and Flowdan’s resonant basso proves potent. Flowdan sounds good saying almost literally anything, and he delivers the occasional quotidian detail—“Why don’t my wife even like me?”—in the same confident bluster as his threats, which is both sneaky and funny. Manga, a bit more histrionic, turns the wild, splintering square waves of “Function” into the record’s best banging-on-the-dash party. In this context, Death Grips, who growl menacingly on “Fuck a Bitch”, sound stiff (and they always sound atonal).
Still, these tracks surge, bleeding adrenaline: Martin sows chaos and his collaborators keep things just under control. When the tempo and aggression are dialed back, the dynamic turns; Martin’s still a talented sound designer, but the whipping, centrifugal force that binds his tracks together is missing. That force is largely absent for the first six songs of Angels & Devils, and the album is trying as a result. The ruff cuts that close the album are your reward, and they are as rattled and rattling as ever, proving Martin still has a deft touch with the underground, provided the underground gives him something to work with.
