Yes man! New Lion Charge! Been waiting for a new drop from the label for time, feels like a while since the D-Operation Drop release, and it’s proven to be well worth the wait. Two sides of wax only, heavy, heavy, dub from Egoless here, taking us back to a proper sound system aesthetic.
Lion Charge has been crazy good over the last few years. The white-paper sleeved releases barely last a day once they hit stores, and with good reason. The likes of DJ Madd, Killawatt and Ipman and Kaiju have blessed previous releases, giving it a substantial weight of quality across a large range of the spectrum for what’s currently considered to be serious ‘bass’ or ‘dub.’
An imprint of Osiris, Lion Charge is run by J:Kenzo, who’s been a chief tastemaker for dubstep and London sounds in general since Rinse started dictating some record sales. No surprise then that he would have had his choice of unreleased bits for pressing, but the curation to date has been sound system focussed, heavyweight shakers with a ragga attitude.
Egoless properly channels the booming bass levels of Kingston sound here, for two cuts appropriately titled with ‘Dust’ and ‘Tape’ titles. If I’m being honest, this was a bit surprising, as a except for a handful of Lo Dubs releases on 2012, which were more straight forward reggae workings, we’ve not seen a great deal from the producer, or we’ve been sleeping on his work.
To come out with these on Lion Charge makes us want to dig backwards for the last few years to see what we’ve been missing. ‘From Dust To Dub’ is a righteous stepper, drenched in bass so deep that we mostly only expect from analogue masters such as Blood Shanti or Lee ‘Scratch’ – there’s just so much soul in this joint. The rhythm on the bassline and percussion are amazing, and are pushed to the extremes with psych-delay, balanced out with layers on every level of your mids and highs as well.
Despite the intense activity the track never overstepping or losing it’s earth shaking dub roots. It still holds itself together in structure and somehow manages to pack in so many different sounds.
On the flip comes the more stripped down but equally devastating ‘Broken Tape Dub.’ More reverb and delay, and slightly darker, it’s a half-time burner that’ll change the mood of the dance on it’s own. Proper weapon this plate.
Some fella’s gone and uploaded the vinyl only release to youtube, which you can check out below. Label press release underneath that, big ups Egoless and Lion Charge.
via Lion Charge Records
Ringing in the New Year in high style, Lion Charge returns with their ninth outing of super limited wax. This time Egoless helms the mixing board with two duppy speaker cone wreckers. In true King Tubby style, both are full of haunted house effects, reverbed guitar chops and steppa b-lines.
On the A-Side, Egoless opens with ‘From Dust to Dub’. Dub sirens crack the void as a thick muck of sonic sorcery folds into itself. The steppa sub rumbles and sets a slow, determined pace for some eyes down meditation while the percussion is treated with all sorts of spring reverb and other Black Ark psychedelia.
Meanwhile, ‘Broken Tape Dub’ rounds out the B-side with wheezing organ drones as a heaving sub figure is outfitted with neck snapping snare cracks and guttural dungeon atmospherics. Like the A-side before it, ‘Broken Tape Dub’ is lathered in a hallucinatory soup of space echo and busted reverb tanks.