Bristol’s Orphan101 comes from the same lineage as the city’s considerable musical family of Appleblim, Headhunter, Gatekeeper, et al, but for whatever reason it took him a few years to really penetrate beyond city limits. With an impressive backlog of tracks spanning all sorts of genres, 2011 looks to be the year he finally establishes his reputation outside of Bristol. One part of the triumvirate that rules Bristol’s promising new Deca Rhythm imprint, Rob Davies’ first release of the year actually comes on Appleblim’s Applepips label, and its two tracks fall perfectly in line with the label’s standard of idiosyncratic bass music.
Davies, on these two tracks, seems rather preoccupied with silence and drama: “Propa” skitters by on thinned percussion and portentous chords before simply fading out a minute in and then hitting with renewed fervor. It’s a perverse take on the drop, the impact notched up when it slams out of complete silence. The track’s subsequent progression is a steady ebb and flow of bubbling chords and brushstroke bass lines, built from strange samples that share little with the common metallic snares and blunt kicks of most dubstep. Everything is further emphasized with “Disemble,” which drops a startling LFO bomb that scatters springy and organic mass everywhere, the bass line gurgling and darting across the track like something Villalobos might have let loose in the earliest stages of his career. It’s an unmissable start to what looks like a banner year for the not-so-new producer, yet another progressive force in the endlessly splintering and expanding field of vaguely-dubstep music.
