Description:	Ace CD on Hyperdub
	Format:	CD
	Genre(s):	Dubstep / Bass Music
	Label:	Hyperdub
	Price:	£12.89
	Availability:	Dispatched within 2-5 days (on average).

5
...according to our Ant on 26 November 2009.

If I am perfectly honest not that much of the recent material on Hyperdub has excited me as much as the early to mid-period stuff. However the release of the debut album from King Midas Sound is an event I've been waiting on ever since I first heard tracks on their Myspace player a while back. Well the day has finally come and I'm pleased to report that 'Waiting For You…' is everything I wanted it to be, and then some. Kevin Martin (The Bug/ Techno Animal etc.) really can turn his hand to pretty much any style and still sound fresh and original. The teaming with vocalist Roger Robinson is a match made in heaven with Robinson's silky smooth delivery fusing perfectly with Martin's blunted and very soulful post dub/ haunted lovers rock sound which he employs for this project. Also the album introduces a third member into the sound with female artist Hitomi. The album begins with previous single 'Cool Out' with the lyrics "We kill soundboy's with our shoalin styles, run them out the dancehall wiping tears from their eyes" setting the tone for the album. The use of dubwise effects give proceedings an ultra stoned vibe, superbly deep with many layers of ethereal, haunted, spooked out sounds. The beats for a large part are very much in a kind of spaced out hip-hop zone. Robinson's lyrics are both conscious and personal with stories of wanting and loss. 'Earth A Killya' sounds heavily inspired by Linton Kwesi Jonson and is nothing short of totally thought provoking. I'd recently been listening to this BRILLIANT mix they created and it really paints the picture of the musical influences that have gone into the King Midas sound; Gregory Isaacs, AR Kane, My Bloody Valentine, Jacob Miller, Oval, Thomas Koner, Japan, Burial, Rhythm & Sound, Theo Parish , Scritti Politti, Sade, Tanya Stevens and so on. This is pure genius from beginning to end. There is paranoia and darkness lurking around every corner, and the lyrics of broken love are very touching. 'Goodbye Girl' is like the ultimate tale of relationship separation mind-games; both brutal and moving.Oh there is some superb bottom end action to be found here too. Very highly recommended and comes in lovely digipak with lyric booklet.

Love this record? Hate it? Tell us.

Sound clips for Waiting For You by King Midas Sound: on CD at Norman Records UK. CD, Hyperdub, HDBCD003, £12.89.

What their label says...

After two singles on Hyperdub, and a release on Soul Jazz, King Midas Sound's ‘Waiting For You’ is the debut album from Roger Robinson and Kevin Martin's new group. In previous collaborations, Roger performed as a highly respected poet, but when he opened his mouth to sing in a fragile falsetto, everything changed and King Midas Sound was born. The signature intensity of their previous solo projects remains, but the mood and feeling is radically different. As opposed to Roger's spoken word pronouncements and The Bug's fierce battleground dancehall, King Midas Sound is more like an opiated aftermath. ‘Waiting For You’ is all about intimacy. Roger’s falsetto is fragile and vulnerable, a sound somewhere between Gregory Issacs and Vincent Gallo, nestled inside an intimate blanket of bass and vertiginous atmosphere. On three of the album cuts, the duo becomes a trio, as the bittersweet backing vocals of Hitomi (from Dokkebi Q) add a further disorientating swirl around the mix like memories gatecrashing the present. Two years after Hyperdub released Burial's 'Untrue' it is still rare to find albums packed with such intense and honestly exposed feelings. King Midas Sound often deals with a similar strain of musical melancholia, but instead of hyperemotional haunted garage, ‘Waiting…’ is absolutely song based, and generates the spectral bliss of a jilted lovers rock, a sublime, heartbreak reggae. We learn quite quickly that the opening fresh breeze of sound system nursery rhyme 'Cool Out' was actually the back draft of an emotional apocalypse. As we move from the yearning title track, to the ital ecology of 'Earth a Kill Ya', to the elevation of the lunar 'Outer Space' and 'Miles and Miles,' the emotional geography opens out into full, dread soul glory, a wasteland populated by songs of psychic meltdown, the sweet toxicity of love, echoed lullabies to the departed and an acidic undertone of resentment - ("I wish you luck with a capital F, boy").

Tracklisting : ‘Cool Out’, ‘Waiting For You’, ‘One Thing’, ‘Earth a Kill Ya’, ‘Dahlin’, ‘Meltdown’, ‘I Man’, ‘Blue’, ‘Goodbye Girl’, ‘Lost’, Sometimes’, ‘Outer Space’, ‘Miles & Miles’.