Various Production - Meskmen / Wot U Say

Electronic shapeshifters Various Production return with their second vinyl outing of 2008, a 7-inch that continues to establish their credentials as one of the most unhindered and effortlessly creative studio units operating anywhere today. Following January’s thundering ‘Diver’ EP, Various Production have remained hard at work behind the mixing desk, and are now within touching distance of completing their hotly-anticipated second album, from which these latest tracks are drawn. Staking claim to territory both well within and far outside the dubstep nation which gave them their first flash of notoriety, this new single leads with ‘Maskmen’, a banging dub-charged marriage of VP’s trademark claustrophobia with a punkoid lyrical hook that could well be their most insistent to date. Tracing a line from dubstep’s rushing sub-bass physicality to the equally visceral thrill of howling dirtrock vocals, ‘Maskmen’ nails the harder-edged sound they have been developing in their many notable live shows of the last year, while keeping faith with punk’s time-zero credo as the uncredited singer intones a looped assertion that “the future’s now for you and me”. This is the acid seeping from dance culture’s recklessly abandoned batteries, corroding deep below the surface, staining indelibly wherever it spreads. Conversely, ‘Wot U Say’ finds our hosts working through a long-held obsession with Django Reinhardt, while introducing a distinctive new female voice to their fold. Possessed of an alchemical quality that marks it out as uniquely Various, the tune’s (“real”) spanish guitar and rusty ale-house piano rattle across a game junkyard jazz shuffle, as a smartly crafted lyric administers an iron-fist-in-velvet-glove beatdown to all the vapid mini-Allens who insist upon getting in the way of better things. As XTC so emphatically exclaimed, “This Is Pop!”. The future may be now for you and me, but Various Production were there first.

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