(a Patreon Request)
It wouldn't surprise me if this collaboration between Pinch and Shackleton had been counted upon to rescue dubstep from the clutches of bro-dom when it first came out (yes, another 'great hope' – there were a few of those). Here were two of the genre's founding fathers, a pair of producers who took the early concepts of dubby, minimalist bass music into mutant strains few knew what to make of at the time. It had those half-step rhythms and powerful low frequencies though, plus was getting rinsed out in haunts throughout the London underground, so it must be dubstep. Until it wasn't anymore, because dubstep officially became something almost diametrically opposite to this, save some scene lineage. Ah, reminds me of the good ol' trance-eurotrance wars, it does.
In any event, despite coming up through the dubstep ranks along similar paths, these 'future garage' guys never really crossed paths – probably didn't help that Shackleton had shacked up in Berlin while Pinch had pitched his tent in Bristol. Also, Shackleton had his own label to essentially self-release material with Appleblim (Skull Disco), while providing the odd tune for tech-house prints like Crosstown Rebels and Perlon. Meanwhile, Pinch was releasing stuff on his own Tectonic, with additional contributions to leftfield rhythms label Planet Mu. They had to cross roads eventually though (releasing fabric mixes about a year apart maybe helped), and thus the deed was done with this self-titled album, surprisingly both their official sophomore efforts in the long-player format (so sayeth Lord Discogs).
Even with but a skimming of each producer's output to this point, Pinch & Shackleton delivered mostly what I expected out of such a pairing. Surprisingly though, it offered something more, or rather something familiar that may have been incidentally arrived by both players. Or perhaps not, the roots of such dub production a genetic through-line since UK ravers were first transposing the sounds of Jamaican transplants into all manner of house, techno, downtempo, and 'ardcore. Still, I couldn't deny, hearing those tribal rhythms and samples, the stripped back songcraft, and the desire to explore between the sonic spaces, that I was getting some serious Sandoz and Bandulu flashbacks on this album (because it always comes back to them for my dubby tribal techno influences; PWoG, too).
I'm hesitant to say it's a one-for-one comparison though, as many tracks here could only have been made in a post-dubstep climate. The urgent opening build of Torn & Submerged, for instance, or the gnarly bass growl of Burning Blood, are the sorts of sonic markers that have been UK bass staples for over a decade now. Tracks that edge closer to tribal-techno's realm though (Jellybones, Levitation, Rooms Within A Room) could have been obscure '90s cuts, though definitely with finer production on hand. Yes, no matter how 'gritty and stripped' Pinch and Shackleton's aesthetic is to the modern ear, those overwhelming bass frequencies remain quite contemporary. Ain't nothing from 'back when' sounding this vast in my headphone space, nosiree.
