Joker & Rustie - Play Doe

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  • Joker, often described as the "young king of Bristol" by a certain raspy voiced Radio 1 tastemaker, serves up the second slice of wax on his own brand new Kapsize imprint and once again he's showcasing a flair for heavily synthesized 140 BPM melodies. After the debut release of "Holly Brook Park" b/w "80s," Joker's earned himself the reputation as the South West's dubstep equivalent of Bernie Worrell through his monstrous passion for Moog bass and a killer synth line. Enlisting the services of the Glaswegian aquacrunk Godfather, Rustie, is a masterstroke, as the pair gush over a shared love of 808 kick resonance, toy town snare drums and pitch spanning tom tom fills on "Play Doe." It's hard to fathom who brought what to the table on the first listen, but what is obvious is the pair's passion for low-slung Southern hip-hop; the beat slams and ducks its way in and out of the filtered bass with percussive toms punching their way into the mix. It's the most instantly gratifying of the two cuts on offer and alongside the debut 12-inch sets Kapsize up even further as the new go-to home of G-funk infused Dubstep Rustie’s solo jam "Tempered," which backs the 12-inch, is straight away a slightly moodier, swaggering affair that's a notch or two slower and has a less obvious melody. Cranking the sine wave drenched sub bass up a notch, Rus stabs at the groove with an offbeat, swollen and distorted melody that falls out into drips of synth colour and some of that Nate Dogg trademarked whistling you might find on an early Warren G record. He frames all this low end and those subtle, sucker-punch melodics neatly in a selection of primitive drum machine percussion, aptly showcasing a wanton slice of the Scottish crunk that's been setting the music press alight of late. KAP002 isn't so much a bold follow up to the introductory 12-inch; "Play Doe" is a banger that almost completely eclipses the first release. It’s without doubt one of those tunes that is guaranteed to nice up the dance each and every time; it'll make kids throw them bows all the way up to the roof and smile the whole time they're doing it. Instead of focusing on sheer bass weight and those all-important smatterings of percussion, Joker goes for the jugular, tearing into his drum patterns wielding a massively destructive talent to create hummable hooks that stick in your mind for weeks after the first listen; and when you team that with another ice cool shard in the shape of a Rustie production, you've got one hell of a special single for any label, let alone the second release on one that's less than six months old.
  • Tracklist
      A Joker & Rustie - Play Doe B Rustie - Tempered
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