- Geographically the two could hardly be further apart, but in style New Zealand's Epoch and the UK's Wen are close cousins. Both make spacious, brooding beat constructions at around 130 BPM, and both display a level of technical skill beyond their young years. The pair collaborated on the storming "Hydraulics," but their solo work has slightly different leanings: where Wen's sliced vocals reveal an allegiance to grime, Epoch draws more directly from classic mid-'00s dubstep. This, of course, is crowded terrain. But compared to the legions of purist "dungeon" dubsteppers mimicking their parent style with dreary accuracy, Epoch's music is interesting for its distance from the form. In last year's Soundboy Abduction Vol 1 EP, he peppered his lumbering halfstep grooves with imaginative flourishes. And 'The Steppenwolf''s slinky wobble-drop, a highlight of Keysound's This Is How We Roll compilation, was framed with all kinds of unexpected twists and turns.
The 11.38 EP is slightly puzzling, then, as it represents a narrowing of that distance—and not only in tempo (both originals here nudge up towards 140bpm). Much of the title track—the moody sampled film dialogue, sinister reverbed chords and fulsome sub throb—is dubstep to the point of cliché. Fortunately Epoch makes it his own through a characteristically skillful handling of narrative, meaning we're never quite sure where we're going next. "Numatik" is more overtly modeled on the gaunt minimalism of "Rufage"-era Loefah. It's certainly not pastiche—the grandiose string riff that descends in the breakdowns particularly stands out. But any young producer is likely to suffer when working to such a shining exemplar, and in this context the choppy detail that defines Epoch's style begins to feel a touch fussy. Rounding off the package is a ghostly re-imagining of "The Steppenwolf" by Gantz. The recent single Spry Sinister proved this Deep Medi signee to be a fan of the unusual, and the way his remix drops into sluggish half speed in the middle is pleasingly unexpected, if not exactly dance floor dynamite.
Tracklist01. 11.38
02. Numatik
03. The Steppenwolf (Gantz Remix)