Zomby - Dedication

Author

Scott Aitken

Published

Friday 14th October

Over two and a half years after the release of Where Were U In ’92?, electronic producer Zomby brings us Dedication, his second full-length album.

Whereas his debut was both a tribute to and a celebration of the classic hardcore rave scene, Dedication is a dark and intense ambient/dub experience filled with sparse electronic production, gloomy synths and vintage techno hooks.

On Dedication Zomby seems to draw his influences more from the sounds of Capcom and Super Nintendo than Wiley or Kraftwerk, demonstrating his passion for producing 8-bit grooves filled with circuit bent keyboards and glitchy, old school videogame sound effects such as on ‘Black Orchid’ and ‘Digital Rain’.

On other tracks such as ‘Riding with Death’, Zomby creates a chilled-out ambient hum with a lot of space and darkness that’s expertly underpinned by minimal dub influences akin to earlier works by Basic Channel or Rhythm and Sound.

Animal Collective’s Panda Bear helps out on ‘Things Fall Apart’, giving us his best dub vocal impersonation against an 808 drum, a booming bullhorn, and some dramatically rising synth-lines.

Like its predecessor, Dedication is a fine mixture of different sounds and styles and as always you never know what you’re going to get next. For example straight after the racey, John Carpenter-esque ‘Haunted’ comes the somber ‘Basquiat’, dropping all the vintage electronic beats and glossy production in favor of a raw acoustic piano melody and some subtle strings.

The only flaw of Dedication unfortunately is that each song finishes too early before you can fully experience everything that Zomby has going on in the track. Dedication is a clever, unpredictably varied album with some great tracks from a man who wants nothing more than to test the boundaries whenever he can. Pick up this album to find out how he continues to be so damn good at it.