Absent of Nudie Suits

Grievious Angel - Devotional Dubz Fact Magazine Mix 2008

I'm pretty slow with this Dubstep thing so beg my pardons. I actually hated it at first, and blame it on Burial and the lame shit I heard around the time The Wire first started hyping it. All that said, this is another great mix I slept on from last year that you hopefully didn't. GA's own words from his blog on what he claims is the best thing he's ever done:

"In the summer, I put out Lady Dub, the first of the Devotional Dubz series of dubstep / dark garage refixes of r’n’b tunes, which was the counterpart to the harder ragga techno styles on the double album, Belief is the Enemy, that was released at solstice. Lady Dub is a refix of D’Angelo’s nu-soul classic Lady, or rather of DJ Premier’s remix of it; it turned out to be fairly popular, helping to propel the garage revival that we’ve seen this year. It also offered a different vision of dubstep, one that reaffirmed the form’s original tolerance for sweetness and vocals while offering the biggest booming 808 sine waves I could manage.

Each Devotional Dubz release will have a DJ mix that acts as a kind of sonic manifesto; therefore the first one focuses on the other side of dubstep, the landslide, horsepower, mala side that traces a lineage back to soul and dancehall and broken beat, just as jungle traced a lineage back to r’n’b as much as to bashment. It includes exclusive refixes and blends of r’n’b tunes, alongside unreleased Grievous Angel garage tracks that have previously only been heard on Blackdown’s Rinse show, and some special edits of dark garage classics. It’s lush, it’s spacey, it’s skippy, and at the end it’s unremittingly heavy, but all the way it’s pure garage flavour.

Turn it up and feel the sunshine. Volume two will be out in a few months when I’ve got some funky stuff out of the way".

R&B tunes rehashed with echoes that would make Tubby proud. Very recommended