Goth-Trad: New Epoch

Over six years after he inadvertently discovered dubstep on 2005's Mad Raver's Dance Floor, mohawked Japanese bass fiend Goth-Trad has finally returned with a follow-up. But where his last album was a hyperactive collision of grime, jungle, crunk and dub, New Epoch finds producer Takeaki Maruyama in a far more focused frame of mind. Most of the tracks stick to a by-now familiar dubstep palette of roiling sub-bass and skanking, half-step rhythms, deployed to particularly crushing effect on last year's 'Babylon Fall' – featuring vocals from reggae veteran Max Romeo – and new single 'Airbreaker'. But if those songs would probably sound best played over a PA the size of a house, others are more tailored to headphone listening – check the skittering, high-frequency rhythms that dart across the stereo field on 'Cosmos' and 'Walking Together', or the pulsating ebb-and-flow of mid-album breather 'Strangers'. Opener 'Man in the Maze' accumulates a sense of cinematic dread that's almost John Carpenter-esque, but it's on the closing title track that Maruyama really blossoms, unleashing an epic slab of futurism that would do longtime pal Kode9 proud.

Time Out Tokyo rating:

‘New Epoch’ is out now on Deep Medi Musik/P-Vine Records