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MARTYN - Great Lengths

MARTYN - Great Lengths
3024
CD // £8.99
DUBSTEP / GRIME / FUNKY
Released: Apr 2009
Catalogue Number: 3024005CD

*14 Track CD Edition - finally back in stock!* Undoubtedly the most anticipated album of the last 12 months, Martyn's debut full length arrives amidst a cacophany of fanfare and media hype, but is it any cop? We'll have to go with the concensus on this one, because as dubstep albums go, this is a right killer and pretty much exactly what we expected from this incredibly talented producer. The dubstep scene has thrown up a few auteurs in it's time, but hardly any as single minded yet expansively influenced as Martyn. Coming from a background in D'n'B, with releases for Revolve:r and Bassbin, Martyn has proven that he has a keener and more discerning set of lugs than the rest of the scene with DJ sets drawing for prime Detroit techno, Berlin dub house and minimal and UK broken beats besides the usual dubstep, all obviously informing his multi faceted ouevre, which he simply sums up as "The Martyn Sound". It takes a great deal of skill and an idiomatic spirit to cut through so many styles and still emerge without it sounding like a glut of mismatched angles, but Martyn has made this his stock in trade. 'Great Lengths' is rammed full of these stylistic fissions. It's very hard to mistake the opener to the CD 'The Only Choice' as anything but a Martyn track, while 'Krdl-t-grv' only serves to solidify this with a stunning broken beat exercise rattling with intricately woven layers of junglist percussion and climactic synth pressure, at once made for the rave, the headphones and the bedroom. 'Seventy Four' is destined to be a future classic, to our mind the first time he's released a track below 130bpm, with a Theo Parrish indebted Detroit houser swirling with the same jazzy abstraction but just smudged in all the right places by deft Martyn brushstrokes. The already established classic 'Vancouver' makes a pivotal appearance, elevating the path towards the album's centrepiece 'These Words' ft. a ball clutching falsetto from Bad Company's dBridge over tight skipping garage tech constructions. This follows neatly into 'Bridge', the much discussed solo piano interlude which isn't nearly as painful or cheesy as it could have been, and onto the smartly broken Burial-esque syncopations of 'Hear Me' before the clandestine murk of Spaceape's delivery over mystical Mid-Eastern percussion and crushed blue velvet textures on 'Is This Insanity'. Finishing on 'Natural Selection' is a very canny move, meaning that all but the most emotionally redundant of listeners should be left with a warm glow and almost guaranteed gooseflesh when those chords kick in. It's unlikely that anyone will top this masterpiece in the dubstep scene in 2009, but we're more than happy to hear any contenders. Martyn can sit proud knowing he's made one of the most soulful, rhythmically rich and inviting albums of this year. Essential purchase!

• Tracks on MARTYN - Great Lengths:
• MARTYN : 01
• MARTYN : 02
• MARTYN : 03

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