The Bug
Machine
RELAPSE
Beloved for his vividly corrosive yet melodic takes on dub-techno and post-dancehall, UK-based producer, composer, and overall sonic manipulator Kevin Martin lets loose on Machine with a sound he developed as far back as his 1997 lo-fi debut as The Bug, Tapping the Conversation—an explosive, cinematic roar that capitalized on the crack and crunch of discordant metal and the ire of industrial rock, all with the wheeze and sleaze of bass-bin-throttling British hip-hop. With this newest record, a curious collection of instrumentals designed primarily for his live gigs that compiles five EPs dating back to March of 2023, Martin has drifted into the damaging territory you always thought he’d inhabit, that tiny dark bar where The Bomb Squad, Foetus, Slayer, and King Tubby might drink.
The staggeringly loud, “Hells Bells”-era AC/DC ring of “Shafted (Laws of Attraction/Repulsion),” the gigantic tape hiss and stereo-panning static of “Vertical (Never See You Again)” and “Sickness (Slowly Dying)”—these tracks have the unfleshy filmic feel of where Martin started, inspired as he was by Francis Ford Coppola’s clammy intrigue of The Conversation. Going deeper and darkly into a dangerous groove setting—the fact that Machine is Martin’s first Relapse Records release should give you an idea of the noise you can expect—the halting “Annihilated (Force of Gravity)” and “Buried (Your Life Is Short)” are the wrong ends of the dancefloor in which to hang. I don’t know what clubs these cuts were crafted for, but fuck, this is no easy human rhythm.
As for the metal machine music of “Bodied (Send for the Hearse)” and “Exit (Wasteman),” if you could imagine Lou Reed and Metallica’s death-star Lulu project, only faster and deeper—well, you do that. Machine is uneasy listening at its finest, and here’s hoping The Bug plays live on the back of its release.
