The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

“DJ Zinc is a BASTARD!” spits one reveller down my ear as the man in question moves through dancehall, bashment, 2-step, grime and straight-up bassline without morals or fidelity. His set for this Tuesday Club leaves no sub genre unpilfered and no ear drum unruptured. The room is turned into a maelstrom of pulsating torsos and hoisted index fingers. And the night has only just begun.

Next up, Skream ciphers through easily the deepest and best back catalogue in dubstep. His respect and knowledge of the music is clear and with it he creates a dark and sweaty old rave feel. Pressure is built from his mastery on the decks and MC Tonn Piper, who stands over the crowd like a modern day Mephistopheles. People hop and skank on their tiptoes waiting for the bass to expand and blow up. It does, time after punishing time.

Following the almost slow motion moves and gestures that dubstep brings, the threat of drum’n’bass rattles through the room. High Contrast, a man as renown for his DJing at Cardiff’s Moloko Bar as his productions for Hospital records, begins with whiplash-inducing violence, holding us unremittingly by the throat. His set, though, brings smiles as well as terror to people’s faces as he moves on to play his own classics like ‘Racing Green’, ‘If We Ever’ and ‘Twilight’s Last Gleaming’. Energy usually reserved for bassline bangers and high rollers is injected into the crowd; cups of water from the bar are snatched by ravers like marathon runners desperate to quench a never-ending thirst. When they return High Contrast’s incessant barrage sends their arms, knees and endorphins in impossible directions.

The final snare drums reverberates around Tuesday Club and we depart buzzing like kids around a smouldering wheelie bin in Barnsley.

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• Skream keeping one dubstep beyond (Posted in 018 October 2008 | Home News)