Ephemeral Exhibits

One of the fun things about dubstep is how it can sound like the feeling of trying to walk when you're dizzy and nauseated. Another fun thing about it is the fact that by the time this album came out, it was already a mature enough musical form that people were starting to seriously mess with its boundaries, and that's what Starkey is doing here on his first album for the Planet Mu label. "Gutter Music" opens the program with a grungy, shaky-legged groove; then comes "Pictures" with a feel that alternates between a dubstep stagger and an assertive four-on-the-floor house beat. "Miracles" is rather creepy, with long smears of seriously messed-up vocals, while "Escape" is stuttering and squelchy and "Striking Distance" brings elements of more explicitly dubwise reggae into the mix. "Bang Bang the Witch Is Dead" feels strangely contemplative — perhaps it's the long swaths of minor-key chord washes that float above the fluttery sub-basement basslines and nervous percussion. Throughout the whole disc, Starkey seems simultaneously to be celebrating his grime and dubstep roots and rejecting them, and simultaneously laughing and snarling. The result is both exhilarating and somewhat unsettling.