★★★★☆
With skin in the game for a good decade now, Bristol bass kingpins and Bandulu Records operators Kahn and Neek have drummed up years of demand for their first album as a duo. They’ve quietly had a hand in a number of long-players over the years in different capacities – the pair are both associated with the motley crew Young Echo, and Neek frequently delves into vaporwave-infused hip-hop as one half of O$VMV$M – but their new outing Lupus et Ursus marks their first coordinated effort of this scale together.
Translated from Latin as “the wolf and the bear”, Lupus et Ursus signals an opportune moment for the two to flesh out their musical identity in a way previously inhibited by the short-form nature of their vinyl-exclusive EPs; as a result, they indulge us in some more experimental material than fans may have expected to hear, eschewing dubstep and grime conventions wherever possible and drawing on a vast pool of musical influences. One need only look to the duo’s activity on the West Country club circuit for an insight into the eclecticism at play: Kahn has been known to headline goth nights at the Exchange, a live music bar in 0117’s Old Market quarter, while Neek is one of the brains behind Dat Drip, a long-standing trap party at Cosies. These reference points are audible across the LP, which journeys through evocations of dread and defiance as if the two emotions are close siblings.
As a whole, Lupus et Ursus isn’t an album for the clubs, per se, even if the pair’s back catalogue has been best enjoyed in this context. Included are a handful of rowdy, MC-led collaborations that will lend themselves well to a serious soundsystem – such as the ominous “War Start”, which taps Roll Deep originals Flowdan and Riko Dan, and the faultless crew cut “Rally”, which unites members of Killa’s Army, Cemetery Warriors and N.A.S.T.Y – but there’s a sizable portion of bleak, pensive instrumentals, too, which lean into the sound Sam “Neek” Barrett has explored alongside Amos when producing for the likes of Manonmars and Franco Franco. Tracks like “Inadequacy” and “Delayed Atoms” carry an inherent anxiety that’s dialled up to the max, evoking intense feelings of grief and devastation in a manner that the pair have rarely dared explore on past 12”s.
The best offerings on the LP befittingly straddle the extremes: “Baron Blood”, which wouldn’t be out of place as a final boss soundtrack, is a cantankerous, slow-mo dubstep affair defined by busy arpeggios and gnarled reese basses, while “Space Mutiny”, a textbook offering from the boys, employs a gorgeously vibrato-tinged harmony which sneaks into the foreground atop stuttering percussion and choppy low-end. Replying to their predecessors with a newfound optimism, tracks like these are the pièces de résistance amidst an LP in which the pair are almost too good at conveying a feeling of doom. With song names like “Chronic Despair” already in their repertoire, we’d hardly expect any less; but it’s the glimpses of hope and light which reaffirm that they offer the complete package.