Kevin Martin's thinking man's fury.
These days nearly everyone is sneaking a little ragga into their mix, but Pressure stands out as at once unadulterated?the adrenalin jolt it delivers is nothing if not pure?and totally hybrid. That is, the energy is pure but it derives from pressure-cooked elements welded together by Martin. His "beats" include whirling sirens, distant crashes and high-pitched gibbering far- removed from run-of-the-mill dancehall boasting backdrops. His esthetic is restrained, even minimal at times?he can match the most frenetic of vocals with a simple beat that sounds like a hand-drum loop?but as the Bug, Martin never sacrifices dancehall's most powerful weapon, i.e. butt-shaking bass rhythms that compel listeners to get up and move.
Martin has said that this project is about expanding his ongoing sonic war to include the body, via the low end, as well as the mind. A full two-thirds of the tracks here are rocket-propelled grenades that hit their targets square on. Pressure would be an excellent CD to play for any fogey who thinks that experimental electronic music is all about noodling and noise, or who persists in the belief that dancing and thinking are irrevocably at odds (or just to bother your neighbors).
Much of the thinking induced by Pressure comes from the lyrics of vocalists such as Daddy Freddy, once Guinness' world's fastest rapper, who weighs in with the provocative "Politicians and Paedophiles" ("wrong strategy/wrong terminology?poor people are sinking"). Other lyrics are admirably simple and direct, as in Wayne Lonesome's "Fuck Y'self," which begins with his hoarse voice cursing out a hapless enemy; or they're just plain silly, as in "Superbird" ("I'm a super guy/and I love to fly/flying around the world/me and the super girl").
Trinidadian-born dub poet Roger Robinson stands out with contributions on four tracks. His words range from evocative scenes of sensuality and deceit to righteous apocalyptic visions with Biblical overtones: "You drink and eat dry sand 'til your slow starvation/pass beyond the veils of death to borrow wings for your salvation/and gaze in awe the slowly opening eye of creation?/gurgle the blood falling from your mouth and taste your damnation."
Not every track on Pressure is a mind- and tongue-twisting assault. But the duds are among the slower tracks, where some of the energy flags. It doesn't happen on all of them: Martin is adept at crafting sounds that retain tension and a sense of urgency or even menace while reducing the bpms. Still, I can't help wishing that "Gun Disease"/"Gun Version," an all-out firefight of a single, had been included on Pressure, which nevertheless improves with each listening. Minor imperfections aside, the Bug's invasion is a smashing success. This is one of the year's best releases to date.