Bleep

Appropriately labelled “dread-techno”, “mutant dub”, and “rhythm & noise”, Justin K Broadrick's latest release for The Bug's PRESSURE label sees him at his grimiest, exploring sewer systems in true antagonist fashion. With a cover spiralling into a pit of darkness, Sewer Bait is an ode to the vast network of pipes and tunnels lying beneath our feet, an album for urban explorers traversing murky corridors where who knows what could be lurking inside.

JK Flesh is no stranger to constructing absolutely pummelling sounds, with his famed outfits Godflesh and Jesu (to name a few) alongside the collaborative Disintegration Dubs LP with G36 released just a year prior. If that album was “so slicked with filth and grease and dirt”, this one is pressure washed in acid and dissolved in a heavy miasma of sludged out, brickwalled 4/4 rhythms. ‘Soaked to the skin’ is the foreboding black hole entrance, gushing with a dense tunnel reverb and cavernous with rhythmic drips, lasering bass, and eerie klaxons echoing from deep within.

‘Flushed Away’ continues the sonic cataclysm as quaking kicks pace throughout, descending further as the track patiently roils and thrashes. ‘Sewerbait’ is skittish and pulverised, a prime example of JK Flesh’s uncompromising sound with electrocuted synths and relentless bass rumbles. Pretty much every track here is made for towering sound systems, but ‘Cruiser’ and ‘In the Drain’ show off in particular, their visceral lumbering stomps and rattling dub loops drenched and distorted beyond recognition.

Sewer Bait is an intense, brutal, and unsettling listen from start to finish, built to inspire fear trudging through your psyche under 100bpm.