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| Boomkat |
 VINYL FINALLY RE-MASTERED, RE-CUT AND RE-PRESSED. Deep Medi offer something a little more substantial than their usual 12"s with the debut long player from Antisocial Ents' Silkie. It's fair to say the dubstep scene has splintered and refracted into myriad Sub(bass)styles over the last couple of years, but at the epicentre of the scene are a few artists who have maintained the original spirit of the style while alloying it successfully with influences that were always hovering on the edges, but never fully integrated. Silkie is one of those artists, hailing from the hotbed of South London, he's heated elements of deeper house and synth driven soul around the glowing core of DMZ's bassbins to create one of the lushest fusions in the scene. 'City Limits' is a collection of 9 tracks exploring this style with velveteen synths descended in the tradition from Larry Heard to MJ Cole and so forth till they're meshed with the rattling patterns and insistent bass pulse of dubstep. This is dubstep music with one (respectful) eye on the ladies and the other on the floor and for those reasons it's a brilliant summer heater and the perfect example of the congruity of house and dubstep. F*ck it, it's all dance music innit?! Top album....full text |
| Bbc |
| Dubstep kingpin Mala signed both Silkie and labelmate Quest to his DEEP MEDi imprint on the same day, both original members of west London crew Antisocial Entertainment. Despite still being in their early 20s, the pair have steadily risen through the ranks of grime, Silkie producing beats as a teenager for his big brother Silva, one of the MCs in the Channel U-hyped crew Unorthodox. It wasn't until they were exposed to the pioneering rhythms of pivotal London dubstep club night FWD>> in the early 2000s that their sights shifted permanently. Mala seems to be keen to let his artists take their time. Though he was literally bursting with material, Silkie had to wait for two years after being signed before releasing his debut album, 2009's City Limits Volume 1. Another two years later comes the second instalment, and it's polished to a spit-shine. The reason for this is the fact that each track has been extensively road-tested, each honed again and again while their maker’s toured the globe. Tracks like the irrepressible Get Up n Dance might sound the way they do because of a reaction on a dancefloor in Estonia or Japan. The club, he says, is his "second studio", and you can hear it imprinted on every track....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| If Silkie's City Limits Volume 1 had an immediate identity, it was dubstep's more upfront tendencies dialed into a somewhat upscale frequency-- tasteful without being bland, busy without being messy. Headphone music that worked just as well filling rooms, his material had a strong sense of rhythmic pull and intricate density. And while Silkie augmented his developing sound with occasional detours into "purple" bass and evergreen boogie funk, what stood out was an overarching style that didn't see a mutual exclusion between cocktail-lounge ambiance and tons of wobbly bass. At times it skewed closer to the pop-gloss sophistication of late-90s UK garage than the escalating bassbin arms race of crossover dubstep. Follow-up City Limits Volume 2 isn't as immediately gratifying or revelatory-- it's a logical progression, reliability replacing novelty. But it also explores the possibility of connecting on a level simultaneously nostalgic and contemporary, right down to the decades-past pirate-radio evocations of its song titles: "Get Up N Dance", "Rock Da Funk". Repeating themes seem intent on sparking flashbacks, vivid enough to hit specific nerves but vague enough to avoid coming across as specifically derivative-- and threading together a narrative of genre developments in the process. The synth sax that drove the melody of Volume 1 track "Beauty" is a more prominent component here, punctuating tracks with melodic stabs that could have originated from a decade-old Locked On garage 12"-- if not a late-80s hip-house remix. "Selva Nova" tweaks the neo-jungle turf that its title hints at, wringing jittery force out of the old "Amen" break and dousing it with a choppy yet liquid 303 bassline. And whenever a voice breaches the surface, it's in a familiar form-- Rastafarian incantations ("Feel"), Roger Troutman talk-box warbles ("New York City"), or a distorted, pitched-up note or two from a rave diva ("Snowed In"). Even the synth and piano melodies that drove some of the more compelling hooks on Volume 1 sound more comfortably worn and identifiable from eras past, like the rollerskate-jam electro of "Boogie Boy" or the Junie Morrison-esque g-funk extrapolations in "Lucky...full text |
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