Vex'd – Degenerate

Let's be honest, this sounds as tight as the day it was released. They set the bar high.

Heard this before I really knew what Dubstep was. I just knew it as a Hard, Dark and Bassy electronic album with tinges of industrial. But it was done so well, it pretty much ruined the dubstep craze for me. I've never heard bass this deep be so crisp. The drumprog was so hard hitting. All i could think of when i listened to others in the genre was, Vex'd did it so much better - years ago. Simply the best album in the genre - if you consider it part of it at all.

Released at a time when Dubstep was really starting to gain momentum and recognition within the wider electronic music scenes but not quite being raped by the mainstream, yet still not conforming to the emerging template for the clichéd 'Dubstep sound'.

Industrial, abstract electronica, Breakbeat and even moody Classical influences, all culminating into one of the most innovative 'Dubstep' albums to date, and personally my most treasured album from the movement.

In the early days of Planet Mu I thought that this label would only copy IDM sounds of WARP Records, Rephlex or Skam. Unfortunately WARP went "Pop" by nearly releasing Alt.Rock stuff, Schematic and Skam nearly stopped releasing Music and Sublight declared their bankrupt in 2007. But Planet Mu survived by making a good change in the direction of Dubstep and Breakcore, two new styles whitch dominate the electronic music scene now in the second half of the 00's.

And here we have Vex'd 's Degenerate album. Once you put it into your CD player you can't stand still, you HAVE to dance. Enormous beats with the precision of Kraftwerk and the sharpness of Industrial. JUST great. In my opinion one of the best Dubstep albums with Burial and the latest afford of Meat Beat Manifesto ("Autoimmune").

Well, excuse me now. I have to repair my subwoofer.

This was a groundbreaking release for the dubstep genre in my opinion. Because it was released on Planet Mu (not so into dubstep at the time, as it is now), it reached a wider audience. To be quite honest it was one of the first dubstep releases I heard, and it's still one of the best. I couldn't believe how bass-heavy this music was. Truly innovative stuff.

This record will just eat your subwoofers. Released in 2005, still up there in 2008! Class material

This album has been one of the first things I press on my ipod for quite some weeks now, it's absolute madness how well done this is. No one has ever made bass this sharp, it feels like some kind of block-blasting sonic weapon. It grooves like the best of the heydey of darkstep (think Ed Rush having a nightmare) but sounds as harsh as any breakcore, or even industrial. The only comparison I can manage is Pan Sonic - specifically the first disc of Kesto, one of the only other artists I know that make analog drones this piercing), but without the icey grooveless minimalism. Thick, burning stuff.

Do the Vex'd boys have a license to create this much bass? From the outset with the updated version of the first single Pop Pop VIP this CD rips weakened speaker cones to shreds with relentless crashing overdriven beats and growling sub bass. I looked up the word "degenerate" in a thesaurus and these are some alternatives: debauched, degraded, infamous, low, mean, miscreant, nefarious, corrode, corrupt, devil, fiend, lout, monster, ogre, ruffian, sadist. Imagine those words were music... thats what Vex'd make.