Lie Cheat & Steal / You Should Be Ashamed

Album review

Since his first vinyl outings on Ipswich's Deep Red records Tommy Withers, the production force behind Klute, has remained at the very cutting-edge of drum and bass. His recordings for the Certificate 18 label however, were what brought Klute widespread attention; Withers' music moving with a liquid agility and abstract melodics blazing vapor trails above molten landscapes of percussion. Klute's first two albums for the label, Casual Bodies and 2000's Fear of People, successfully expanded upon this groundwork, shying away from any single subgenre in favor of throwing down a complex blend of sounds with intricate beat programming pushing against the gravitational draw of soaring orchestration. Having split from the label in 2000, Klute contributed to labels 31 Records, Hospital, Advanced, and Metalheadz, before Withers launched his own pessimistically monikered Commercial Suicide, with the bubbling synths of the initial single "Trance Format" providing the foundation for a barrage of well-received singles from the likes of John Tejada, Digital, Spirit, and lesser-known artists Illskillz and AI. Klute's first album for Commercial Suicide advances the amalgamation of electronic and drum and bass, with Lie Cheat and Steal: a fully fledged double album where the drum and bass master-class of Lie Cheat and Steal is countered with the second CD of pure techno, entitled You Should Be Ashamed. There are few producers with the ability to manage a cohesive flow throughout two such traditionally very separate genres, but Klute achieves this through a comprehensive understanding of both; demarcating the boundaries through the smoke of mirrors of a common library of sounds, and Withers' characteristic writing style. Of the two albums, the continuum rippling "Music for Doubles" takes the flag for the techno volume; its subtle shifts of programming evoking memories of golden era Underground Resistance; while the deceptively soulful undertow of "Song Seller" outmaneuvers all but the most agile of his drum and bass contemporaries.
© Kingsley Marshall /TiVo