For years, beat heads have waited for an answer to DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing, the downtempo masterpiece that helped change the world’s view of sample-based music. Shadow’s script has been flipped time and again since 1996, from RJD2’s more resolutely polished funk loops to Four Tet’s quirky, near-folky cut ‘n’ pastes to Eliot Lipp’s synth-heavy G Funk. But few have come as close to Endtroducing’s multi-layered moods and atmospheres–that head-nodding bass thump, those easy tempos, them crispy snares–as London artist Kelpe does with Ex-Aquarium.

Kelpe, born Kel McKeown, isn’t working inside the instrumental hip-hop idiom. He’s got his own thing going–call it… a life aquatic. From his debut album, 2004’s Sea Inside Body, McKeown has explored water themes, with tidal synths washing over tangled tendrils of guitar, luminescent hi-hats, and coral-sharp drum kicks. On Ex-Aquarium, these references are even more explicit, from the seagull samples in the ebbing and flowing “Whirlwound” to the enigmatic deep-sea cover art by Thogdin Ripley.

“Some of the tracks on the album have an overgrown feel to them, maybe because I was working on them for too long a period of time,” says McKeown, when asked to explain the album’s title. “I also had a vague notion of something that used to be an aquarium–an ex-aquarium–but all the fish died and it got all festering and full of overgrown oddities.”

He explains that this album’s more unkempt melodies and drums have a lot to do with changes in his recording process. Following his 2005 EP, Sunburnt Eyelids, he moved operations from a flat with paper-thin walls to a friend’s studio, where he began messing around with a drum kit, analog synths, and microphones. “Because I had recorded bits as audio instead of MIDI there was less opportunity to fiddle about intricately with all the melodies, so I got into arranging more natural percussive rhythms and letting them be much looser,” he offers. “When I was making Sea Inside Body, my slight lack of experience and confidence meant I had to keep the tracks quite neatly structured so I could keep control of them, but I would like to think I let things get a little more out of control on the new album.”

Though Kelpe is often compared to Boards of Canada–both deal in faraway-sounding sediments of sound, wistful melodies, and vocal samples from archival radio programs and children’s records–his inspirations actually lie somewhere in between Shadow and the utterly ambient soundscapes of Stars of the Lid. “Hearing a lot of the old Mo’ Wax stuff got me excited about what can be done with sampling, re-arranging beats, and using a more open-minded palette of sounds, but The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid really opened me up to the idea of a different kind of music: completely beat-less and stretched out over long periods of time to wash over you in a subconscious way.”

Deep, dubby, cheeky, metallic. For the next several weeks, XLR8R will profile eight young DJ/producers exploring different facets of dubstep, the low-end sound of the London underground. For our final installment in the series, we listen as a Croydon kid and his mentor sound off on street bass.

Two-and-a-half years ago, Bullfrog Records owner Cluekid, a 19-year-old producer and Star Trek mega-fan from South London, had never heard of dubstep. He and frequent partner-in-crime Cotti, who runs the Bassface imprint, were busy churning out dirty, under-processed white-label tracks as part of the nine-member grime crew 4N Format. One day, the elder, Cotti–the son of Cluekid family friends–took young Clue to DJ Chef’s house and changed his production course. “Cotti was talking about Skream and I never heard him before. Then they played me ‘Glamma’ and ‘Midnight Request Line,’” says Clue, on the phone from Chef’s house, with a new track they’re working on blaring in the background. “I thought it was fucking big, man! Straight away, it reminded me more of the vibes of jungle and the tunes sounded more quality, so no need for MCs.”

Cluekid and Cotti got deeper into the dubstep sound, unleashing the squelchy techno-fied ragga of “Legacy” and their brutal Barrington Levy version “Sensi Dub.” Solo, Clue produces darkcore rave rinses like “Hovercraft” and Cotti’s got grime MCs Doctor and Jammer dropping conscious verses on “Calm Down” and “Dem Fi Know.” “Clue usually goes for a more tech-y, electro-y sound while Cotti’s usually more dubby and more ethnic,” says Chef of their respective styles. “And Clue can be typically a jungle guy, like old-school ragga ’94 stuff.”

“That kind of vibe is where a lot of my influence comes from, those punchy-sounding 808 subs,” concurs Clue, who got exposed to jungle classics like Remarc’s “R.I.P” and DJ Nut Nut’s “Special Dedication” when he was about 13. Growing up with a guitar player dad, Clue had already been around music from a young age, jamming on drums with his dad and listening to his Jimi Hendrix and Who records.

He’s yet to add the classic rock vibe to dubstep, though he’s definitely mining his adoration of Star Trek, using Captain Kirk samples and laser sounds in tracks. And now that he and Cotti are putting so much effort into beats and basslines, he says they don’t fuck with MP3s or CDs anymore; like most of the dubstep scene, the pair strictly plays vinyl and dubplates, which, at £30 per two-sided 10-inch, is no cheap endeavor.

But it’s not really about the money for these two, who have plenty to come with their joint Minus -30 label and busy DJ schedules. “They’re both chill,” concurs Chef. “Clue’s more disorganized; he just goes with the flow, just going deep and having a good time. But they’re both cool, honest people, and they just do this music every day, all day, same as me.”

Rhythm Nation
Part 1: Skream
Part 2: Benga
Part 3: Caspa & Rusko
Part 4: Pinch & Distance