MRK1: Sound of Contagious

The splintering of dubstep over the past two years has been a key development in the evolution of British bass music – and it is the branch that has gone beyond dubstep and taken on influences from techno, funky house and R&B that is providing some of the most exciting electronic music right now. But MRK1 continues to plough the more traditional terrain of harsh, serrated beats and macho low end – music that imposes itself physically, but which is beginning to show a paucity of new ideas. MRK1's grime background as a producer for Manchester crew Virus Syndicate – who show up to give a focus to the best cuts on this compilation – lends his work a metallic sharpness that saves it from the full-on, lurching horror of similarly brutalist producers such as Caspa and Rusko; but one can't help but feel that this sound has been rather effectively supplanted. Still, the vocal tracks here – Chimpo's Steppin' and Virus Syndicate's Back and Forth – show a potential way out of the morass.