Zomby: Dedication – review

Dubstep producer Zomby's debut album – 2008's Where Were U in '92? – was a slightly askance glance back at the rave era. There are echoes of that here – the vocal sample in Natalia's Song somehow conjures up a marooned, decimated clubland. But Dedication is informed by a more pronounced, creeping sense of loss. The album was being finished in the aftermath of its creator's father's death, and it's impossible to know just how much that impacted on the sound, but Zomby has created an album of pensive, thought-provoking sadness. Quite what these eerie tapestries of sound are is a moot point. The melodies sound like dark, inverted negatives of the Human League's synthpop. Its minimal pianos and bare clonks are as close to pianist Keith Jarrett as 90s "found sound" techno act Spooky; somewhere between dubstep and contemporary classical. But however you define it, its beautiful atmosphere of sadness and decay is hard to deny.