Optikatechniqua – Sinister Dub (Alternative Blueprint)

South West England natives Optikatechniqua’s debut album Sinister Dub is full of that rude boy sound, which happens to be the name of the first track coincidently. They manage to make an electro meets dubstep hybrid that is really addictive.

Optikatechniqua uses a heavy electro influence along with squelching acidic synth lines at a dubstep sort of tempo along with some badass hip-hop vocal samples at times to make for a dark and menacing dance floor crossbreed. This mostly works a real treat even if ‘Stickle it’ grates a bit with its chipmunk vocal line on some occasions, that’s pretty much the only track that bugs me a bit though so that’s good going.

As you would expect from any steppa worth there salt Optikechniqua is heavy on the bass infact he is so heavy I heard he managed to play a set in a basement club once and knocked off loads of bottles from the Body Shop above, maybe the lotions and potions were trying to moisturise this rough beats and bass.

One of the standout tracks is the fantastic, ‘Rinse It’ which has had attention by the queen of bass herself Marry Anne Hobbs and Rob Booth of Electronic Explorations amongst others I’m sure. It’s a wonky one that skips and bleeps over any system; the mad digital rewind effect kills it as the beats just flop all over the place like a drunken dance machine. The cut up vocal sample adds a nice bit of melodic bliss within the madness, which kind of brings it together for me, well that and the bass.

That isn’t the only highlight though there are plenty here to keep you interested over a full album. The acid tweaks of ‘6 Month Flower’ or the mellow atmospherics of ‘Sloth Bite’ really do it for me. The rhythmic skip and flow of ‘She Can Hear It’ is pretty deadly, it makes me want to move in strange ways as the fucked up twanging out of tune tones of some kind of string instrument play off it. It’s like electro and jungle are meeting in the middle sometimes with Optikatechniqua.

I really like the low-slung electro blues of ‘Everyone’s a Suspect’ slide guitars meet drum machines and breaks with a mad spooky vocal that’s tweaked and delayed over the top. It has a paranoid and downright cool as hell vibe to it like a cowboy from the future telling a story in a smoky jungle rave / bar.

You can just tell he has grown up in a bass drenched rave scene for some time and is fusing all of those ravey influences into his own unique thing. So growling bass, break beat, cut’n’paste drum patterns meet booms and clicks of drum machines and blissed out synth lines or acid tweaks to create dance floor monsters.

If you’re a fan of people like WagaWaga’s acidic dubstep, Rephlex’s mad electronica and early Warp Records material (lets face it who isn’t?), or even someone like Neil Landstrumm then Optikatechniqua will hit all the right places for you. Sinister Dub is a wonderful experiment into the diverse range in sounds and tempo’s of underground electronica.


Optikatechniqua Myspace

Alternative Blueprint