Eight

Of all of the personalities to emerge from the Mutek affiliated Montreal electronic music scene which exploded onto the global stage at the turn of the millennium Scott Monteith, better known to audiences worldwide as Deadbeat, has unquestionably shown himself to be its most prolific and restless spirit. Through a steady stream of critically acclaimed singles and 7 studio albums for labels such as ~Scape, Echocord, Wagon Repair and most recently his own BLKRTZ imprint, and his genre defining Radio Rothko mix, which drew comparisons to some of the greatest mix CDs of all time (Richie Hawtin's Decks, EFX & 909 : Jeff Mills's Live at the Liquid Room), Monteith has established himself as perhaps Dub Techno's greatest champion. Yet anyone intimately familiar with said catalog could rightly accuse even that lofty title of being an over simplification. In a genre dominated by stoic reverence to the creative framework laid down by Mark Ernestus and Mortiz Von Oswald's Basic Channel and related projects of the mid 90s, Monteith has consistently charted his own course over the last 13 years, tearing up and re-writing the rule book several times over. Having burrowed to the very deepest depths of echo and dread of the Jamaican variety with last year's hypnotic Drawn and Quartered album, Deadbeat once again sets sail into uncharted waters with his latest hour long salvo, humbly entitled Eight. While nautical analogies have often been ascribed to his previous albums, single person craft adrift in calm seas with perhaps distant thunder forewarning a gale on the horizon, Eight is without question a heavily armed, multi-gun warship charging at full throttle to the very eye of the storm. From the very first concussive depth charge which opens the proceedings, driving bass bins and bodies to within an inch of their lives is decidedly the name of the game here. Having moved into a new studio in an industrial space in Berlin at the beginning of the year, Deadbeat's new rhythms show a