Download Restaurant Of Assassins by Neil Landstrumm

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Simon Reynolds is the author of seven books on music, including Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture, Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpun...more »

04.22.11

A Scottish producer lionizes rave's glory days — and makes it sound like the future...again.

Label: Planet Mu / Revolver

On Restaurant of the Assassins, veteran Scottish deejay/producer Neil Landstrumm revisits early UK rave, less out of nostalgia than a desire to reactivate its dormant potentials. It's as if all that mental music churned out on white labels in the early '90s had been given a chance to mature, but without losing its energy or insanity. The result is a bewitching blend of brutalism and sophistication. At the album's core is the North East sound known as bleep: outfits like LFO and Unique 3 who created a distinctively British mutation of house that owed as much to electro's pocket-calculator melodies and dub reggae's floorquaking sub-bass as it did to Chicago. The title of “Big in Chapeltown” is a cute nod to the Caribbean district of Leeds with its sound systems and shebeens, while “Yorkshire Steel Cybernetics” has the characteristic Warp-circa-1990 blend of ominous stalking bass and skippy drum machine beats whose syncopation looks ahead to jungle rather than back to house.

Restaurant isn't one long bleep homage, though. Landstrumm plucks ideas from all across the 20 year span of UK rave, acid house to dubstep. Proto-jungle legends the Ragga Twins drop patois chat on “Reverse Rebel,” while “Assassin Master”… read more »

If one album could describe...

...my love for electronic music, this one would be pretty damn close to the top of the list. And to think, I found it so randomly. So many influences at work on this one, with gritty 4/4 beats and slow skittery breakbeats along with distorted basslines providing the soundtrack to all the sounds I've fallen in love with over the past decade. If you love Drop the Lime, MIA, Kid 606, Matthew Dear, Burial, Skream, Diplo, Roni Size, or any of the other EDM greats, check out this album.

ravers+dubstep=smooth funky chunky

pasted from:http://www.rubadub.co.uk finally the new landstrumm album drops on planet mu. this is neil's "ravestep" album, and as you could expect, it is his take on the bass n' bleep era from the early days of sheffield raving, mixed with his enthusiasm for the burgeoning dubstep scene. each track is filled with the monster detuned bass sound that he can do so well, and although there are plenty of dubbed out moments, landstrumm's techno upbringing is still prominent, and it shows in the structure of these tracks, with the chaotic beats tying together the bass and the bleeps very nicely indeed. top stuff from a seasoned veteran of many scenes, who has successfully mangled together lots of influences into a cohesive work which will not disappoint one bit.