Those seeking Burial style experimentation wont find it on this dubstep producer's full-length debut. Far more comfortable representing the dancefloor, the up-and-coming artist uses his time on plastic to submerge listeners in a black sea of uneasy darkness and bass.
The relative youth of dubstep compared to other club-oriented electronic music subgenres partially insulates it from some of the pressures of the full-length album. Whereas techno producers are constantly derided, and with good reason, for making glorified singles collections instead of cohesive audio documents, artist albums from Skream and MRK1 are credited for trailblazing almost by default. And while both of their recent CDs rightfully deserve attention and praise for the high quality tunes, the principle of "first mover advantage" arguably added an extra boost. As in the business world, once vinyl-only dubstep imprints subsequently appear reactive, scrambling to get something out on disc for an eager and voracious audience. After last year's impressive double-disc label compilation / DJ mix, Tectonic Plates, the prominent Tectonic imprint selected Random Trio member Cyrus to be their first, albeit unlikely, flagship act.
It takes all of 40 seconds of sparse jittery "Gutter" for that now-familiar snare-centric dubstep pattern to make its first appearance, immediately followed with a dash of tabla and a wistful woodwind emulation. By immediately conjuring the most obvious and just about clichéd elements of the sound, Cyrus displays his "if it aint broke, don't fix it" attitude. Still, just because an artist is comfortable in the present paradigm that defines the subgenre does not excuse him from slacking off, and thankfully Cyrus proves himself to be very good at making the club-ready tunes that many have become familiar with on dancefloors worldwide. On the previously released "Bounty," he shows an understanding of the space between the beats and how to utilize them to create a sense of drama, sometimes with light strokes of ghostly synth and others with near silence. "Rasta From" throws a bone to the dub reggae contingent, throwing a mess of echo over a generally unintelligible Jamaican voice, without compromising his overall austere vision.
Throughout these 12 cuts, Cyrus performs a balancing act between coddling the minimal and unleashing the extreme, yet still holds it all together impeccably. Boisterous wobbly bass aggressively dominates "The Watcher," while the decidedly barer "Indian Stomp," which appeared on the soundtrack of the dystopian Children Of Men, throws spicy Eastern vocal and percussion into the mix. While having earned the respect of many in the dubstep community, Cyrus' profile hardly matches that of superstars like Digital Mystiks or Kode 9. He doesn't necessarily need the cult of quasi-celebrity that has formed around some other producers, though at the end of the day it may ultimately lead to less public excitement and fewer sales beyond the scene's core constituency. Nonetheless, From The Shadows is an entrancing noir of aural bleakness with just the right amount of dramatic tension.
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