Skream – Outside The Box review

Croydon dubstep pioneer Skream is ready to unleash the noise with his new album Outside The Box through Tempa.

The maverick 24-year-old DJ has incorporated a diversity of styles and genres in this new offering, fusing together dance elements with his archetypal semi-instrumental dub-step mixes.

Skream has selected 14 tracks that cover hip hop (8-Bit Baby, with LA rapper Murs from Living Legends), bass-wobbling dubstep (the self explanatory wibbler), dreamy electronic (Perforated) and a strange dose of euphoric jungle on The Epic Last Tune.

Outside the Box is a mixed bag with moments of brilliance. Where You Will is one of the stand-out tracks and sounds like it could have been penned by Mike Skinner of Streets notoriety.

The song features singer songwriter Sam Frank who says: “I don’t think I’ll ever be sick of that track. I’ve easily listened to it 500 times. It’s not fundamentally for the dance floor.”

Another track worthy of praise is the soothing Fields of Emotion, which shows that Skream is not scared to broach new musical frontiers and break new ground with a more ambient sound.

Towards the end of the album there are moments that point in a whole new direction, like in Reflections for instance. It is a fresh sounding, novel tune written with talented drum n’ bass exponents dBridge and Instra:mental and is definitely worth a listen or two.

Skream said: “It has opened my eyes to a whole new way of working. I was playing the bass, and they were programming drums and playing the pads and the strings. I was used to sitting in front of a screen.”

Check out Skream on his Myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/skreamuk