Always grimy, occasionally filthy, dubstep has dusted the leaves off the rite of passage to ubiquitous airtime and universal laudation. Yet dubstep, post-dubstep and its ambient, 2-step subgenres are quite often devoid of melody, melancholy and above all, discernible music. Mount Kimbie recently purveyed the nonchalant brilliance of toned down squelches in favour of wily guitar lines and haunting underpass howls. It's now the turn of South London trio Dark Sky to keep things grubby whilst not getting Nick Grimshaw listeners clawing at their earlobes. From the globular drips and synth surges of Reflex, to the more full-frontal heavy Croydon bass of Fly, Dark Sky do for the underground what Magnetic Man somehow did to the gilded pavements of the mainstream, as they burst the sewers like gargantuan oak roots, gasping for air. Night Light thrives and feasts on a shuddering intro, before bouncing elasticised ping pong reverberations about like schizophrenics on LSD in a squash court. But Dark Sky are at their most transcendental, their most inspirational when they interpret the isolated clangs of Cirque du Soleil and synthetic strings that last sounded contemporary on Bittersweet Symphony for the beautifully bereft Drowned City, a mastered, truly unique sonic explosion that corrodes coyly over four and a half timeless minutes. Don the most colossal set of headphones available to HMV, slap Frames on the iPhone and ditch the outside world of gloom and dusky misery, as Dark Sky embrace the murk, keeping things extraterrestrially excellent.
