No slang is sillier or more superannuated than labeling someone a “tastemaker.” You might as well reference “brand-building,” “paradigm shifting” or refer to your latest project as an “artistic exploration.” But Mary Anne Hobbs, the British BBC 1 radio personality might be the one of the only people imaginable for whom the sobriquet is actually appropriate. In 06, she dropped the seminal Warrior Dubz compilation which helped break Dubstep torchbearers Burial, Kode9 and Skream. More recently, she championed Low End Theory staples like Flying Lotus, Gaslamp Killer, and Nosaj Thing, before local media hopped on the bandwagon (read: me).
Slated for release next Tuesday on Planet Mu, her latest compilation, Wild Angels, is essential listening for both Dubstep die-hards and neophytes. Gathering a litany of mostly unfamiliar names (save for Nosaj Thing, Starkey, and Mark Pritchard), Hobbs impeccably curates a collection of imagistic and interstellar flights. Headphones on, tendrils of smoke splitting the air…weightless, lightless float music. Or as Derek Miller aptly opined, “it’s bound by its own gasolined, star-blind narrative–it illustrates just how fleecy and artful dubstep can be under current, fly-by-night parameters before it peaks.”
Buy: Mary Ann Hobbs-Wild Angels
Download:
MP3: Architeq-“Sleeping Bear Lament (Take Remix)”
MP3: Hyetal-“We Should Light a Fire”
