Label: Tempa
Catalog#: TEMPACD 015
Format: CD, Album
Country: UK
Released: 02 Mar 2009
Genre: Electronic
Style: Dubstep

For all the non-vinyl heads and those who had their tastes piqued by the doublepack, your wait is over, as the Roots Of El-B CD compilation arrives just in time for the first warm breeze of spring. The Martin "Blackdown" Clarke compiled retrospective covers the work of Lewis Beadle aka El-B with a killer 15 track compilation of ultra rare white labels and lost remixes from his 2000-2002 halcyon days. As history now tells us, garage emerged as the UK's urban music style of choice after the dominance of drum'n'bass in the mid-late nineties, but during this transition period a young crew calcified around producer El-B and his Ghost recordings label out of Streatham, South London, acting as the missing link between the two styles. El-B combined the spacious flex of jungle and D'n'B's dynamic rhythms with the slink and slide of Garage style production techniques and tempos to create a typically UK centric and idiosyncratic dance music. Most notably, many of these cuts have never appeared on CD before. 'The Club' was the first release on Ghost Records, backed with the equally seminal 'Bison' and 'Two Thousand' produced with J Da Flex, it defined a tougher and more focussed direction for Garage in paralell with the nascent production of Zed Bias who was carving out a similar niche at the time. Released in 2001 for garage powerhouse Locked On, 'Serious' hooked up with MC Rolla for a sharp shock of millenial futurism with deadly bass licks and tucked polyrhythmic kinks that blew the rest of the crowd out of the club, while 'Express' solidifies garage rhythms into a mad effective minimalism with a paucity of elements pivoting around those clocking wood blocks that have come to influence a whole generation of dubstep and post-dubstep producers. While tracks like 'Digital' take hardstepping Ed Rush D'n'B styles and reconfigure them for a slinkier tempo, his classic refix of Zed Bias' 'Neighborhood' swings in the opposite direction with a legendary revision of a garage staple with pure feminine pressure. Without the push from Martin Clarke, tracks like the killer 'Cruiser' or 'Among The Stars' may never have seen the light of day again, or recieved such a high profile presence so it's thanks to all involved with this project for bringing it to the wider attention of the world. Fans of Burial, Martyn, Pangaea, Untold, Brackles, Zed Bias or the new wave of steppin' bass music, this is as essential as they come!