- Dubstep may have a monopoly on wobble, but Tom Demac strikes back on "Critical Distance Pt. 2," a surly brawler of a house track whose shuddering low end recalls Azzido da Bass' 1999 anthem "Doom's Night." It kicks off relatively demurely, with a crisp, shuffling drum groove fleshed out with tuned toms and watery string pads. But that melancholy restraint gives way to something far more primal. That bass has something to do with it, poised somewhere between foghorn blast and the bellow of a wooly mammoth, and a yowling vocal melody drives home the track's essential animal nature—cornered, wounded, and entirely unconcerned with niceties like prettiness and pitch. To the contrary, the way the voice slides between the notes only adds to the drama, reinforcing the sense of being sucked down in quicksand.
That said, it would have been nice to have an instrumental version, for those occasions when you're not feeling quite so Bronze Age hunting-party, although Hrdvsion's remix also does the trick. He keeps his interventions minimal, removing the vocal and giving the drums a faintly garage-y re-shuffle. It's still plenty ominous, suffused in rolling war drums and distant banshee wail.
TracklistA Critical Distance Pt. 2
B Critical Distance Pt. 2 (Hrdvision Remix)