- Filter Dread's finest achievement to date is Space Loops, a cassette mixtape for Bristol's No Corner label. It seemed to suggest that, as with another of last year's breakthrough acts, Galcher Lustwerk, the mixtape format was the best possible home for Leo Johnson-Davies' music. Partly this was a matter of pacing; Filter Dread tracks acquire a new intensity when assembled into a rapid-fire collage. But it was also one of depth. Inspired by the "quick and unapologetic" approach of early rave production, Johnson-Davies likes to hash out the barebones of an idea rather than getting bogged down in development and refinement. In a mixtape, where the joins between tracks are blurred, his rough-edged sketches can become components in a larger narrative.
It should come as no surprise, then, that Space Loops' followup EP retains something of that feeling. For one thing, there's a "Jungle Interlude," a brief breakdown-like number that is begging to be slotted into a larger whole. More broadly, where much Boxed-affiliated instrumental grime strives for new heights of structural complexity, Filter Dread remains happy to keep things simple. Fans of UK rave history will appreciate its nods to several different eras, most audibly grime (particularly in "Stolen Dub"'s jagged percussion) and early '90s hardcore as it morphed into jungle (see the loping, syncopated groove of "Space Compartment").
Crucially, though, Johnson-Davies' music feels referential but never reverential. The title of "Clowns From Outer Space" hints at its balancing of the alien and the downright silly. "MIDI Fighter" captures it best, its oafish bassline offset with otherworldly rave chords for what is the record's rowdy apogee. And of course, you can always trust Filter Dread to throw in an outlier: he closes with "Trippy Patterns," a queasy techno workout that likely gets its name from the vivid delay effects strafing its surface.
TracklistA1 Clouds From Outer Space
A2 Jungle Interlude
A3 MIDI Fighter
B1 Space Compartment
B2 Stolen Dub
B3 Trippy Patterns