Hailed as the most exciting producers in the world today by
Pharrell Williams, drum'n'bass duo
Chase & Status finally step out from behind the mixing desk to release their debut album,
More Than Alot, over a decade after they started DJing together at Manchester University. It may have been a long time coming, but the majority of its 13 tracks prove to be worth the wait, as like the genre's other big-hitters,
Pendulum, the South London pair incorporate a wide array of influences into their skittering breakbeats and deep sub-basslines, to produce a hugely inventive and accessible album just as likely to appeal to pop and R&B fans as it is to drum‘n'bass aficionados. Any sell-out accusations from fans of their blistering 2006 EP The Druids should be nipped in the bud by the turbo-charged "Smash TV," a towering, menacing fusion of pounding jungle beats and speaker-blowing, warbling bass riffs which samples
Guns ‘N Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Pieces"; a frenetically-paced collaboration with
Plan B, which combines the soulful melodies of his reinvention with the snarling and venomous
Rage Against the Machine-inspired aggression of his debut to startling effect. But
More Than Alot is just as thrilling when it ventures into genre-hopping territory. "Against All Odds" manages to make
the Incredible Bongo Band's heavily sampled "Apache" sound fresh, thanks to grime MC
Kano's tight rhymes and vocal snatches of blues singer
Lou Rawls' Philly soul classic "Dead End Street"; "Eastern Jam," covered by
Snoop Dogg, is a brooding slice of dubstep which cleverly blends Ismail Darbar &
Shreya Ghoshal's Bollywood number "Silsila Ye Chaahat Ka" with unsettling but hypnotic industrial electro; while "Take You There" is a convincing attempt at blissful Balearic chillout featuring the soulful vocals of emerging R&B star
McLean. Elsewhere, "Music Club" shows the duo don't take themselves too seriously thanks to a plummy-voiced, tongue-in-cheek account of how to create a club anthem set against a backdrop of the hipster jazz you'd usually associate with spy movie soundtracks, as does the tongue-in-cheek, self-aggrandizing "Foundation Skit," a brief ragga-fused shout-out to the original acid house scene, while their clever choice of samples continues on the dreamy vocal-led "Take Me Away" (
Loleatta Holloway's "Love Sensation") and the retro synth pop-based "Running" (
James Ingram &
Michael McDonald's "Yah Mo B There"). A tour de force in exhilarating British dance music,
More Than Alot more than lives up to
Chase & Status' glowing superstar recommendations, and with a sense of invention not seen in the genre since the '90s glory days of
Roni Size and
Goldie, it's not hard to see why the likes of
Rihanna and
Jay-Z later came knocking. ~ Jon O'Brien