The Bug - Machine The Bug

Released: 04/10/2024 delayed from 27/09/24 

Maverick UK producer Kevin Richard Martin (Zonal / Techno Animal / King Midas Sound)
joins Relapse for the release of his devastating new double album Machine, his first solo
instrumental record as THE BUG. 

Machine started life as a series of self-released "floor weapons" (to use Martin's description), landing in installments between 2023 and 2024 on the Bandcamp page of Martin's own PRESSURE label. And now - always his intention - Martin has collated a single, powerful, unified statement from those EPs. The album detonates apocalyptic dread-tech mutations of crushing intensity, fusing a unique new strain of futuristic dub with deadly deep electronics and killer bass riffs worthy of the heaviest metal. It is, writes Martin, ice cold and dystopian. It celebrates atmospheric pressure, and the joy of full body assaults, via oversized sound systems in undersized club rooms. Machine also represents the latest metamorphosis of the "Macro Dub Infection" philosophy Martin germinated with the groundbreaking series of compilations he began curating for Virgin Records as early as the mid 90's.

As THE BUG, Martin's music is formed from an overwhelmingly explosive sub-bass pressure, as relentlessly in-the-red beat production amplifies mutant industrial sound design, fuzzed, expectant crackle, and bleak greyscale harmonics. Machine is no exception: no speaker exists big enough to withstand its weight.

Machine represents a cohesive and narrative journey through dystopian wildernesses. Throughout, the production shakes with scoured textures, black hole gravity, and deceptively crafted nuance, as Martin's singular mastery of ferocious and annihilated bass music holds the record together in a visceral and pummelling assault. Indeed, Martin describes the EP sequence from which the album was culled as separate parts of the overall puzzle that becomes fully realised on this longform album.

Key moments Buried and Bodied live up to their names. The former is earthmoving in its sheer weight, opening with a riff-made-machine synthesis of corruscating tectonics over a heavystepping beat destined to destroy dancefloors. Bodied begins with an acid-corroded 4/4 kickdrum, around which noxious fumes sputter and billow, spitting pure poison that no human body could survive. It is industrial-strength doom-riff-dub, as slow and low as sonics can possibly go. As such singular music, few comparisons exist, but considering an instrumental SWANS in dub or Aphex Twin covered by Sunn O))) yields something close, though Machine turns up the crushing, pulverising intensity even further still.

Having recently reissued The Brotherhood of the Bomb and Re-Entry by Martin's Techno Animal project with Mr. J K Flesh (Godflesh's Justin Broadrick), Relapse represents a perfect home for Machine. Techno Animal reformed as Zonal in 2019, and released their acclaimed album Wrecked in collaboration with Moor Mother, also through Relapse.