DUSK + BLACKDOWN

Four years since their acclaimed debut album ‘Margins Music’, Keysound founders Dusk + Blackdown (that’s +, not &) return with their second longplayer, ‘Dasaflex’.

The album features their singer Farrah, alongside jungle legend MC GQ and Marcus Nasty’s mic man Shantie, aka the first MC to spit over UK funky. It also includes the single ‘High Road’, the origins of which have been subject to feverish speculation in the music press of late. “In the period after making our debut album we swore we wouldn’t, couldn’t do it again,” the duo explain. “That was it – and for the exact conditions in which the album had come out of, it sorta was. But then the sands began to change around us, and sifting through a sea of beats for our Rinse FM show, we began to be re-inspired, in many different ways. Four years and hundreds of thousands of possibilities later, ‘Dasaflex’ is where we’re at.”

Further to that, the album’s sleeve notes contain the following cryptic inclusion: “Metaflex: new album/new decade: death/rebirth, possibilities/limitations, groove/implosion, expansion/sub-division, positivity/strength, movement/rigidity, focus/non-linearity, community/solitude, drive/drift, local/global, weight/sublimation, tradition/mutation, feminine/masculine, love/loss, nostalgia/progress, dirty/clean, euphoria/dread”. The pair have been producing music since 2000, started Keysound in 2005, joined Rinse FM in 2008 and still comb through approximately 500 tracks a month to share the most upfront monthly selection possible from the best up and coming dubstep, grime and UK funky spheres. In 2010 they built and toured a live project featuring grime MCs Trim and Durrty Goodz, Keysound singer Farah, a synth keys professional and an Indian percussionist.

In 2011 and into 2012 they released long players from LV & Joshua Idehen, Sully, Damu and, most recently, the jaw-droppingly epic debut double CD from LHF. Their label has released music by Skream, Burial, Wiley, Zomby, Starkey, Trim, Zed Bias & Steve Gurley, Scratcha DVA, Geeneus, Durrty Goodz, Riko, Flowdan and more, and supported up and comers like Kowton, Logos, Grievous Angel, Balistiq Beats and Vibezin. Finally, in 2012, Keysound turns back to Dusk + Blackdown again.