Conrad Pack - Commandments LP

Conrad Pack’s debut album Commandments. Mournful, murked-out dub-tekno and water-logged 〜150bpm steppers scraped from the floor of the Thames. A very UK response to the year-zero schrantz death-trips of DJ Valentime$, DJ Salazar et al. Simultaneously ultra-alienated and dialed into the dance, full of caustic/entropic industrial textures, drawing deep too on concussive reggae/soundystem dynamics and drill’s emotional-badboy yearning.

“Main influence for this lies somewhere between Puppy Tapes, Spiral Tribe & Hallucinator (+ Drill). Lots of it was made in my studio in Brixton during 2020-2021 as lockdown ensued then opened up and Scram began with Julian [Fairshare, R.I.P.] + Guy [Leeway]. I had the impetus to start SELN with Gonz as it felt like the time was right to create something more concise and solid to put out our own music under as it felt like a sound was emerging between myself, Gonz and Guy.
 
“The music itself was trying to merge the grandeur of steppers / dub, the drive + general no-fuks-given of Puppy and Spiral Tribe, plus general industrial music techniques, etc, but all the while having good mixdowns where the kick and bass would sound and work well in a club. 
 
“All the tracks are 150bpm because I was just consistently rinsing DJ Valentime$ and [DJ] Salazar everyday (but then listening to ‘Red Angel’ in the car to Woolwich). I think with clubs being closed during the time a lot of the recordings were being made, and then Scram starting just as more than 3 people were legally allowed to converge, it really felt like a whole world / new possibilities for dance music had opened for us. I really thought we had found the new dubstep and it was going to be a world-changing genre shift...ha.”