Six tracks of blood-red, skewed breakbeat ruffige and heavyweight drum charge have been pressed up on wax, marking the debut of Bristol’s Karkossyn on UVB-76 Music. The label was launched by Ruffhouse & Gremlinz in ’15, and has been pushing a forward thinking drum & bass orientated Bristol underground sound ever since. Now with ‘Troubled Youth’ Karkossyn adds a guttural, sludged spin on skewed drum funk to the mix.

Stick on the record, and things force into motion at a rugged pace, with the first three tracks going for the evil gut punch at slow tempo, letting the cracks and bruises in the adjusted drum breaks expose themselves through a timestretched lens.

Where Blame Yourself comes in with a deceptively lithe drum section and frequency arrangement, it  leaves a haunting amount of space in the mix to let reverberant voices breathe over twisted bass snarls coming in from the distance. Full impact for the snares and kick drums to crash and boom at thunderweight. On the A2, Lost Cause picks up from the gravel and destruction of the opener, with an ominous fog of field recordings and modulated percussive frequencies rolling out at an uncompromisingly slow pace while the subtle dread increases to a point of no mercy.

On All This Hate, Karkossyn loads up on the heavy-hitting snare and kick drum, with a crushing boom bap rhythm stepping against a moody, gritty bassline and percussive echo chamber ruminations.

The mood and sense of rhythmic progression is coherent, but the real motion and deeper sense of intrigue lies in the constant shift of sonic details that are coded in the atmospherics in Karkossyn’s productions, with deft subtleties in harmonics and dynamics through field recordings, modular synth and effects trickery adding a near hallucinatory sense to the music at times.

Covered In Sand crawls its way back into higher spheres with a warped dancehall rhythm and ice cold percs guiding the way out of the darkness, just about. This one is rhythmically flexible, and texturally layered to a great degree, sounding like some of Donato Dozzy, Leo Anibaldi, or Shackleton’s trippiest works, but with a disorientating twist of chopped & screwed jungle in the mix.

On the 5th track, City Chaos, Karkossyn takes time out and reflects on a counterintuitive mind state and adapting to new scenes of life, narrated by way of sound and voice. Distant horns and slow motion seemingly synthesised natural ambience pass across low, unnerving rumbles and industrial reverberation… A ‘poetic taxi driver-esque take on the struggles of moving into a big city vs growing up in nature’.

Last, but not least, we have the title track to close things off. Troubled Youth rips through our previous moment of clear reflection and pulls us right back into the ominous fog, for the final drift. Shredded bass and a dangerously low slung rhythm charge in tandem here, as splintered drum breaks unveil themselves occasionally, guided by morphing clouds of melodic elements, echo’d concrète-style recordings and barely audible, yet urgent voice interjections - we’ve reached the final descent, time’s up.

Get yourself locked in between those speakerboxes, adjust the volume a little… Whatever you do, make sure to take some time and let this one unfold from start to finish… Tavis Hitchcock, aka Karkossyn’s Troubled Youth EP enters a particular type of frequency shifting time tunnel of drums, bass and it presents itself with a constant sense of flux through warped sound recordings, moving reverberations and bruised, sharp percussive work.

Ruff, tuff and dangerous stuff >>