In the light (or darkness, perhaps) of England’s World Cup elimination last weekend, press attention has focused somewhat on the confusion over and fumbling of England’s national identity, arguably a very reactionary response to elimination from a sporting tournament, but on the other hand an understandable one from a country which thrives on its own sadomasochism and whose press constantly aim to perpetuate that mindset. It is in this context that London Zoo, the 2008 critical favourite from Kevin Martin under his The Bug guise, is best understood, an album ultimately about the capital which redefines what that concept means in England today through a kaleidoscope of dubstep, dancehall and reggae firepower.

On this record, Martin brings the intensity typified by previous affiliations with artists as seminal and furious as Justin Broadrick and Dälek. London Zoo’s spine is a sinister, head-spinning low end of pulsating bass to which computer speakers will do no justice. It begs to be played on a system, from the second that the surprisingly poppy opening track “Angry” bursts through, with a beat playing second fiddle in the menace stakes only to Tippa Irie’s frantic vocal on Africa, government and other things that, you guessed it, make him ‘angry.’ The real peak of the sonics is the instrumental “Freak Freak” which arguably says more with no words than the other tracks do with their worldly musings. The track is oven-hot, a dense, borderline-sentient monster of bass that rumbles as if transmitted from another dimension over a skittering, climbing drum line. Although it arrives at no particular climax, it doesn’t need to, so potent are its five minutes of dread, made for 3AM summer listening and indicative of any evils from imminent public sector cuts to knife crime statistics.

On the subject of crime, “Skeng” is another brooding diamond in the aural rough Martin constructs, the highlight of which is the best rhyming of ‘worse,’ ‘nurse’ and ‘hearse’ that my ears have ever been privy to. Of the guest stars recruited, Warrior Queen puts in the best work. After an M.I.A.-esque reflection on gun crime and all of the rest on “Insane”, she lends her talents to the album’s strongest track and the one with the greatest crossover appeal alongside the earlier “Angry”, in the form of “Poison Dart”. Its beat wails along at sludge speed, sounding incredibly tortured, but remaining danceable while Warrior Queen crafts a charismatic hook. On similar levels of sounding ready-made for underground clubs and being danced through fogs of marijuana smoke are the futurist dancehall of “Jah War” and a reworking of Spaceape’s earlier collab with Kode9, the righteous “Fuckaz” which sounds more bloodthirsty here after Martin’s bass-bin murdering treatment.

Despite all sounding very pre-apocalyptic, from the London-centric dissection of modern England best summed up by the skull and gun clutched by The Bug on London Zoo’s cover through to the tremor-inducing frequencies that really cannot be overstated, the record ends with incredible promise as the dreamy, minimal sound of “Judgement” which nonetheless gets its kicks from stating that the subject of its title is ‘around the corner’, provides the perfect backdrop for a vocal much more measured, and frankly, angelic than anything else on the album. Martin is in typically visionary form, putting the jigsaw pieces in place to create a focused if somewhat terrifying picture of the city, if not the country, as he saw it in 2008. If London Zoo and England’s World Cup destruction are able to simultaneously prove one thing, it would be that we do have problems at a fundamental level. Still, this kind of record almost makes it worth it.

by Michael