From the depths of post-millennium tension, this weeks drift soundtrack has been a cold snap of hauntological lost and found grime and dubstep from an early 2000s unknown artist cassette

Thursday night, sunset drift 6.54pm // unknown artist - unknown cassette

From the depths of memories recalling the early edges of post-millennium tension, this weeks work/drift/doze tunes have been a much needed in the warm weather cold snap of unknown artist/existence dubs dug up from somewhere deep within the urban burial mounds of the early 2000s grime and dubstep overdrawn memory bank wasteland. The sounds of long lost USBs with storage space ran into the red by 320 bit crunched mp3s and the sort of DIY sounds that were cut to many a crumbling acetate and left by accident on sleep deprived night buses from South LDN to Stockport or lost down the back of splinter lined DJ booths, buried in the memories of those who were there long before there was turned into overpriced flats and chain coffee shops (foot note also Teardrop Explodes Treason has been a daily spin!).

I'm sure we'd all agree that grime and dubstep are both the best underground sounds of recent memory, well decades really, and the sounds rattling away in my headphones along the South LDN train tracks and boroughs where I imagine these tunes were sparked up to soundtrack is a sort of lost album of sort. This long since permanent marker scribbled on cassette of unknown early 00's icy instrumentals from an equally unknown operator is one that I've no clue about where I got it or who built it, or how it even made its way to me, but it's been a long listened audio accompaniment when in need of some choppy water subs and skeleton scar rhythms. Locking into a proper tomorrow's world move I've managed to freshly digitise/digi-dub it's collapsing content via a crunchy cable and a fucked tape deck so forever this unknown with out any DJ ID or sleeve notes/scribbles that may have come with it (forever long lost no doubt) and the scribbled over email address itself scribbled on the shell (a Hotmail address - what email could be more grime?) has booked me a return ticket to set about to scribble about this elastic bassline mess. A truly obscure low-fi beats and all tape that has soundtracked many late 00s post-night club pals smokey living rooms, curtains closed (standard!) in the post club daytime/daydream drone outs.

Back to back on the digital shelves of my Thameslink channel for this week this tape is a solid selection of brutalist dimensions for my listening habits of delayed train station chills and tapped out Thameslinks. The ancient memories captured within these blunt razors edge electronics snap me right back to days from decades ago where afternoons were spent stood in record shops in Manchester being played endlessly fresh and new in that week delivery dubs recommended by top pals behind the counter, incredible trax like Pangaea's Memories "it's 1-sided 12" so the coin is a stretch, but ya properly need this!" to Joker's Stuck In The System "wait till the bassline hits, its bananas!!" to Martyn's Scuba remix, Instra:mental & dBridge's Blush Response, Zomby and Rustie's Hyperdub hijinks. These tunes recall to mind lying on the floor of my bedroom, literally floored by hearing Appleblim & Peverelist's Over Here/Circling 12" for the first time, the audio cut to tape here is a moment of pure dread energy and bedroom producer sounds that I imagine/hallucinate were being dreamt up to dream of being bricks in the build of seminal mix CDs like Appleblim's Dubstep Allstars 6 or the never not exciting and 100% fresh cut dubplate woodblock comp selek/margins music roll of Tempa Allstars 2 (Loefah, Kode9, Digital Mystikz to Geeneus, EL-B & D1, incredible really). Or even to be forever set in steel as part of the legendary Rephlex Grime compilations sleeve notes "Grime. Sublow. Dubstep… It’s Music. Different people call it different things, depending on when they discovered it. In the 80s maybe it was House, Techno and Electro. In the 90s it was UKG, Drum & Bass, Breaks or whatever. Now there are so many terms for it that the journalists can’t pidgeon-hole it anymore. This is a good thing – it’s music. Moody music".

This tape contains sounds hugely inspired by the 4x4 mechanics of Slimzee's forever seminal Sidewinder DJ sets and the Berlin x Bristol dub/techno connection of PunchDrunk, Pinch, Apple Pips and T++, it's echospace spiraling out across the sea with a coldest season stare gazing FWD to the modern day/modern hardcore of Low End Activist (Air Drop on Peak Oil is a mind melter!), the grim grime of the NW/HR YOUTH shower face grief and the recent years run of Low Company dug up and sick yet proper mysterious Macker 12"s.

The unknown assailant(s?) on a mission here fire low-fi grime and dubstep experiments that for me drift towards a similar level of modern mystique and intrigue as those tunes too buzz, this tape must have landed must have landed via a pal who passed it on knowing this was my sound, yet I've forgotten who as dead cert it was definitely a long time ago. Yet still now even after all these years this is the sound of low-fi fast made fast moved on tunes built on unreliable computers and built from cheap sequencer programmes, the sort of computers and technology that would fill a computer museum or in the case of an iMac be turned into a goldfish bowls for the sort of expensive flats in the neighbourhoods where these sort of instrumental sounds from the far off future were built to soundtrack before the venues and audiences were long ago priced out. There is a deep unreachable ocean, dare I type.. dance, floor of top level, and some lower level for sure within these obscure time capsule tunes, buried deep within the dub delay/erosion/decay of the cheap plastic shell and low-rate mp3 rips. The distorted sounds that survive what the information has left hark back to a time before the digital amnesia of modern day electronics and everything irregardless of any reason being endlessly and unnecessarily recorded and archived forever.

This is a roundabout way of typing that this week on the drift to and from my floor 7 / 9 2 5 grimescape I've been revisiting an old grimey/techno/dubstep/sublow etc cassette from an era I spent charging about and working and hanging out in Manchester's Northern Quarter and its surrounding Hacienda psychogeographical (and of course rain) drenched cityscape, flyering, postering, chilling in various cafes, sandwich bars, record shops, pubs, clubs and record label offices from Grand Central, Finders Keepers, Fat City etc, all peak early 00s and pre-living in LDN. I've not got a public link to listen till I can/hopefully find out/remember who/where/when this obscure, searching tape that somehow found its way to me possibly via who knows (properly can't remember, has been a lot of tunes and tapes passed by my way in that forgotten/lost-era) unknown/forgotten in the mists of time, recorded 2003 ? rediscovered 2024 // echospace. The operator(s?) behind this cassette of wyrd grime/dubstep experiments that seem to owe as much to accidentally (we've all been there, if you know you know!) basic drum pattern on a muted channel dubstep as techno heavy grime experiments that have all the allure of those tunes you'd read were coming about or played out often only on Boomkat product descriptions or Dubstep forum and Fact Magazine top dubs lists but never ended up reached public consumption minus the odd cut and paste version ripped from a Rinse set. Listening out of curiosity during the post day shift drifts through the South LDN boroughs with the evenings fading light these spannered dubs take on something of a hauntological vibe, a resurfaced by chance and nearly lost again/chucked out in a recent weekends spring clearing of boxes of old junk, CDs and tapes that I've carted about from one rental flat to another in the last decade plus.

I've no live links to share the audio atm but if I can find an excited set of ears its ripe for a 2024 wider/actual cassette first release/reissue edition, some permanent marker removing, to hopefully work out the operative agents info buried underneath and some low key probably given up a long time ago producer location scout out to translate the excitement I've got solo atm for something that was possibly made from dreams of Rinse, dubplate acetates and Plastic People, but has long since landed in a cardboard box with other crunchy cassettes, yet this ones spark ignites an urge to be unearthed and rediscovered for a new (very small audience) and era, an artefact of a bygone age yet ready for reduction and rediscovery if if finds the right path FWD, if so then to quote my hometown hero Leyland Kirby (The Caretaker) from a Mark Fisher interview in The Wire many moons ago, maybe a door will open somewhere.