Coloures & Memories EP
- Artist: Puppy Kicker
- Album released in 2011
- Genres: Electro | DJ, Jazz, Rock
Some albums are ideal for biking. Some are for working. Some are best heard through a thick fog of bong smoke. Other’s while driving East on a vacant desert highway at dawn. Radiohead’s “OK Computer” is perfect for reading. Le Shok’s “We Are Electrocution” makes me want to punch a granny. Pure Moods Volume 1 is for bubble baths, burning sage, and cooking quinoa with a girl named Sativa or Moonstone.
Justin “Puppy Kicker” Stephenson’s new Coloures & Memories EP (Rogue Dubs) - firmly rooted in dubstep but exploring a more ambient, ethereal, often sultry, and markedly jazz-inspired sound – is undeniably felicitous for making love.
"These songs were a way for me to deal with emotions,” says Stephenson. “I pictured them as colors.”
The “coloure” tracks (“Yellow,” “Red,” and “Grey to Silver”) exemplify Puppy Kicker’s jazz tip, reminiscent of Clifford Gilberto Rhythm Combination or Squarepusher sans urgent drill and bass beats.
“Basically, I’ve always been super influenced by jazzy stuff,” says Stephenson. “That’s the kind of stuff I’ve always made and I feel like there is a place in dubstep where that sound needs to be heard.”
Well-placed wobble, deviant bass lines, and boisterous synth leads brand the second track “Cosmic Orgasm” as definitive space lounge baby-making music, evoking visions of the city at midnight, a whirlwind of neon and high-pressure sodium bulbs, a pre-dawn tryst on the pier.
“First Experience-Last Chance” calls on a mysterious, Halloween-y vibe with an articulate, chugging bass lead certain to resonate with Substep Infrabass enthusiasts.
Closing track “Dust Mask” takes the (ideally) love-struck listener back to deep space with expansive, quixotic bass.
Far removed from the megalomaniacal phallus-in-the-ear dubstep of the mainstream, Coloures & Memories explores the more sensual side of the genre.
Forget kicking puppies. Go caress your kitty.