Neil Landstrumm - Restaurant of the Assassins

Telephones, steam power, the kilt: all things the Scots claim erroneously to have pioneered - indeed, talking in some pubs about national inventions yields more dubious claims than OJ Simpson's police statement. And now we can add dubstep to the list; not only is Kode9 a Wishaw boy, but way before Coki and Mala rolled their first spliffs and started playing MC Fuck You at half speed, Neil Landstrumm was pioneering a form of two-step inflected techno with bass fatter than a sumo wrestler on the Atkins. Landstrumm's always applied elements of dancehall to his work, but Restaurant of the Assassins sees him dipping into the Hackney zeitgeist and more equally blending the spliffed-out bent of dubstep and the amphetamine grind of bleep techno. It's both a continuation of past work and a snapshot of the current scene. It's also very, very good; tracks like Harlem Shoot Me, released as a killer 12" a while back, are dancefloor-orientated and uptempo, but build on wonky off-beats and crushing bass, fusing technical complexity with a pure adrenal kick. Appearances by the Ragga Twins and Youngsta are fairly downplayed, but serve as a reminder of the Restaurant's significance. Table for two please. [Liam Arnold]