Musician Kevin Martin alias The Bug has had a long and distinguished career on the experimental music scene. In the 1990s, together with Justin Broadrick (Jesu, Napalm Death), he created the projects Ice, Techno Animal or God. In the last of these he played with renowned saxophonist John Zorn. Since 1997 he has focused on an extreme form of dance hall and dub under the name The Bug. His third album London Zoo released under the cult label Ninja Tune last year received a number of awards, including best album of the year from the influential monthly The Wire.

Kevin Martin aka The Bug will be at the Stimul Festival to present his new vision of apocalyptic dub and sonic wars of the future. His physical music combines powerful dubstep bass, steel industrial beats and moody ambient with the vocals of Jamaican or London MCs. The sound system is understood as an independent instrument; the incantation is the maximum intensity of sound. At the Prague concert The Bug will also be accompanied by two renowned MCs: Flowdan, a former member of the London grime group Roll Deep and Jamaican reggae vocalist Daddy Freddy. Come hear the manifesto of hyper-style sonic futurism!

The basic idea underlying the work of anonymous London loner Zomby (released under the respected Hyperdub label) is that rave culture and its offshoots did not moulder over the years, but were part of an imperceptible evolutionary process. Last year’s debut album by the young producer of Where Were U in 92´? is not just a colourful memory of ecstatic club orgies. It is more like a well-conceived textbook that enriches its subject by introducing new chapters. Zomby mixes rave synthesized motifs, sirens and breakbeat rhythms with brutal sub-bass lines. On his next seven-song EP and in most of his current singles, in addition to modern studio techniques, he also uses an eight-bit gaming console. The buzzing of the ancient Atari ST is processed using an archaic sound editor that meshes ideally with chaotic bass gurgles and intoxicating rhythms.

In the spring Zomby stirred controversy in a polemic with well-known British critic Simon Reynolds, who in The Guardian newspaper published an article about the relationship between the “wonky” style of music (the latest offshoot of dubstep, of which Zomby and the USA’s Flying Lotus are the main adherents) and use of the substance ketamine. “Wonky” is addictive physical music, which replaces the tension and urban paranoia of dubstep with somewhat more positive vibrations.

tba