Lynx & Kemo - The Raw Truth

Rating: * * * *

On a British drum'n'bass tip comes the producer/MC duo Lynx & Kemo.

The Raw Truth, a dark, yet soulful and utterly unique album, could pass for dub-step.

However, they produce an industrial electronic clickety-clack that is well-greased, which gives songs like Camera and Apocalypse fluid groove in contrast to the traditionally cold and anti-social mood that often comes across in this static form of music.

Camera glitches and bops along with Kemo's foreboding and doomed spoken-word lilt; some ominous "la la las" open Committing Love; Tribes belches forth with some booming bass and heaving movements of sound; and the record's smoothest moment comes on All You Own, a melodic drum'n'bass tune with a bloke who has the same husky, soulful voice as Fat Freddy's Dallas Tamaira.

Towards the end, from Broken Glass and Deez Breakz on, it takes a darker, more disturbing and clangy turn which is when these two show their true spirit.

Scott Kara