Soundclash

Soundclash arrives before the filing system. London dub, hip-hop and breakbeat collide long before anyone thinks to call it trip-hop, big beat or anything else, and the rough edges preserve the collision rather than tidying it into a prototype. A rough sketch of ideas others refined, and it got there first. What came later made the categories clearer; this record sounds better for not having them yet.

London dub-punks with a sampler and a grudge, prefiguring both big beat and UK bass culture while neither existed. Probably a Robbery is the famous one and the album around it is meaner.