Skream – 'Outside The Box' review
With Ollie ‘Skream’ Jones and Burial the only dubstep producers to have enjoyed mainstream success recently, Jones may feel he has something to prove here. And on that score, Outside The Box does its job. On the centrepiece of Fields of Emotion and the Jocelyn Brown-sampling Love The Way, the cavernous arrangements offset the potentially cheesy synth melodies, and the results are as bowel-shakingly brilliant as his La Roux remix from 2009.
His ear for pop is bent into perfect shape, too, on Where You Should Be, a futuristic take on new jack swing that melds Blackstreet with The Streets and comes out with one of the classiest RnB tracks of recent years. Unfortunately though Outside The Box’s dub is far stronger than its step, most embarrassingly on the terrible junglist dross The Epic Last Song. It’s regrettable, because the majority of the album is brilliantly executed, compellingly dark stuff, and proves Skream to be far more than a one-remix pony.
8/10
