Skreamizm Vol. 6

Skream has always reserved his deadliest club material for the Skreamizm series of EPs. Ever since its first edition in 2006, each volume has offered a further snapshot of a producer constantly in flux. But they've always remained distinct from any other projects he's working on, dictated both by the needs of a club crowd and Skream's own vision of the genre he helped to establish. *Skreamizm Volume 6, the first addition to the series since 2009, proves no exception. His attention might have been divided between exploring a range of styles on last year's Outside The Box album, writing huge pop tracks as part of Magnetic Man, putting out subtler, funk-infused music on Nonplus+ and DJ'ing around the globe. But all seven tracks here stay locked, hard, to the demands of the dancefloor. Broader in its sonic range than any other Skreamizm so far, the range of sounds within this sixth volume in the series reflects dubstep's growing status over the last couple of years. *Of course, while dubstep might have exploded into wider consciousness during that time, around the time of Skreamizm Volume 1 you'd have been hard pressed to predict its future potential. The first few Skreamizms were dark, claustrophobic beasts, their dense pockets of bassweight and rain-drizzled melancholy still reflecting the cramped club spaces where the genre first began to evolve. Tracks like 'Rottan' and '0800 Dub' were insular, eyes-down killers for the Plastic People soundsystem. At the time, the notion of Skream making a pop record was still very remote indeed. *Skreamizm Volume 6, though, feels like a further step in the direction his dancefloor music began to take on Volumes 4 and 5. It certainly encompasses the sort of crushing, big-room club tracks his sets have become increasingly known for. 'Xmas Day Swagger' is metallic and bristly, and the shuddering 'Indistinct's intensity is cleverly offset by tiny melodic flourishes and fragments of female vocal. Both 'Abtruse' and 'Snarled' match th