DISRUPT
Foundation Bit
WERKCD04
Werk Discs 2007
10 Tracks. 41mins05secs

Although it may show some affinities with dubstep and dancehall, two musical genres usually, although not exclusively, associated with London, Foundation Bit comes all the way from Leipzig, once one of the most important cities in the German Democratic Republic. Disrupt, not to be mistaken with the American punk band of the same name, is the brainchild of Jan Gleichmar, who spent years experimenting with various forms of electronic art forms before developing a healthy interest in dub and trying his hand at it with an old laptop and pretty much nothing else.

His first release came in the form of the Fistful Of Dub EP on Dresden-based netlabel Phonocake in 2004, This was followed by a pretty regular flow of digital EPs issued through the Jahtari label, which Gleichmar co-founded later that same year. Fast-forward to early, when Disrupt published the Tubby ROM Module / Foundation Bit EP on Werk Discs, paving the way for Gleichmar’s debut album.

Clocking at just over forty minutes and ten tracks, Foundation Bit is a bass-heavy slice of digital dub which digs deep into the legacy of reggae and dub and proudly splashes glitched up, electro-infused morsels all over it as if it was the norm. And it all works rather impeccably. Arse-shaking, feet-tapping, head-bobbing narcotic beats and grooves are lined up on the Foundation Bit conveyor belt and relentlessly processed, from the moody dubstep slant of opener Tubby Rom Module to the feverish Jah Red Gold And Green, Foundation Bit or Selassi I Continually to the anthemic True Creators, with its vocoded section as last heard on LFO’s We Are Back and the happy-go-lucky Riddim Grid. As the album progresses and Gleichmar’s smart pixel art modules fall into place, a warm glow radiates from these instrumental pieces, at times splintered with corny sci-fi effects, especially on Blast You To Bits, Bomb 20 and THC 1138, and send massive shockwaves through the

References are plenty and pretty clearly laid out all along here, but this doesn’t prevent this album from sounding extremely modern and fresh. Despite being intrinsically, and quite openly, electronic, Foundation Bit actually manages to sound gritty, organic and raw. Jan Gleichmar has created with this album on of the sharpest and cleverest records of the year. This is sci-fi for the dreads generation.

Jahtari | Werk Discs
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