Ghost Dubs

The Bug’s Machine collection was one of my favorite albums of 2024 by a landslide, as it felt like Kevin Martin’s culminating and defining masterwork as far as his industrial-damaged and heavyweight instrumental dub side was concerned. Wisely, Martin did not attempt to mine that particular vein of mechanized menace any deeper with this latest release and instead went with the equally brilliant idea of a woofer-straining sound clash with Michael Fiedler’s like-minded Ghost Dubs project. Aside from sharing these two slabs of vinyl and a number of stages, the two artists additionally shared a “raw” and “brutally minimal” vision for Implosion that carves away virtually everything except for throbbing bass pressure, crawling and stoned slow-motion grooves, and minimalist dub sorcery (mastered to starkly futuristic perfection by Pole’s Stefan Betke no less). Unsurprisingly, it is an absolute banger.  

The album follows an unconventional format for a split release, as the two artists alternate tracks rather than each taking over a full LP. The actual provenance of these pieces is a bit unclear, however, as all of The Bug’s tracks list a specific venue and I know that the two artists did a series of back-to-back performances together, so I have no idea if this album collects of one prime cut from each artist’s dueling set from each night or if some of these pieces were pure studio creations (or perhaps even hybrids of both). 

In any case, nothing sounds conspicuously live in a “crowd noise” or “ceiling tiles loudly crashing to the floor due to seismically over-saturated bass frequencies” way, so I guess all of that is purely academic. Fittingly, the lines separating each artist’s distinctive aesthetic are similarly blurry, as each traffics entirely in lurching and blunted low-BPM head-bobbers of god-tier vibrational hypnotism here. In short, Implosion is pure bass-worship at its best, though Martin’s pieces generally feel a bit more crushing and martial while Fiedler’s pieces betray a bit more of their Jamaican & Moritz von Oswald/Mark Ernestus inspirations. 

Regardless of how you slice it, Implosion is an absolute tour de force of dread-soaked post-industrial dub crushers with viscerally throbbing physicality. It is not an entirely monolithic one, however, as the sensuous skank of Jamaican dub makes a few welcome appearances on tracks like Ghost Dub’s “Hope” and both artists throw an unexpected hook or sampling curveball into the mix every now and then (albeit often in unrecognizably drugged and dirge-y form).

In fact, the aforementioned “Hope” has a bit of both (along with some wonderfully snapping and rubbery chords), as it features a recurring vocal stab and an out-of-sync rhythmic loop that continually mutates the feel of its slow and heavy chug. Elsewhere, pieces like The Bug’s “Burial Skank” and Ghost Dub’s “Dub Remote” sound like they could be hiding a big band ensemble or an entire fucking halftime show marching band in their murky depths (albeit in conspicuously stretched and warped form).

In general, however, even a more meat-and-potatoes approach yields some of Implosion’s most satisfying juggernauts of futuristic menace. For example, The Bug’s grayscale “Alien Virus” weaves subtly hallucinatory magic from just hiss and deep reverberations, while Ghost Dub’s doom-y dirge “Down” boasts an extremely satisfying and dubbed out whip crack motif. While I suppose the monochromatic nature and pared-to-the-bone minimalism of this album will probably alienate some fans of Martin’s more vibrant and vocalist-centric work, the flip side is that these twelve variations on a theme are endlessly absorbing for those of us who are more than happy to zone out to deep, heavy grooves with plenty of space for trippy dub effects to pan and reverberate around in. 

In short, Implosion is essentially just slow kick drums, earth-shaking bass vibrations, and some occasional chords, but that foundation proved to be extremely fertile ground for these connoisseurs to compellingly flex their dub muscles. In fact, it was such fertile ground that the pair could not even fit all their best tracks onto a mere double LP, as a couple of excellent pieces were necessarily relegated to a limited bonus LP (though they thankfully appear on the album’s digital version as well).

Listen here.