Equiknoxx & Mark Ernestus

Mark Ernestus dubs Equiknoxx to the moon and back for DDS with an irresistibly percolated take on Congo Get Slap backed with a jaw-dropping, Basic Channel style version of Flagged Up. We hardly need to stress that this one’s a doozy. 
 
As a big fan of Equiknoxx’s teched-out take on up-to-the-second dancehall, it was perhaps inevitable that the venerable Ernestus, owner of Berlin’s Hardwax and one half of the legendary Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound, as well as his most recent work with the brilliant Ndagga Rhythm Force, would eventually cross paths with Jamaica’s Gavsborg and Time Cow, two of the most exciting producers to emerge from JA this decade. 
 
On both remixes the past informs the present in timeless fashion. The cloud-bursting chords and spaghetti western-esque tropes of Equiknoxx’s Congo Get Slap are deftly diffused in the echo chamber, giving the bass an elasticated recoil and sublimating the chords to scudding, skywards dabs with weightless effect for the dancers. 
 
Flipside, Ernestus takes that aspect one step further, distilling the kinetic dub futurism of Someone Flagged It Up!! into a maze of diaphanous dub chords and rolling, sunken subs that inarguably measures up among his strongest post-Basic Channel works. 
 
Like Shackleton’s dub of The Stopper by Cutty Ranks for DDS, the results here triangulate deep-rooted connections between Jamaica, Lancashire and Berlin, speaking to a mutual respect and reverence of style and pattern which has heavily resonated from sub-tropical Kingston into much colder, European climes over successive generations.