Zomby is a wiseass. I don't mean that flippantly or pejoratively, but I just can't think of a more appropriate term. Here we have a producer who sealed his rep as a dubstep powerhouse with 2008's much-buzzed-about breakthrough single "Mu5h/Spliff Dub (Rustie Remix)", and then he goes and decides that the best way to build on that goodwill is with a full-length 'ardkore/jungle throwback album. Well played, sir, and bonus points for turning a half-rhetorical phrase from M.I.A.'s "XR2" into a giddy, time-warping answer: Where Were U in '92? isn't just a rib-nudging throwback, but an electronic dance music family tree's branch rendered in flashing neon. Despite his dubstep associations, Zomby is revealing himself to be a provocative genre-tweaker, someone who's never content to let an idea stagnate for more than a moment and shoots out in all directions-- historically and stylistically-- to keep things interesting. As one of those crucial producers who can trace his current musical lineage back through a youth consumed by garage, jungle, and rave, he's long since figured out how all the pieces fit together.
This album's circa-1992 throwback elements are obvious but cleverly deployed: Bursts of ultra-pitched-up diva vocals provide hyperactive melody, only to be answered by rugged dancehall shouts; sirens and air-horns explode against densely-packed uptempo breakbeat rhythms; synthesized stabs and slashes blur the line between pianos and string sections. And while the album feels brief yet fully realized, its mood-swing structure and abrupt transitions-- the wobbly, dubbed-out gloom of "Tears in the Rain" jolted into the shiny 1 a.m. massiveness of "Get Sorted", or the rapid-fire "Hench" stepping into the subdued breakbeat of "B With Me"-- evoke the kind of feverish real-time mutation that came from a low-tech, pre-internet yet fast-moving DIY movement. It all sounds a bit like a homemade mix cassette assembled from scraps and pieces by some teenager with a dual-deck tape recorder and more interest in pace-tweaking, blunt-trauma segues than seamlessly-crossfaded transitions. (Though you can't say he didn't warn you, what with the first track bearing the title "Fuck Mixing, Let's Dance".)
Zomby's commitment to the era's style extends all the way to the equipment he used to record the album, using the studio techniques of the era and putting it all together on an AKAI S2000 and an old version of Cubase running on an Atari ST. So it's kind of jarring-- in a good way-- to hear a few more current-day notions run through it, like some of the robot vocals from "Technologic" downpitched and dragged across an archetypal breakbeat rhythm on "Daft Punk Rave", or the crunked-up ghettotech of "Pillz" making the UK hardcore/Southern bounce connection (and its shared interest in ecstasy) that much clearer. And there's never a sense that the music on here is strictly a backward glance; for every moment that sounds like it could've come from A Guy Called Gerald's 28 Gun Bad Boy or one of those great early jungle tracks that came out on Awesome Records or Moving Shadow back in the day, there's enough guttural bass and rhythmic elasticity to remind you of the garage and dubstep disciplines where breakbeat's successors eventually migrated to by the mid-late 00s.
It only makes sense that this album closes out with "U Are My Fantasy (Street Fighter II Theme Remix)", which reworks Baby D's '92 rave anthem "Let Me Be Your Fantasy" with music and sound effects from the classic fighting game, since Super Street Fighter II Turbo was recently revived as an updated, modernized, super-glossy high-definition remake for next-gen home consoles. And just as the people who grew up throwing dragon punches in arcades found out that there's still a tight, fluid game under that shiny new surface, Zomby's proven that the fundamentals of a sound that peaked over 15 years ago can still be streamlined into the current zeitgeist. He's gotten to the point where he can invoke old signifiers as something more than you-had-to-be-there nostalgia: all at once, Where Were U in '92? is a history lesson, a depiction of a musical timeline that folds in on itself, and a revival that works because it approaches its subject with the idea that it simply evolved instead of died.
