SKALAH, Riko Dan - Thriller in Manila

Riko Dan’s voice is one of those instruments that makes a track sound dangerous before a single bass note lands, and Thriller in Manila weaponises it from the first bar. SKALAH builds the whole thing around that menace, holding back until about the 1:10 mark and then dropping into a sub so low it stops being sound and becomes a physical problem for your room. This is dubstep in the old, mean sense, the kind that clears out anyone who wandered in expecting pretty melodies. The MC and producer combination is the secret here, because Riko keeps the energy criminal even in the gaps where a lesser vocalist would let the tension leak out. I’ve played the drop back four times trying to figure out what makes it hit so hard, and I think it’s that SKALAH refuses to layer anything decorative on top of it. No frills, no melodic safety net, just weight. It’s the rare festival-sized dubstep tune that still sounds like it was made in a basement that smells faintly of damp. Filthy in the way the genre was always supposed to be.

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