Demdike Stare have scored another coup for their DDS label, a Shackleton dubplate that has remained unreleased for a decade.
The track dates back to 2005, when Shackleton, Appleblim and Vengeance Tenfold were showcasing the nascent Skull Disco sound in underground venues across London, Manchester and Bristol. According to Boomkat, the record achieved a cult status to those in the know, who assumed it would never be released.
“Pitching down the vocal and reworking the riddim at a sinuous 138bpm halfstep, it continues a long-standing dialogue between UK dance counter-culture and Jamaican soundsystem music, rendering that stentorian vocal with seismic subs and skeletal, impish drums inna claggy echo chamber aesthetic that would serve to define Skull Disco until its burial in 2008,” says Boomkat of the track in a enjoyably hyperbolic review.
The 12″ vinyl pressing also comes with a cassette mixtape from Demdike Stare, “an hour long trip through 50 years of deviant music from deep deep in the archives, taking the Shackleton dubplate as its focal-point and extending out through a myriad refracted ideas and all the way back again.”
The record follows the brilliant Shinichi Atobe album and Micachu tape put out by the label last year. Both the 12″ and tape are available now from Boomkat, and come housed in a screen-printed DDS tote bag.
Read FACT’s beginner’s guide to Skull Disco if you need a primer on Shackleton’s early years, and if you want to see some more of Boomkat’s most enthusiastic (and cattiest) reviews, we rounded some up here.
Update: You can now listen to the track in full, thanks to a recent NTS mix which you can stream below. It’s the first track in the mix. [h/t @Seanmcg]