Virgo

Dylan Richards aka King Cannibal returns with his latest smash to the solar plexus, "Virgo." to flesh out his twisted, industrial take on dancehall, dubstep and drum & bass, vox are provided by brand new French crew Face-A-Face. This is the vocalists first release and they sound magnifique over a rhythm built firmly for the dancefloor and set to do considerable and lasting damage in any such context. All amplified thumb piano, fidgeting rhythms and filtered nastiness, Richards chops the vox to pieces and puts them back together, all to make you lose the plot. "Murder Us" came about after a meeting with Sasha Perera of German group Jahcoozi in Berlin late last year. It turned out that although the pair had never met, they used to live about a mile away from each other in South London. Musically the track was also born from the same trip after hearing techno in it's correct environment, "clubs like the Berghain," Richards says. "Open for days on end, people dancing for 48 hours, driven by nothing except sounds that bounce around in a dark room. I heard it, drank it in and wanted to put my spin on what I heard that long weekend." As for the lyrics, Sasha uses the idea of battery chickens in a box as a metaphor for the inner city life both knew from South of the river. While she says it's "a nihilist message," the King manages to make it uplifting in his own Lynchian, brutal way, just by the way the tune gradually unfolds itself. Not for nothing has Radio 1s Mary-Anne Hobbs has already declared Richards music "too dark!" When Eddie Temple-Morris head his debut single "Aragami Style" he loved it so much he added an extra hour to his XFm show and called it "Remix Darkside" in his honour. Championed by early adopters like the Bug, Bong Ra, Strictly Kev, Kid 606, Knifehand Chop and Ebola, King Cannibal is all set to be the next big nasty thing. Be afraid.