Album Review: Rinse Presents: Royal-T by Royal-T

The return of instrumental grime these past few years, as epitomized by the Butterz label and the work of Royal-T in particular, seems underpinned by the realization that it was never the supposed authenticity of grime that made it compelling, but rather its flash and (reverse) glamor, the over-acted, over-extended tinny malevolence of its ridiculous soundscapes offering multihued bruises and contusions both sonic and verbal. And once that general fetish for the over-the-top becomes the object of devotion, why stop at just grime? So, on his debut album for Rinse FM's in-house label, Rinse Presents: Royal-T, the young British producer Mark Taylor offers a more all-embracing vision of rudely extroverted modern garage, unified by his familiar palette of turgid bass tones, decaying synth riffs and shuddering, syncopated beats. The cheerfully skipping 2-step of lead single "Inside the Ride" measures the distance that Taylor can wander while affirming the essential constancy of his sound, its synthetic pizzicato melody and gargantuan bass drops evoking roughneck boisterousness and ecumenical joviality rather than the feminine bump and grind that was 2-step's primary raison d'être.

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