Stagga - The Warm Air Room

Stagga - The Warm Air Room (Rag and Bone)

Following on from his singles on Rag and Bone and Rudeez, Stagga drops his debut album, The Warm Air Room, fusing violently nasty basslines to subtle hip-hop frameworks, and chanelling it all into a doomy, dread-fuelled warehouse sound. Whilst Face Get Splat and Sick as Sin were rooted squarely in the kind of full-on dubstep-mutant-bassline territory that Rag and Bone have made their own, The Warm Air Room displays a surprising amount of subtlety and delicacy of touch, without in any way sacrificing heaviness; following the Zomby-esque bleepy intro, Is This The Future rolls in bouncing hip-hop boom-bap, complete with G-funk strings and as detuned sample of U-God's famous "Roll like cocaine, straight from Bolivia" on the breaks. The Dragon heads more for a UK funky feel, with the monstrous bass-drone offsetting rattling tabla percussion and slightly surreal manga-esque quotes about summoning dragons. Even the pixel-driven psychedelia of Zomby and Rustie rears its head, on the likes of The Chilski and Original Misty, both featuring many-time collaborator Monky and skillfully bridging the divide between hip-hop and purple wow.

Neatly fusing the major strands of UK bass music, and creating a few anthems in the process, The Warm Air Room is an accomplished album from an artist who risked just plastering big basslines over everything and riding the Ket-massive all the way to the bank in his first few singles.