UK-based Jonathan Gooch, also known as drum and bass heavyweight Spor and his dubstep/electro house alias Feed Me, has evidently not been resting on his laurels. It may have been a while since we saw him release anything as Spor, but the patience of his fans has been rewarded as he recently returned with a remix for The Prodigy’s single Nasty and now even a full album released on his own label Sotto Voce.
According to the man himself, the time was right: “It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to work on the project. I wanted to make sure I was doing it for my own reasons. Not to fill a space or do it just to appease people. I wanted to make sure that by the time I came back to doing it I felt as enthusiastic as I did previously about the music.”
Ready as he may have been to work on the project, the album did leak early, but Spor and his team anticipated such a thing happening and followed with an official release moments after the fact. Discussing the release, he further discussed an upcoming Feed Me album.
Caligo itself is available as a pay-what-you-want album that is downloadable as a torrent, featuring all 13 tracks in both .mp3 and .wav format, a video for the single Empire (featuring James Hadouken!), a sketchbook, wallpapers and vector logo’s. Download the full release here:
http://blog.bittorrent.com/2015/02/19/spor-releases-caligo-as-a-pay-what-you-want-project/
On to music itself. Starting up with some slow building soundscape-heavy drum and bass before leading into the heavy hitting vocal track Empire, Caligo is as dark and atmospheric as you’d expect from a Spor release. The rest of the album too has been expertly produced with great attention to detail and features a number of tracks that instantly piqued my interest, such as the collaboration with Tasha Baxter who also featured on several Feed Me tracks. At times dark and enigmatic, sometimes surprisingly melodic with a number of guest vocals, Caligo is a beautifully crafted album that showcases why Spor is one of the most celebrated artists in the drum and bass scene. I could hardly think of a better way to kickstart the weekend.
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