When riots and looting broke out around the country last week, I found myself drawn back to London Zoo, the claustrophic, tense, angry and flat-out brilliant ragga/dancehall/dub album by The Bug from three years ago.
There's much debate going on at the moment about the causes of what happened - police brutality, a loss of morality, alienated young people, a lack of role models, violent computer games, consumerist greed, a general fin de siècle malaise and even BlackBerry messaging have all been batted about by various parties.
Events certainly appeared fluid and by the time teenagers were pulling overpriced jeans out a broken window of Diesel in Manchester, it was hard to detect any obvious link to the shooting of Mark Duggan by police in Tottenham that had sparked the original violence.
But does the country really descend into mass rioting just because people think getting some stuff for free and chatting about it on social networks is a bit of a lark? And does it really only take a bit of Churchillian rhetoric, a few late-night court sessions and ditching a load of health and safety regulations to see the problem off?
London Zoo emerged in 2008 just as the financial crisis was peaking (well, let's hope so...), and I was staring down the barrel of losing a job I enjoyed and had been in for nearly ten years. The simmering tension and frustration, not to mention the gloriously deep, dirty bass, struck a chord.
The P45 duly arrived and London Zoo was slipped away on the shelves, too much of a reminder of bad times. It was only the arrival of the Arab Spring last Christmas that led me to finally dig it out again, when the angry crowds and petrol burning on heavily armed vehicles still seemed a long distance away.
Perhaps the idea of people rising up to finally overthrow oppressive regimes helped to detoxify the album in my mind, but I found myself actually enjoying it even if the vibe is still distinctly heavy.
Now I've found myself returning to it in the wake of what has just happened closer to home. After three nights of watching TV footage of London aflame in a manner seemingly better suited to the age of Samuel Pepys, it's hard to escape the yearning for some kind of answers. In truth, I'm not sure if I'm listening to London Zoo in search of truth or simply because the post-apocalyptic feel seems to suit.
London Zoo is Kevin Martin's third album under his Bug alias, having previously worked a wide range of interesting but demanding projects on the more extreme edges of recorded music, including industrial jazzcore (God), slurred blackly psychedelic hip-hop (Techno Animal) and illbient (compiler of the Macro Dub Infection albums).
Drawing on his love of Jamaican music, Martin collaborates with MCs he cheerfully admits mostly hadn't heard of him before they worked with him. It's the quality of his productions that win them over (and a reputation for actually paying), and that suits him fine.
Martin freely admits that for him "part of the attraction of dancehall has always been the sex and violence", and makes a very valid point that white artists such as Nick Cave can use extreme violence is their work and rarely get criticised for it, but you never get the feeling he's trying to be shocking on London Zoo. There isn't a lot of sex either, though there's plenty to shake your booty too.
Opening track Angry features Tippa Irie and is most lyrically eloquent tune on the album, with the Brixton MC spitting out everything that incenses about the world, from the the ozone to the abandonment of New Orleans, over an almost military beat.
Ricky Ranking turns up next on Murder We, the first of his three fine contributions, and a bleak vision of Babylon, where the streets are "flowing blood red". He slows things down to plead that we "remember my children, like I remember your children", but this vision of a community slowly melting down into molten rage seems a particularly pertinent one.
The consciousness side of things goes out of the window on Skeng (meaning knife or gun), which finds Killa P and Flowdan in pure raggamuffin bad boy mode. 'Shot you in the face/Make you send for the nurse/Doctor can't fix you/Send for the hearse' they growl over a minimal throbbing bass, with tongue very discretely stuck in cheek.
Ricky Ranking returns to team up with Aya on Too Much Pain, a haunted swirl of parched percussion and horror film dramatics. 'Top tune, Kevin!' Ricky blurts out at one point in a welcome moment of levity.
"What's wrong with the world/ Has the world gone mad?" wonders Warrior Queen on Insane over another precision-tooled groove before Flowdan returns with a scattergun toast about the coming Jah War.
The dark heart of London Zoo arrives with Fuckaz, a remarkable surge of disgust and anger over a migraine throb of sub-bass. Frequent Kode9 collaborator and dubstep scene stalwart Spaceape gets out some serious bile for nearly four minutes before asking several times: "How did we get here/ And where do we go now?". Spaceape and Martin seem to be inviting us to ponder this point as the song slowly ebbs to a close.
Poet/lyricist Roger Robinson, who also appeared on second Bug album Pressure, turns up on You & Me to take the temperature a notch or two. His light, dreamy delivery and Kevin's whispering, drifting production suddenly take you to a very different place. This would prove a step-off point for Martin's next move with the duo collaborating over a whole album as King Midas Sound in a more downtempo dubstep style.
Freak Freak is a dry, echoey and ominous instrumental, the sound of the underpass, glass crunching underfoot and your fingers tightening around the keys in your pocket.
Flowdan returns for Warning, another blast of inner city dread that dubs out midway through into slow decaying tones before firing back in with a martial beat and a flurry of patois.
Warrior Queen returns for the excellent Poison Dart, her voice somewhere between singing and toasting over yet more speaker-battering bass. The Skream remix seems better known but Martin's original version still does it for me.
Ricky Ranking is back for final track Judgement, showcasing his sweet singing tones between gruff voiced toasts. He concludes with "We are living in serious times/ I guess it's coming like a judgement sign/ The people have killing on their mind", so perhaps we should have considered ourselves warned.
London Zoo came out on Ninja Tune, who did a beautiful job of it, splitting the album into three 12-inches to do full justice to all that awesome bass and packaging it in a gatefold sleeve featuring artwork by Fefe Talavera. Even dystopia comes with design flair nowadays.
