Man vs. Sofa

Legendary avant-dub producer Adrian Sherwood (owner of the notorious On-U Sound studio and label) and dubstep producer Pinch have worked together on several occasions over the years, resulting in a couple of fine and quirky albums. Man vs. Sofa finds them mining a dark seam of dubstep-adjacent moods, though this is hardly a genre exercise: “Itchy Face” fits no musical template I can think of, with its alternately juddering and abstract beat, while the title track offers no groove at all for its first couple of minutes and then lapses into a deeply weird sort of pseudo-dub vibe. A very cool departure from the norm for both artists.