London’s shadowy LHF collective, who over the last eighteen months have released a trio of 12"s through Martin ‘Blackdown’ Clark’s Keysound label, have announced the release of their long-awaited debut album. A double CD package entitled Keepers Of The Light (a term used regularly by the collective), it will be released through Keysound on April 2nd. It gathers together many of the tracks from those earlier EPs with a host of new ones, including ‘Akashic Visions’, which you can watch below.
LHF – a grouping consisting of Amen Ra, Double Helix, No Fixed Abode, Low Density Matter, Octaviour, Escobar Seasons, Solar Man and Lumin Project – make tracks rooted in the whole history of UK dance music. Mostly operating at dubstep tempo, they regularly throw open the floodgates to allow influences from London and further afield to flood in: jungle, whose sci-fi flecked percussive intensity is particularly audible in Double Helix’s tracks; UK garage and two-step; Wu Tang-style hip-hop dread, and the astrally minded beats of LA’s Brainfeeder crew.
It’s that approach that’s made them a fresh prospect in a dividing dubstep scene. They’re a completely self-contained entity, with their DJ sets regularly consisting only of tracks from the huge LHF unreleased archive, and regular radio shows combining their own music with that of close contemporaries.
Keepers Of The Light‘s full tracklist runs below. It includes Double Helix’s ‘Chamber Of Light’, which made our top dance tracks of 2011, and we described as "all snakelike rhythms, disembodied voices and tough, burnished synth drones… Like wandering around darkened alleyways in South London, cigar in mouth, Indiana Jones hat jammed firmly onto your head."
CD1
‘Secret Lagoon’
‘Steelz’
‘Candy Rain’
‘Sunset (Mumbai Slum Edition)’
‘Essence Investigation’
‘Supreme Architecture’
‘LDN’
‘Rush’
‘Questions’
‘Blue Steel’
‘Simple Things’
‘Low Maintenance’
CD2
‘Strangelands’
‘From Whence We Came’
‘Broken Glass’
‘Indian Street Slang’
‘Fairytales’
‘Akashic Visions’
‘Hidden Life Force 2’
‘No Worries’
‘Bass 2 Dark’
‘Chamber Of Light’
‘Inferno’
‘Deep Life’
‘Voyages’
‘One Toke Wonder’
Keepers Of The Light is released on April 2nd, as 2CD (with exclusive sleevenotes) and digital
