Virus Syndicate - The Work Related Illness

I have this, but I haven't listened to it (same with the Mark One record.) I have listened to the Sizzla/Virus Syndicate track though. I remember thinking that the vocals weren't up to snuff with the instrumental.

I'm liking it a lot.

1. Perversely, this strikes me as being the "proper" grime album circa 2003 that never was: it's well-produced and the rapping is kinda professional and cleaned-up (a relatively huge amount of attention is paid towards forming proper rhyming couplets), but it doesn't abandon grime's sonic foundations in a bid for broader appeal, and the subject matter and MCing style are grime 101.

2. The retort to this is that Boy In Da Corner is the proper grime album circa 2003 that actually was, and so was Treddin' On Thin Ice for that matter - but those albums feel like incredibly distinctive one-offs to me, largely due to the personalities of their creators. There's something almost generic about this album. Not generic as in boring, but as in symptomatic of the genre as a whole.

3. Ironic then that it's released on Planet Mu! And I assume that the producer "DJ M.R.K. 1" is actually Mark One, i.e. hard dubstep producer? If this is a homage to grime by a group of outsiders it's an incredibly studied and accurate reproduction. I never would have thought I would see the day that there'd be a Planet Mu album and a single apiece, by different artists, in my top ten for a year.

4. The lyrics are mostly very good, often taking that study of internal contradictions that Dizzee codified (I am a bad boy and I will bludgeon you/i've been to paradise but i've never been to me) and projects it outwards. As far as I can tell the rappers don't actually talk about their inner worlds much but focus on their social reality, real or imagined - crime, sex, the usual. The music and the rapping are usually both quite angry and intense, simultaneously trying to put you into the "heat of the moment", but also implying this strong sense of disapproval for everything they're talking about. They make it all sound very unpleasant indeed, but, more than that, they want you to know it's unpleasnt, and they're warning you not to go down this path. This is hardly unusual - hip hop lyrics 101 - but I'm not sure that I've heard this done so smoothly in grime before. I guess b/c grime has tended to broach these topics in more of a lecturing/boasting/threatening mode whereas Virus Syndicate favour storytelling, and it's usually easier to capture ambiguity with the latter approach.

Actually that last point really only applies to about half the tracks.

Well the album did come out originally in mid-2005 or so (it just got a re-release with extra tracks.) The DJ MRK1 is Mark One (he was forced to change his name for legal reasons) and the Mark One album (also on Planet Mu and from 2004) has a bunch of tracks with the Virus Syndicate. They are def. grime guys and Mark One, despite being on the Rephlex Grime comp is kind of separate from dubstep anyway and more of a grime guy although obv both are kind of separate since I think they are from somewhere outside London (let alone East London, Croydon maybe?)

I think they're from Manchester way?

It looks like you are right. Is Plasticman (or the Plastician or whatever he's been forced to call himself) from Croydon? Someone is.

Obv Horsepower Productions were.

Ew "Plastician" sounds just wrong.

Yeah I'm not sure about MRK1 either to be honest, but it beats the "Plastician".

Virus Syndicate are from Manchester.

Also, Croydon is in London - Greater London, if you really want to split hairs.

Croydon is indeed home to The Plastician, as well as Skream, Benga, Hatcha, Loefah and Big Apple Records, with DMZ hard at work just over in Brixton. All South London people.

I can't stand their accents. (The Virus Syndicate MCs, not Croydon-inhabiting dubstep producers.)

Why not?

I saw them and MRK1 in Bristol a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty good and people were into it (I was insanely tired so couldn't do much more than just stand there, personally). Perhaps perversely, I enjoyed them more when a bunch of us put them on about 15 months ago, less than 20 people turned up and we lost shitloads of money. I'd had one of the shittiest nights I could remember until they came onstage, and couldn't stop smiling the whole time they were playing.

The album that came out last year is great, it was in my top 10 for 2005 I think. Haven't heard the new version

Agree with Alex in SF: MRK 1 (as he's now known due to name conflict issues with someone else called mark one) sees himself, a bit like Plastician, as a "Grime producer", rather than dubstep, but he straddles the genres more than most. Incidentally he did one of my favourite Dubstep mixes (on three decks), lots of grime like beats, no vocals (if I recall) and he opened it with an instrumental version of one of the tracks off this Virus Syndicate album, (can't remember the name, the one with the choir on it).