CLUBS

Shit The Bed launch 2011 with a visit from Croydon’s Benga. Adam Anonymous gets ready to change his sheets.

The dust may barely have settled on In:Motion's season-concluding NYE monster, yet only a fortnight later the Shit The Bed team are prepping the skatepark once again to start 2011 as they intend to go on. True to form, it's a notable name-packed line-up of characteristically mega magnitude led by Benga.

Bristol may have taken the dubstep baton and run with it, but the influence of its spiritual home, Croydon, still looms large. And Adegbenga 'Benga' Adejumo has arguably done as much as any producer or DJ to drive dubstep sounds careering toward the mainstream. A sensation in London and beyond before he even hit GCSEs age and still only in his mid-20s now, Benga first truly came to wider prominence co-helming massive 12” 'Night' – aka 2008's tune most likely to come pumping out of a passing blacked-out Vauxhall Astra – with Digital Mystikz's Coki.

Since then, he has helped invent the unlikely concept of a dubstep supergroup as one third of Magnetic Man, the triumvirate of distinguished Croydon representatives completed by Skream and Artwork. The results have already been mightily successful: MM's self-titled debut album crashed the upper echelons of the charts last year, as did preceding singles 'I Need Air' and Katy B-fronted 'Perfect Stranger', their mugs plastered across plentiful magazine covers en route.

Even wilder success potentially awaits in the coming months. Two days before Shit The Bed, Benga will join his Magnetic Man pal/partner in intoxicated DJ tag teaming Skream for the first of their brand spanking monthly In New DJs We Trust shows on BBC Radio 1. The MM transition to superstar status continues apace on the live front too, with a sizeable stint on the NME Awards Tour alongside Crystal Castles next month, followed by a bill-topping appearance at Bloc in March, co-headlining with electronic music overlord Aphex Twin.

All of which could easily have reduced Shit The Bed's undercard to comparative insignificance. Except that wasn't ever likely to happen, considering it features (deep breath) the bassy brilliance of Sinden, Radio 1/1Xtra selector Mistajam, N-Type dropping a classic jungle and garage set, dubstepping junglist Breakage, Pearson Sound (perhaps better known as Hessle Audio's Ramadanman), a live turn from grimy vocalist Donae'o, plus Bristol's own drum & bass titans TC & Jakes and an expected array of party-catalysing local talent. To half-inch the promoters' own parlance with messy metaphorical results, shit the bed indeed.

SHIT THE BED WAS AT MOTION, BRISTOL ON SAT 15 JAN. SEE WWW.BENGA.CO.UK FFI.
 

Copyright Adam Anonymous 2011

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