Grimy, crushing and darkly danceable.
The Bug’s latest EP, Burials / Mud, was released May 19th, 2025 via Relapse Records as a 12” vinyl and on digital platforms. The record is a heady mix of dubstep, noise and grime influences blended into a thick, danceable slurry.
This release serves partially as a new take on The Bug’s 2024 EP, Machine, as opening track “Bury Dem” is a revised version of Machine’s “Buried (Your Life is Short)” and “Drop (Machine Sex)” with added vocals by UK-based grime artist LOGAN. The other featured vocalist in the EP is Magugu, an experimental grime and hip-hop artist also from the UK. In their press release The Bug said, “For me, “Burials / Mud”, is a celebration of verbal grime and sonic filth, where dub meets riff, and beats add brute physicality.”
Burials / Mud features four tracks. Opening the EP is “Bury Dem,” a bass-heavy trudge of distorted synths and slow drumbeats overlaid with the striking vocal performance of LOGAN, whose strong yet simple style adds an anchoring point of focus. “Buried Dub” is a remix of “Bury Dem” that treats the vocals as more of an additional instrument than a main focus; this allows the more rhythmic composition to shine, and a healthy dose of staticky production and reverb add a different kind of edge to the mix.
“Deep in a Mud” features much less bass and much more percussion, trading some of the volume provided by the synths in the first two tracks for a drum-heavy beat to accentuate Magugu’s comparatively faster rap style and deeper voice; the track takes on a much less harsh sound, even leaning towards an almost ambient profile during its conclusion. “Mud Dub” is a remix of “Deep in A Mud” that leans into an ominous kind of cavernous ambience, with the soft synthesizer at the end of the previous track underpinning harsh, crunching percussion, echoing and distant vocals and a menagerie of acoustic oddities, most noticeably the occasional sounds resembling liquid dripping.
Overall, the listening experience is heavy and dark and perhaps a little frightening, but the restless and relentless dub energy serves as a constant reminder to the listener that this is music for dancing and moshing and clubbing, with any fear serving only as further fuel to those flames.
Leave a Comment