The Bug / Dis Fig – Ladybug 1
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Pressure
If you are as into nerdy pseudonym lore as I am, then you’re going to love, or likely already love, the music of Kevin Richard Martin. Blurring the lines between metal, industrial, and dub techno for thirty-some odd years, Martin is an English producer most notably associated with the name The Bug, and has collaborated with artists like Justin K. Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu), Dylan Carlson (Earth), Al Cisneros (Sleep, Om), and Jason Williamson (Sleaford Mods).
There’s a lot of lineage to follow in order to get to his latest EP, and to be honest, I’m not totally certain if it’s all intentional, but here are the quick hits: Kevin Martin’s latest imprint, Pressure, is named after his 2003 sophomore album as The Bug. Since then, he’s released one-off projects under the name Ladybug, both as an artist and as a label head. In 2020, he collaborated with Berlin-based DJ and vocalist Dis Fig (aka Felicia Chen) on the full-length project In Blue. Five years later, we now have their second collaboration, Ladybug 1. As the title suggests, it’s the first in an upcoming series, and it focuses on five different versions of a song entitled “Vanishing.” The original mix is a trippy, low-end cut as you’d expect from Martin, but the addition of Chen’s vocals recall artists like Massive Attack or How To Destroy Angels.
If you’re not a purveyor of twelve-inch singles or remix EPs, the four alternative mixes may not strike a chord with you, but they each offer something at least a bit new from the last. The “Vanished Dub” trades the majority of the vocals for trebly hi-hats and whooshing noise pads, while the “Numb Mix” features a sparser production to give greater focus on Chen’s voice. Somewhere in between is the “Numb Dub,” where flourishes of the non-lyrical vocals sway in and out of the music, ahead of the most drastically manipulated “Numbness Dub,” where Martin remixes the vocals to be much closer to another rhythm element of the production.
Martin continues to be shockingly consistent given his output and tenure as a producer, but if you’ve enjoyed any of his work in the past, this will fit right into your rotation, no matter which version you gravitate towards.
