Justin K Broadrick is one of the most influential figures in heavy music, with a legacy that stretches back decades and touches everything that came after it in the world of industrial metal. PREHUMAN. FLESHSTEP finds him operating in a different genre of rolling 140 BPM electronic music, and yet it’s completely consistent with everything he’s ever made.

This is the original pre-production material for the first JK Flesh album POSTHUMAN, but stripped of the guitar elements that Broadrick later added to the final record because he was never entirely happy with those additions. This is what the record sounded like before, and the result is a pure dubstep record that will send you right back to the moment when the genre was fighting for its soul, when there was a war going on between the underground, bass-heavy UK sound and the mainstream commercial version that was taking to arenas on the other side of the Atlantic. PREHUMAN.FLESHSTEP sounds like Coki, Joker, Mala, Digital Mystikz, Caspa & Rusko’s FabricLive.37 and most crucially The Bug, operating at the intersection of industrial music, dub and bass culture. The synthesiers sound like Dillinja’s Valve sound system slowed down and deepened with weighty bass frequencies and enormous space. EARTHMOVER is the track to point to for maximum heaviness with a clattering breakbeat running through it while KNUCKLEDRAGGER is closer to a dub-influenced sound you might expect from Pinch, Skream or Benga. The record demands to be heard loud on a big sound system, and if you do it will send you right back to when underground dubstep felt both dangerous and important. Justin Broadrick didn’t emerge from that scene, but he understood instinctively what made it great, and these stripped-back versions are dancefloor bangers of the highest order.