Frankly there is nothing inevitable about this album. Another of Different Drummer’s German connections, Al Haca have made an album that stands as a short sharp antidote to the lounge-ification of our times.

This is barely dub. Instead, it is constantly morphing itself into new forms of dark listening, twisting out everything from sharp Hackney dancehall to kooky electronica. This ominous and nocturnal album is unsettling –it comes with an emotion similar to walking alone in a damp underpass with a single, flickering neon light.

As soon as a another rude-boy vocalist has finished his thing the pitch changes again and suddenly we are in bass-bomb r’n’b land (‘Heartbreaker’), only to get paranoid and shifty-eyed with ‘Screw’ minutes later, which itself sounds like unexploded ordnance – dark, malevolent and likely to fill the air with fragments in the night.

This is fantastic late-night music with an urgent broken glass distress. ‘Break The Silence’ rinses out some cracking vocals, courtesy of Sizzla, a Different Drummer favourite. ‘Killa’ is a deeply atmospheric dancehall number, full of attitude, courtesy of He Man and his mic.

Full of dark chords and diaphragm-heavy bass, Al Haca have put a liquid night sting back into airy-fairy reggae rip-offs. No Jah love here, if this is the album you happen to meet down a dark alley, don’t try and shake hands.

words: Rufus Sanders