Doppler 20-20 - “One Small Step”
Avantgardism Vol. 2
1997
Drum n Bass / Abstract
Although he’s worked in a number of genres in the past 30-plus years that range anywhere from ambient, to trance, to acid house, to breakbeat hardcore, to trip hop, and more, London’s Martin Lee-Stephenson has had a foot firmly planted in the worlds of jungle and drum n bass pretty much ever since jungle first emerged in the UK in the early 90s. From starting out with the jungle group, Law & Auder, to working in the dnb/power pop trio, Moondogg, his jungle and dnb work appears to have run the full spectrum between weird and conventional. But Stephenson has always loved the weird, and sometimes that weird mixes with his dnb and spills over into one of his few solo aliases, Doppler 20-20.
Doppler 20-20 isn’t strictly dnb, though. Really, it’s mostly just abstract and experimental stuff. Stephenson kicked off the project in 1996 with his first Doppler album, Art Électriqué, released on his own little label, December Dawn. That same year, following its disbandment, Law & Auder relaunched as a label and quickly became known for its thematic, double-disc various artist compilations, all of which had an experimental or abstract streak to them, and were mostly comprised of idm and dnb tracks. Stephenson would contribute a wild, nearly seven-and-a-half-minute piece of abstract dnb to Law & Auder’s Avantgardism Vol. 2, in 1997 called “One Small Step.”
While both its title and its opening sample of Neil Armstrong’s famed “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” quote might lead you to think that this track sounds like space exploration, you’d be wrong, because rather than flying itself to the moon, “One Small Step” appears to be burrowing itself far beneath the ground instead. In fact, most of this song sounds like my man did a wee bit too many hits o’ acid and got himself trapped in one of those subterranean levels from Super Mario All Stars for a few hours. But rather than having that sharp and metallic melody of synth stabs from the SMAS score, Stephenson uses soft double bass tones instead. And to drive that Super Mario idea even further, he inserts a couple things that sound an awful lot like effects from the games, as well as a two-note tag of tweeting chimes that resembles when Mario is doing his numismatic thing. Truth be told, I guess one could construe this whole song as Stephenson’s own conception of what Super Mario music could be, but on drugs, because it’s also full full of harried drum n bass stutters, assorted bleeps n bloops, random noises, and stabs of staticky distortion, too.
Let Martin Lee-Stephenson write a video game score, please.
