At the start of »Midnight Request Line«, a voice echoes down the telephone line: »I’d like to hear a new beat on the request line.« And fine, not everything here was necessarily new – there may well be people who would argue that Skream aka Oliver Jones was a little too indebted to the opening music from Catch Me If You Can – but what people in the mid-2000s called dubstep was definitively shaped by this track.
Back then, if you wanted to show someone what this British basement genre could sound like – a sound that typically combined dragging, heavy-footed beats, deeeep-drilling sub-bass and a grumbling disposition – there was no getting around »Midnight Request Line«, which would later become the centrepiece of Skream. As a breakout track that, with a slight delay, also made its way into the sets of non-dubstep DJs, it had everything a crossover needed: it hints at darkness, but at the genre’s characteristic 140 bpm counters it with playful melodies.
Even nearly 20 years on, now that Tempa is reissuing by far its most successful 12-inch of all time, the track still recalls the potential of a genre that would only a few years later veer into noisier, more broad-shouldered directions. The B-side, »I«, is the slightly grimmer little brother and feels most at home in the shadows anyway.
