4 out of 5

Label: WéMè Records

Produced by: ?

Not_MDK is MDK, aka Martin Wood-Mitrovski, whose choice of alias for this release is puzzling, as it suggests a decisive flip-flop of styles… though the artist’s career under his MDK moniker or others is already a slew of flip-flops, unpredictably jumping between ambient, glitch, jazzy IDM, and more. But I think what keeps Wood-Mitrovski’s work notable is how effectively it operates in each genre guise: each release suggests whichever-name has been doing that style for years on end, comfortable enough in it to experiment and make it their own.

So it goes with The 140 Album: the grimiest of grime, which slaps the funkiest bass beats down, then greases them up with almost counter intuitively poppy synths which somehow don’t betray the dark tone – rather making the whole thing that much cooler; give it that much more swagger. There’s a top-down head bobbing accessibility to this that I’d cautiously liken to synthwave, but it’s far away from that: NOT_MDK’s songs avoid the obvious path, using the instantly catchy beats to step-by-step walk us down winding paths of escalating intensity, coasting on an air of familiarity towards the weird. That’s how we get to this strange brew of aggressive and uplifting tones, working in concert, and dosed just right: some tracks cut out after a couple minutes; some keep it going past the four minute mark; all are just long enough to set the mood, lay down a memorable beat, and then leave us wanting a bit more… that’s then provided by the next song.

This spell holds true up until the final two tracks, Galactic and How I Got Here, which turn a bit more towards melodic IDM, favoring the synth line over the beat. The tracks end up feeling more generic as a result, and aren’t nearly as emotionally dense. I almost prefer viewing these as bonus tracks; possibly they would’ve worked better not clustered together as a conclusion.

Either way, we get such a mega dose of amazing material that The 140 Album still ranks as a modern day grime classic. Here’s hoping NOT_MDK sticks around in that genre for at least one or two more albums.