My suggestion: don’t classify London three-piece Dark Sky under the heading of ‘Dubstep’, but rather under ‘Dubstep, because no-one’s really sure where else they should go’. An offshoot of London 2-step revivalists The Boogaloo Crew, Dark Sky find themselves kicking about in the hazy, electronica-laced outer boundaries of the dubstep canon. Their productions play to those increasingly widespread zones of dubstep where Rusko-esque danceability stops being the primary concern and the genre as a whole becomes a dumping ground for cheeky references and honest homage to the territories fought for and won by earlier generations of dance music.

Their first release, the double sided Something to Lose/Ghost Notes 7″/MP3 (out now on Black Acre Records), is a case in point. In the space of these two tracks, Dark Sky hove readily between loose ambience and bass-driven beatworks; they’re part Burial’s throw toward atmospheric two-step, part Ikonika’s blip-pop and part Zomby’s assiduous recreation of 1992 high rave. Which makes them sound awfully derivative, but their music still manages to be remarkably refreshing. Perhaps because they’re taking on so much at once. And, you know, actually succeeding.

Attached today is their underplayed, skittering and quite wonderful take on The xx’s ‘Crystallised’, as well as a garage meets new wave remix of a band named Mirrors Mirrors (according to the ID3 tags) about whom I can find, precisely, nothing. Cool track though…

The xx – Crystalised (Dark Sky Remix)

Mirrors Mirrors – Change (Dark Sky Remix)