Had very high hopes for Rockwell until he signed that exclusivity deal with Shogun Audio but his recent stuff is just dreadful by and large, can't get my head around the stuff he's making nowadays at all, massive shame because at one stage he was promising to be one of the most interesting DnB producers of his generation. A lot of people really liked "Detroit" but I thought it was overproduced messy rubbish that failed to live up to its conceptual promise, still, horses for courses and all that.
Recent stuff I'm really enjoying:
The "Scope" LP on Samurai Horo - some excellent tunes blurring the lines between deep minimal DnB and dark droney type stuff.
Narratives have been putting out some corking records too, that latest Rhyming in Fives 12" has been described as Gary Numan doing the soundtrack to Bladerunner, and that's not too far off the mark IMO, it also continues the fine tradition they're establishing as a label by sounding quite unlike any of the previous releases in any sense apart from its quality.
Om Unit and Machinedrum's new albums are both well worth a look, lots of interesting experiments in footworky, jungle-ish stuff, although in terms of the Footwork influence Fracture and Stray and to a lesser extent Sam Binga and Danny Scrilla are the ones to check. There's an excellent Om Unit remix of Machinedrum's "Gunshotta" that be downloaded free in return for handing over your email address etc, well worth the extra burden on your spam folder tbh, it's wicked.
Foreign Concept & Stray - Bang It on Critical is one of the best attempts to bring the footwork vibe into DnB to date I think
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aKAlXtSRoI and there's another solid tune on the flipside too :
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIwcTOPAXzU
Have a lot of time for the whole Manchester sound at the moment too, lots of sparse wonky MC-led halftime numbers going around, Dub Phizix is the name to look for, this Fabric promo mix he did with Chimpo is ace, lots of proper party tunes that blur the lines between Dancehall and modern DnB really well, with a few nods to Jungle and Footwork along the way. I would love to see a lot more of this kind of thing...
Sam Binga & Redders - Ayo!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=k30VQqfwuSs
On a more subdued tip dBridge and Kid Drama have started a new series of podcasts called "Heart Drive" - there's going to be six of them in all, and based on the first one I can't wait to see what's in store with the next ones, the Autonomic podcasts were pretty seminal so it's nice to see them pulling the finger out and getting stuck into a new project. Podcast can be found here -
http://heartdrive.co.uk/
ASC is doing some quite interesting soundscapey stuff on his Auxiliary label, I'm still loving this tune he had out on Samurai recently enough -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w-9-0_U8co
On a more Drumfunky tip all the recent Subtle Audio releases have been great, the Nic TVG album is really exuberant stuff, and as off the wall as a lot of it is there's a few perfectly playable pieces on it as well.