The acsendancy of big beat/trip hop with a raw edge continues unabated with Stealthsonic, a band with old-school smarts, mixing a challenging, relentless combination of heavy/chunky/dope/chilled out grooves and breaks a-la Skint and Wall Of Sound's residents. An electronic outfit, forging music with passion and attitude. Unapologetic, simple-minded, and devoted, the brothers have taken everything they loved about music while growing up, flipped it on their heads and turned it into something very special. The result is a sound that is vaguely familiar yet totally original. Stealthsonic emerged as the brainchild of Bulgarian marketing student Vladislav who, inspired by the likes of Chemical Brothers and other significant big beat artists, began mixing music in 1999 under the alias Freakoftheweek, aiming to pump out a similar type of audio adrenaline. Originally a one-man-band, Freakoftheweek produced a couple of tracks before joining forces with his twin-brother Svetoslav, who named himself Psycrow, after a video game character. Vladislav is heavily involved in the conceptual and organizational end, crafting beats and laying out vague sketches his brother then help expand into full-blown tracks. Ultra-clean production and an everything else but economic approach to sampling is what distinguish their music from spliff-tokers and bombasts alike. Not claiming to be innovative, Stealthsonic take the "who gives a fuck" approach to create a moody, antsy collection of breaks, beats, and a steadfast refusal to die following the blueprint for the dance music popularized by the big beat pioneers: break beat/trip-hop/downtempo invested with a lot of energy and old-school attitude. Luckily, music loves iconoclasts. The brothers aim to produce caustic, bombastic and thought provoking music, fusing rock-based samples and attitude with elements of house, techno, and club-bound hip-hop. One aspect of Stealthsonic's music that one has to quickly become acclimated to is its odd shift of moods. The big beat hype was considered a catch-all term for a bunch of characters who liked their funk beats loud and their techno slamming by some people. To some it's pretty much hip-hop, sampling everything under the sun and spiced with modern dance music. Hoping not to be just another big beat act invading the LP realm a couple of years too late and trying to retain the addictive breakbeats and infectious eclecticism that made big beat such a good idea in the first place, the brother's main goal is to renew big beat's varied personality as well as its emotional potential.

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