Svetlana Industries is a new label based in Belgrade, Serbia, long the unsung home to a serious late night party scene known only to the cognoscenti. Recent extensive profiles in Resident Advisor and The Guardian among others have finally started to peel the lid off the rather secretive heart of the Balkans, and with signings like Mary Anne Hobbs favourites 1000 Names and Brainfeeder member Teebs, Svetlana is already widely tipped as a label to watch in 2010. Their first international release is a fizzing 8bit dubstep banger from Bosnian producer Filtercutter, who takes a distorted perspective on the Nintendo sound palette and adds layers of detail to deliver a track that is at once bouncing, and chirpy yet spiky and aggressive. Like a darker take on Joker’s purple wow sound, or more electro sounding Akira Kiteshi, it’s perhaps closest to the productions coming out of the grime scene with a debt to early Benga. The tune manages to retain strange menace without compromising the 8bit soundset or resorting to any of the cheap tricks that bedevil most adolescent “nasty� tracks. No shouty film samples here, just cascading layers of bleeps, chirps and suspended bass. The flipside sees a total rework by Ramadanman, probably one of the dubstep producers of the year in 2009, whose tunes brought a whole new angle, while his Hessle Audio label pioneered a deeper, more intricate and thought-out sound that soon dominated. Here he strips the tune right back and focuses on a driving half step rhythm, a bed of clipped and clear percussion, and heavy heavy sub bass, over a hypnotic rhythmic theme that builds and builds. This is one of those tunes in which everything is happening where you think it’s not: the hi-hats are constantly evolving and the bass is never quite the same from one bar to the next, sounds adapt and shift and new parts keep coming in without ever quite seeming like they have. So far the track has attracted repeat plays on Kiss and Sub FM, and Ramadanman has incorporated his remix as a regular part of his set. Both tracks have been mastered at Transition for a spatious yet punchy sound with forceful bass presence.