Deadboy

Allen Wootton, recording as Deadboy from South London, distinguished himself through exceptional range among producers active after the dubstep period. From his 2009 debut onward he consistently delivered striking singles that converted downcast, occasionally devastated vocal fragments into bright, propulsive garage and 2-step tracks while also venturing into jungle, house, and ambient territory. Early efforts relied on fragmented R&B vocal sources; by the time of his 2017 album Earth Body he had begun incorporating his own singing. Abandoning the Deadboy alias in favor of work as Al Wootton, he issued the dub-oriented full-length Witness in 2020 and subsequent club EPs, among them the 2022 Azu Tiwaline collaboration Alandazu on Livity Sound.

Before those milestones he issued two limited experimental cassettes on Judgement Dispenser (one under the chiptune/dancehall project Hyper Black Bass) plus a 12" under the name Deadboy Racer. His first notable release arrived with the 2009 Well Rounded Records single “U Cheated.” The 2010 follow-up “If U Want Me” appeared on Glasgow’s Numbers, a label that rapidly gained attention for its adventurous output. Deadboy placed two further 12"s on Well Rounded—one featuring Julio Bashmore’s remixes of the “U Cheated” B-side “Heartbreaker”—and three additional records on Numbers while also reworking material by Jamie Woon, Scuba, Foals, Paul Weller, and numerous others.

A 2015 ambient single, “It Did Not Feel Right,” surfaced on Crazylegs and led into the Local Action EP White Magick, which merged ambient and new-age elements (sounds he explored at his New Atlantis club night) with intricate, bass-heavy garage rhythms; Black Magick, a remix EP emphasizing beats, arrived next. In 2016 he teamed with grime producer Murlo under the DBM name, released 12"s on Unknown to the Unknown and Ten Thousand Yen, and moved impulsively to Montreal without prior visits to Canada. There he began composing downtempo pop material influenced by Drake and Rihanna and featuring his own vocals. Local Action released Earth Body, Deadboy’s first full-length, in 2017.

After several additional singles he ended the Deadboy project and continued as Al Wootton. He launched the Trule label in 2018, issued his initial Wootton EPs in 2019, and delivered the dub-heavy album Witness in 2020. The Maenads EP followed in 2021, with the solo Callers Spring EP and the Azu Tiwaline joint Alandazu both appearing in 2022.