Silencer

A partnership unites two veteran figures from Britain’s breakbeat underground, Force Mass Motion—born Mike Wells in England—and Dylan Rhymes, born Marvin Beaver on 4 April 1970 in Woking, Surrey. Prior to adopting the Silencer moniker the pair had already issued the Acetate Records club staples “Hold Back” and “Vanquish” in 2002. Their first full-length project under the Silencer name, Signals, appeared on the Critical Mass imprint the next year. Ahead of that album the track “Rollin’ N Controllin’” became a major club hit, attracting endorsements from DJs such as James Lavelle and Seb Fontaine. The producers’ style fuses robust rhythms and low-end pulses with atmospheric textures and sweeping strings, an approach they term progressive breakbeat. When female vocals join the lush orchestral passages the results sometimes evoke a cinematic quality and have drawn favourable comparisons to Massive Attack and Portishead. Critics praised the record’s range and sophistication, noting that it functioned equally well for attentive home playback despite its dancefloor focus. Force Mass Motion and Dylan Rhymes each maintain separate recording and DJ careers.