Album: So Solid Crew

They Don't Know, Relentless/Independiente

While the impressive They Don't Know is probably the first album since Wookie's debut to develop the garage two-step sound with any sustained degree of coherence, the threads of violence that attach themselves to So Solid Crew highlight the problems facing any scene whose notion of authenticity is rooted in gang culture.

They may argue that they had nothing to do with the incident in which two people were shot at their recent London Astoria show, but the various firearms charges levelled at Crew members – and particularly Skat D's jaw-breaking assault on a 15-year-old girl who refused his sexual advances – belie such protestations of innocence. As Bill Withers once put it, "If you go with dirty people, you're gonna get some dirt on you."

And quite apart from the reckless endangerment of themselves and their fans, the emphasis on violence and gunplay is clearly holding them back creatively – it's the only thing that makes So Solid Crew seem like just another pathetic homegrown imitation of dismal American hip-hop death culture, rather than the cutting-edge, original sound-sculptors suggested by the grooves that make up They Don't Know.

The album opens with "Haters", a defensive blast at their presumed enemies, hung on a synth hook that sounds like a mobile-phone ringtone. The paranoiac atmosphere thus established barely lets up for the rest of the album, with the Crew's MCs attacking their supposedly jealous rivals (whoever they are) and offering them outside with gun brags and tired territorial threats such as: "You defend what's yours; we'll defend what's ours", and: "If you want it, bring it." The overall antagonistic mood is akin to the WWF wrestling circus, a constant barrage of dissing, boasting and general over-the-top ranting – fine as pantomime but hardly the best model for life. Even their invitation to join them in "Ride Wid Us" appears to be on virtually an "either with us or against us" basis, which seems awfully rude to those of us who don't actually know them.

The great shame is that there's undoubted talent lurking among So Solid Crew's 20-plus members. There's an engaging haughtiness to the ragga-inflected rat-a-tat-tat delivery of MC Megaman (I presume), while the group's various DJs come up with the most arresting variations on the two-step style, stripping back the grooves to the most basic rhythmic suggestions. The results are the aural equivalent of Alexander Calder mobiles – little more than a blunt synth vamp, a staccato snare and a subterranean bass, hanging in perfect equilibrium, skeletal and irresistibly propulsive. But the endlessly admonitory nature of the subject matter is ultimately depressing, leading one to wonder why, if the garage scene is as petty and vindictive as they paint it, they should want to be at its head.