See Son Raw driving a German Whip
Believe it or not, despite my ever vigilant trawling of the Internet for the freshest in Grime and Bass music, even I sometimes miss stuff and need peoples to watch my back. Geng Grizzly from Fresh Out the Box Radio and the now defunct Purple Tapes Pedigree, is said peoples. Aside from being a straight up G whose connections with Hip-Hop and beat music go way back, he’s always on the look out for new styles and regularly schools me – a rarity in the game. Which is to say that when he sent word about Rinse Recording’s latest release by Celestial Trax, something I’d overlooked, I knew had to get on it.
The London born, NY based Trax works across several tempos ranging from Grime (No More, Blockx) Hip-Hop (Wax Forest), and Drum & Bass (Sinner, A Cross) but what keeps the EP cohesive is the dark and frigid sound design. Following in the footsteps of Jam City and Visionist whose airtight, plastic atmospheres have become a rallying point among new producers, Celestial Trax imbues his work with a futuristic dread that builds on classic UK soundsystem culture without sounding quite like what came before it. It’s not clubby, but neither is it as direct as the material coming out of producers affiliated with Boxed. If anything, it’s yet another sign that the signifiers that once came together as Dubstep are slowly reconfiguring into new shapes and tempos, out of the public eye.
Full EP Stream along with my own and Geng’s last mixes on Fresh Off the Box after the jump – for the funk of it. Fresh Off The Beats is live tonight from 7:30-9:30PM on BBox Radio.
