Son Raw is hard for the street, sicker for the club
Another wot you call it moment is upon us, and this is where the nomenclature gets tricky. Her Records don’t make Grime but they’re riding that musical movement’s rising tide as well as any pure Grime producer. They aren’t from Jersey or Baltimore but borrow from those cities’ club traditions as well, although thankfully they avoid appropriating American styles wholesale in favor of a more creative synthesis. I suppose you could describe what they do as “Bass Music” but that term has been kidnapped by artists who find minor differences between shades of pastel exciting, and that kind of bland inoffensiveness has nothing to do with the stark, metallic, club music artists like Sudanim, Miss Modular, Cyphr and Fraxinus specialize in.
UK Club? Post Nightslugs? I’ll be damned if I know what to call it, but Her Records, along with contemporaries Club Fatale and Goon Club Allstars are currently providing a much needed counterbalance to the Sino-Grime weirdness at Boxed and the technoid seriousness of Dark 130BPM bass music, all while remaining in dialogue with those sounds. Propelled by rolling kicks and industrial musique-concrete, the 10 tracks on Her Records volume 3 are rude but functional, proving there’s still plenty of room to innovate outside the confines of four on the floor. Let Duke Dumont and the Disclosure bros act as gateway drugs, this is that Heisenberg. And like all good drugs, the first taste is free, at least for the next 24 hours or so. Cop that with the quickness, lest you be condemned to dance to the selfie song.
Stream/Download:
MP3: Her Records Volume 3 [left click to Bandcamp]
