Son Raw will abide no cursing and foul language.
A genre’s vitality can be measured by how fast and how often it’s willing to reinvent itself. When movements and musical signifiers linger too long or worse, refuse to change altogether, things get boring but when the music evolves so quickly that multiple strains and ideas coexist at once, that’s when magic happens. By my count there’s at least 5 different directions existing simultaneously in Grime: MC led material being held down by crews like Family Tree, Butterz’ high-energy dance music which has dominated for the past few years and now weirder, harsher instrumentals inspired by Wiley’s Eski period, championed by the DJs at Boxed. Throw in Pop crossovers by Grime elder statesmen and experimental 130BPM material by artists such as Wen at Keysound and you’ve got a new tipping point for a genre long left for dead by the media.
Furthermore, these strains aren’t subgenres: they’re extremely permeable with producers crossing lines with ease and DJs reconfiguring what can and can’t work every time they play a set. Slackk’s guest mix for Rinse FM yesterday is a shining example, promoting beats that merge the bizarre square-wave synthesis of Wiley’s early production with the modern heft and space of contemporary production. It’s a bracing 2 hour listen, one that sets the pace for 2013 and one that most importantly, leaves you wondering where the music will go next.
MP3: Slackk on Rinse.FM 28/05/13
