Son Raw is cold just listening to this
There’s a frigid current flowing through Grime’s veins circa 2013. Maybe it’s a reaction to the (admittedly awesome) dayglo futurism of the Butterz camp, but it feels like every day there’s a new release celebrating the lo-fi weirdness of the genre by splicing its genetics with Industrial Techno and dark Garage. London producer Visionist’s releases have been a particularly potent strain emerging from this experimentation, emphasizing the tense urban atmospheres and textural grit that have been lurking beneath the Grime’s digital surface since the days of pirate radio. His latest Crying Angels E.P makes this debt to classic Grime explicit, re-imaging three stone cold classics as bombed out shells, clanging and resonating as if they were recorded in an empty warehouse. Throw in an original and you’ve got a great under the radar release for heads in the know.
Improving upon the originals might just be impossible, so Visionist wisely avoids this tact altogether instead virtually turning them inside out before clearing the flesh and leaving only a skeleton. Incidentally, this is Grime we’re talking about so there wasn’t much flesh to begin with – apart from a few haunting pads and monstrous kicks, some truly evil bass lines are the only things keeping these remixes together. It’s incredibly anti-function: you can’t imagine anyone rapping over these and it’ll take very progressive (read: intoxicated) crowd to get with a sound this strange on the dance floor for more than a minute or two. As home listening however, these are just about perfect: strange, startling but buzzing with life and energy. By the time we get to “Your Eyes were Green,” the sole original, it’s easy to start imagining a dystopian urban future…or present.
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