Son Raw does this for the culture. At some point this season, you will need a turn up mix for  when you’re having drinks, lest you leave the house sober: you should probably make it Oneman’s latest. Whereas London’s finest already effortlessly combined Garage, House, Grime and Dubstep into an all inclusive smorgasbord of UK […]

Son Raw is floating on a Kush cloud. How far can you push street music before it becomes something else entirely? This is what goes through my mind when listening to Houston-based producer Rabit’s Sun Showers EP, a release that pushes up against the limits of dance music’s structure all while making use of its […]

Son Raw can’t be boxed in. How can you tell if a Pirate Radio show is relevant? Well if the 90% of the Twitter shout outs are to producers huddling in front of their radios to hear new tunes and the other 10% are me, chances are you’ve hit a winner. Last Sunday’s Boxed takeover […]

Son Raw is a gawd. No pastries required. Reconfiguration is the word to play in UK dance music right now. Long past a single-genre singularity and finally distancing themselves from the post-everything soup of “Bass Music” that characterized the Dubstep diaspora, today’s producers are combining Afro-Caribbean riddims with London darkness, Grime’s sparseness to bassweight and […]

Son Raw has gone through 150+ war dubs this week. Please stop. In case I haven’t made it obvious, Visionist is a shoe-in for my producer of the year. Equally beloved by Grime’s new wave and the amorphous East Coast beat scene coalescing around acts like Nguzunguzu and Fatima Al Qadiri, he’s slowly developed his […]

Son Raw is filing a war report. Warning: this is a long post. Two days ago, producer Bless beats set off a Grime war of epic proportions, sending for half a dozen producers via twitter. The reasons behind his initial aggression is unknown, but what began as a one off barb quickly spiraled out of […]

Son Raw‘s smoking on that purple kush. You can call it a comeback. Joker’s first run of tunes in the late aughts was truly special, injecting a heavy dose of funk and color into a scene that was on the verge of drowning in its own darkness, but his subsequent pop-ambitions didn’t quite hit their […]

Son Raw seen it like 27 inch Zenith – believe it. I called it two years ago: instrumental Grime is having a moment. While Big Room House continues to make inroads into the UK pop charts, the underground is erupting with new talent finding inspiration in the twisted synths and broken drum patterns perfected by […]

Son Raw isn’t easily impressed I don’t usually bother with other blogs to find new music. If it’s big, the majors  will pick up on it, if it’s small then it won’t make it past Soundcloud and if it’s rap, someone here’s covering it. Hedmuk is the exception: a small UK outlet that’s gone above […]

Son Raw sees you lurking More ultra-dark, gunshot festooned beats from ‘di man like Visionist, this time on Berlin-based electronic label Leisure Sounds. This probably means we’re about 6 months away from dark instrumental Grime becoming really cool and its inevitable absorption into the all-consuming Berghain sound. The Teutonic dance hive mind does not fuck […]