Muskatt is Fracturing the UK Garage Formula
Nathan Evans' UK garage and club music column covers the latest songs, remixes, bootlegs, mixes and albums that capture his attention. This edition looks into the work of Murlo’s new Muskatt project and features more than one inexplicable mention of Katy B.
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Cover Image Credit: Muskatt
Muskatt is unlearning the aesthetics of UK garage
The discourse wagons have once again circled in the UKG community. YouTube curator BlueDollarBillz made a tweet chastising the shameful speed garage bootlegs made for quick virality off the back of a popular song from pop or hip-hop, and it sparked many ideas as to the reasons why it is happening. But what is its effect on the music?
These rushed-out edits show how much of a quick formula garage is seen as to some producers, with little time reserved for innovation. While the aesthetic - the dub sirens, organs, grime MC samples, chipmunked R&B vocals - are what makes it so great, the saturation of it has opened the floodgates and left some parts of garage stuck in a cycle of recreation. It’s an aesthetic that has remained unchanged for over two decades now, but even at its high point at the turn of the century, producers like 2 Wisemen and labels like Harry Lime were innovating on the successful formula with their own hardcore and almost sci-fi edge. Though dance music will always prioritise club effectiveness over inventiveness, as Tabula Rasa co-head RamonPang pointed out to me on Twitter, BlueDollarBillz and others feel that garage faces being reduced to the same punchline it was in the mainstream by the mid-2000s.
Part of the reason for this monopolised, franchised aesthetic is a symptom of YouTube tutorials and the nostalgia cycle garage is under right now. Where once upon a time, everyone figured it out in their own isolation, now everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet. To quote a recent interview I conducted with producer, DJ and all-round club culture advocate Finn, “Aren’t we going to lose tonnes of the magic that comes from people having no clue how to do anything? You’ve got to have some of that sheer bloody-mindedness of trying to make something that sounds like something you’ve heard before and don’t know how, and somehow getting near it.”
Which is why Muskatt’s recent run of singles is such a breath of fresh air. It’s a new alias from UK producer Murlo, who, for the past half-decade, has been creating dance music from interesting angles, especially with his garage-focused Sharda project. With Muskatt, you are privy to the sound of him unlearning the aesthetics of garage. The result is something very close to UKG in 2024, but with its skeleton slightly mutated in a way you can’t quite put your finger on. Take “Needle”, an assertive 2step introduction into the project with bass gulps and an odd gallop caused by the hard thwack of a snare. From a certain angle, the rhythm is almost like the clack-clack of baile funk.
Since February, he’s quickly amassed an album’s worth of material from monthly two-tracker instalments titled Echoes. He’s using an all-new set of parts and sounds, from the synth on “On & On” which feels squidgy and metallic simultaneously to the bass in “Good RN”, which swoops and stretches into whack-a-hole shaped holes and comes out somewhere else in a way that’s thrillingly disorienting. He also recycles parts from track to track, using the same ticking snare on “Stand Alone” and “FoE”, and resourcefully flipping the bird cry heard in “Focus” onto “Listen”. They all stick in your brain, and build a new space of textures and features within garage.
The project’s artwork adds to this, adorning these tracks with almost Gigeresque images of contorting human bodies on botchy printed paper. Inspired partly by manga artist Keiichi Koike, it reflects the skeletal makeup of these tunes, giving you a chance to look under the hood of these mutated beats. “You’ve Changed” is accompanied only by a gauzy chord descent as though to focus squarely on the four kicks that unspool out of alignment, along with the percussion which sounds like it was created from a blacksmith’s forge.
While Muskatt’s Echoes series sits refreshingly outside of trend, these tracks are still able to slot into a DJ’s tracklist. Dancehall vocals are a signature of this series of singles, reverberating around “Good RN’, “Focus” and more. “Needle” implements rampant vocals in the breakdown, made more gritty with the small detail of a fuzzy key stab that interjects like a bleep censor.
Tracks like “Aint Sure” and “Stand Alone” shows how effortlessly Muskatt involves new influences from disparate worlds, the former a delicate track that chops a film score and feeds it through a gramophone, and the latter somehow blending Four Tet, Arca and Melody’s Echo Chamber into one jumpy yet snakey melody.
Perhaps the most ecstatic track from this Echoes series so far is “Shine”, which is Muskatt’s take on summery R&G à la Wilfy D. Here, girl group croons are transmitted over old radio, a link to Aint Sure”, and the hopscotching guitar/synth couplet gives way to a trembling deep synth that could have come from a new age electronic album from Beverly Glenn-Copeland. Garage artists can embrace the time-honoured aesthetics of UK garage and show their love to it, but Muskatt shows that it’s not all it needs to be.
Bklava - c u l8r
You can really look at the lay of the land of a certain time period in dance music not through its producer but through its vocalists. When it comes to albums, it’s the rare vocalist LPs that are able to bring together the styles of the day into one document of the sound of a point in time - producer records are often more beholden to the style the artist got there with, only saving room for a (usually) ill-fitting style change. I think of Katy B’s On a Mission, an album that bridges then-en-vogue London club styles together, from dubstep to UK funky, with a few key collaborators including prime talent like Zinc and Magnetic Man.
Producer, DJ and vocalist Bklava’s new mixtape c u l8r is a testament to how sprawling the garage scene today is stylistically. Where Katy B cribbed styles that were still in their infancy, Big Ang, Bullet Tooth and MJ Cole all congregate on a mixtape that stretches across multiple generations strung together by Bklava’s glitsy, larger-than-life songwriting.
Like most dance vocalist records, c u l8r is set during the most eventful night out that stretches deep into dawn, and where everything that could happen, does happen. “I wanna feel, wanna feel you all around me”, slides the hook of “all around me”, before they push this potential off on the breaksy follow-up “done”. “1 more song” with Leeds speedy g merchant Soul Mass Transit System is an organ house ode to club stamina and on “By your side”, co-produced by Yorkshire bassline icon Big Ang, Bklava channels the roaring vocalists that vintage garage tunes cut up in the 90s, backed by Ang’s erratic, vinegary bass wubs.
Bklava’s songwriting lyrically is less detailed than Katy B’s, less attentive to the small fragments of images from a night out that stick with you through the hangover. She’s more focused on the general feeling - “Nobody’s ever gonna hold me down / I’m so high that I could reach the clouds” on “free”. Her vocals possess an invigorating falsetto though. “Right Round” splits into a thrilling polar at its apex - Bklava’s soaring hook that holds the feeling, and the swelling bassline underneath.
Bklava makes a point of showing that she’s not just singing behind the decks but producing the beats spinning them. Her vocals take a backseat to guest North London rapper Frizz Price on “my fave”, as well as instrumental joyrides like “h2b” and “feel it”. The hands-on approach means that, for all the variety of styles, c u l8r doesn’t feel like a compilation of disparate moods and themes. The highest single-style combo she pulls off is “over you” into “turn this car around”, both co-produced by Bullet Tooth and lead into the other like a rollercoaster drop into another, taller summit. “speak my mind” tries to go for the three-peat but overstays its welcome, but that’s almost the point of the mixtape - it’s worth staying out till weekend-ruining hours just to express as much joy as possible.
Mix of the Month: Interplanetary Criminal B2B Main Phase - All Night Long at Wire (29 May 2024)
A 5-hour, all-ammo rave tape from hitmaker Interplanetary Criminal and dark garage Dane Main Phase? This is like The Caretaker’s Everywhere at the End of Time for Rinse FM listeners.
Recorded on one of the last ever club nights at now-closed Leeds institution Wire, the regular B2B pair’s sendoff turns the place into Niche, The Four Aces Club, Gass Club and Hidden at their whim. Loaded with unreleased tunes from the future and lost gems from the 2000s, they start the night relishing the opportunity to go into several sonic abysses - house of various forms, lumbering, progressive and often from Chicago. These are long tracks blended with satisfyingly hard cuts, and it sometimes enters a hypnotic, psychedelic space with the flighty, translucent synths they welcome.
Beefy 909s let them exit this space and get the night moving up the mountain trail. A Niche-flavoured bootleg of Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady” and Champagne Bubbler’s “Give You Love (Real Love)” - a top 5 Jeremy Sylvester tune - gets play, before ushering in dark garage that goes light on the percussion to soak in the forceful bass and cold air it leaves behind. Over time, the strutting speed-garage rhythm burrows itself in and takes over like a spread virus, and by the 2 hour mark, speedy g is out in full force with bumpier tracks in between while they recharge their special attack.
At the halfway mark is a hard house tune with kitschy but blood-pumping hardcore keys, a sign of things to come as they turn it up to a barbaric level. The calmer tracks are far in the rearview mirror, now only staring down speedy g and barbaric bassline. Towards the end, they go even further into the chaos as they chop and change between donk, jungle and snotty 4x4 breakdowns, the tempo fluctuating wildly. But as the lights go up, they dig into the Now! compilations and play Will Smith’s “Miami” for a final singalong. This recording is hard proof that they have more firepower at their disposal than the Three Lions. Unlike Gareth Southgate, they have the wit and tenacity to use theirs to the fullest extent.
DRIIA - chill UK garage mix
DRIIA’s “chill UK garage mix” may have a bit of a cynical, keyword-clutching title, but her selections here are far from it. The London artist has poured budget into a multi-camera video setup with coloured lights for this mix, which is the future of DJ mix consumption. Video-recorded mixes have been pushed heavily by Rinse FM recently, and they garner more attention than a Soundcloud mix because people want their mixes to have a face to go with them, or to double-up as a screensaver for their TV.
Opi has found a niche in the YouTube DJ mix space with his “cosy garage” mixes, as has Frankie $’s exceptionally thorough genre dig mixes recorded in his apartment. Is it the “lo-fi beats”-ification of garage? Well, if good suppliers of UKG such as these can reach new audiences through this medium, that’s a net good. Plus, it doesn’t diminish the genre - “chill garage” of this ilk has existed since it first came to the UK (not that the UK necessarily came up with the idea - to find that out requires a dig so big the Time Team wouldn’t take that up).
It’s fitting that Driia looks to be playing in an empty studio, the mix is similarly an environment for isolated, healing listening. Recent speed garage-infused mixes for Bubble and Rinse FM prove she can turn up the heat. But here, it’s sexy vocal garage, from the opening remix of Fish Go Deep’s “The Cure and the Cause” that paints the “beautiful day on the lawn” sung in the lyrics with golden syrupy keys.
Through the mix, long, languid chords simmer and melt away. Vocals can be slightly slurred. A bed of disco strings comes in intermittently, adding peripheral heat like a lit candle. It speaks to garage’s similarities to trip-hop or broken beat - all able to frame lounge and soul music around an exciting rhythmic pattern that keeps the beat so you don’t have to.
Elsewhere, Ell Murphy’s “Pressure” is an early pick that cements the sensual atmosphere, as does a jingle bell edit of Brandy’s “I Wanna Be Down”. “Hackney Parrot” is remodelled with pancake-flat chords that stray just offside. DRIIA, purposely or not, shapes the mix into an undulating waveform, alternating between perc-heavy and more stark tracks. That she’s able to hold attention within that simple binary is commendable - it’s like the mix calmly inhales and exhales.
Stixy D - Where The Love Is EP
A pair of 2step edits of Eliza Rose and Juls by London’s Stixy D from last year turned the originals into complex, fidgety machines. With organs dancing over sweet-sour notes, they were unrecognisable from their originals.
On his debut EP Where The Love Is, those qualities remain, but the songs set the pace. Opening track “Let Me Down” is a swooning soul cut which uses the classic trope of love songs that could also be about the club DJ. Amber Jade lends vocals that have the same gravity as Katy B - at times weightless, but can add heft that punctuates when she asks, “are you gonna let this go to waste, boy? Can you keep your word?”
The rest of the EP offers other jubilent moments of classic garage, from the Sunship-style post-chorus on “Play Thing”, to instrumental moments like the loose woodblock knocking senselessly like a Thunderkats tune on “Pattern Party” and “Eardrum”’s squelchy bass that somehow has the twang of a guitar or a robot vocoder after a coughing fit. All these moments are linked together by Stixy’s ability to set robotic-feeling 2step grooves with small, almost glitchy bleeps, and then disrupting them in the just the right way.
Camoufly - Intuition
Masked producer Camoufly’s music could be filed as “hyper garage”. Sitting close to the realm of salute, it tastefully blurs the lines between UK garage and the big room melodrama of EDM, with a slightly sped-up 4x4 rhythm and a blown-out, ultra-processed production style. Camoufly deviates within this new style by introducing UK bass, specifically heavy use of rapidly oscillating bass that Overmono’s “Gunk” has a lot to answer for. Artists like salute and Camoufly aren’t strictly tied to garage and some of their tracks detach from it completely, but tracks like Camou’s latest single “Intuition” sweep you up with the same pattern that is used to shuffle.
“Intuition” can be spotted for its guest vocals from SHIMA, who lets out a wordless siren song as catchy and innocent as a kid singing the theme of their favourite cartoon show. Camoufly frames it in rolls of fluttering guitar that Bonobo might sample, before letting in the full spectrum of colour in the breakdown with its quietly flexing bass chords. The use of compression magnifies the plucks of guitar in an instant, like one flower sprouting into a field right in front of you.
Physical Therapy - Fast Garage Special
Two years ago for his NTS show, New York DJ, producer and digger extraordinaire Physical Therapy recorded a “Slow Garage Special” which slowed down garage classics enough to enter the realm of trip-hop and Balearic beat. His latest episode heads in the other direction - a corybantic mix that pushes UKG about 20bpm above its usual range.
To open up the mix, he touches down on 2 Wisemen’s “Hardcore Garage”, a unique stylistic cul-de-sac from the new millennium when garage was being cross-bred into other club styles. Quintessential bassline producer DBX’s Niche-adjacent synths get boosted to the point of almost resembling PC Music from a certain angle, and his track under the alias 2 Smooth “Tonite” gets sped up to resemble jungle more than garage, bringing a similar idea as Finn’s Jungle House mix, revealing connective genre tissue through tempo changes. Similarly, MJ Cole’s “Sincere (Wild Side Mix)” sounds like hard house in PT’s hands. If he can somehow pull off a third instalment, I’ll be as gobsmacked as I would be delighted.