Nathan Evans' UK garage and club music column covers the latest songs, remixes, bootlegs, mixes and albums that capture his attention. This edition features words on Sammy Virji’s DJ Mag set, Anz’s Spring/Summer Dubs mix, the new James Blake album and more.

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Cover image credit: Firmative Media

Sammy Virji - DJ Mag HQ Session, 18th August 2023

The current garage paradigm owes a lot to Sammy Virji. NUKG’s saturated aesthetic, influences from bass music and obsession with edits and bootlegs have come in large part from the Oxford producer, among others like Conducta. Make of that what you will, but Virji has always kept his productions high-quality and explored interesting ways to sell merch. His recent DJ Mag set has broken out and made waves, already going triple platinum on Soundcloud. While the show takes place in such a small, clearly purpose-built studio that makes the crowd seem like film extras, the set itself makes the case for what makes Virji’s sound so instantly gratifying.

Virji’s style is over-the-top; where someone like Perception is a garage method actor, Virji is a theatrical thespian. You can expect him to play the well-known bootlegs, such as Oppidan’s rework of Adam F’s “Circles” and “Mr. Sandman” or his excellently voltaic remix of Hamdi’s “Counting”, which pulls in dancers with a visceral G-force.

His breakdowns are wonky but warm, stripped of unnecessary weight and have basslines hit right on the off-beat for maximum punch. It shows in the first track of his set, rearranging Unknown T’s stark “Goodums” into his formula of round synth stabs with a sweet-sour tone that bounces around the room with the bright fuzziness of a tennis ball.

With the rowdiness of the lad-centric crowd, he sometimes has to kick to half-time with a spin of OutKast’s “SpottieOttieDopalicious” and Cypress Hill. Like a problem gambler, he seems to raise the stakes with every track and it gets to a point where being there is more fun than listening back - I find this with most ‘norty bassline’ sets of this kind. However, Virji shows love for the classics throughout; there are cheers when he deploys a tune like “Met Her At the Love Parade”. See how he intensifies Mosca’s “Bax” with double-time vocals from Cutty Ranks, which make the organs so animated, that you can practically see the bounce lines.

It’s his own productions that earn the most furore. “Peach VIP” takes the original salute collaboration and raises the vocal harmonies even higher, while Flowdan joins live for “Shella Verse” one of his largest unreleased heaters-turned official release and honestly? A track whose build is far more memorable than the breakdown. Still, here it’s the most lively moment of the night.

From the tempest of rotten basslines comes Kaytranada’s remix of Jill Scott’s “Golden” as the outro, closing proceedings with another side of Virji’s taste. What’s interesting is that while this set is becoming uniquely successful, Virji doesn’t stray from his usual style. It could be a sign that having visuals of a DJ set is what is really attracting people now, and/or that more people are catching up to NUKG and bassline’s sweet-toothed pleasures.

Mix of the Month: Anz - Spring/Summer Dubs 2023

Manny DJ Anz has finally added to her genre-explorative Spring/Summer Dubs mix series. Her 2020 mix is the stuff of legend - a 35-track homebrew of thumping UK garage with boogie, UK funky, big beat and electro that became a lockdown hit. Anz’s mixes are different from other ‘100% Production’ mixes because of the freedom to show ideas that will likely never leave the mix’s context, rather than a lineup of tunes to be released over the next six months.

The 2023 Spring/Summer Dubs mix opens with a slinky guitar lick that plaits into what could be a Khruangbin track, her most leftfield beginning track yet. Normality restores itself for a few tracks after as she transitions into a stabby garage house and a gulping amapiano edit of Frank Ocean’s “Lost”. One new obsession that defines this mix is the IDM experiments scattered across the mix, leaning closer to the genre with the acidy “The Strangest Days” to crossovers between jazzy drill and bass with speed garage (“Set Squares”) as well as fidgety rhythms and bassline organ (“Bad Girls Good Times”). But the biggest surprise lands towards the second third with “Sticky!”, a turn towards pop punk so sudden it reminds me of “Sex, Violence, Suicide” from Amaarae’s new album Fountain Baby.

Anz says that all the tracks in “Spring/Summer Dubs 2023” were made in 15 days from 2 years’ worth of demos, but it honestly feels like diary entries from that timeframe. Certain moments reflect a two-mindedness, of diving in and out of her head, such as when the sweat of the ballroom house (“Hips & Dips”) turns into a still water calmly flooding the bedroom floor (“Remember 2”, an edit of the untouchable deadmau5 & Kaskade track). On “The Strangest Days”, a voice casts down on the mix, saying “these days they start to blend together / these days, they start to change / don’t let them tell you how to change / just because you feel a little strange”. It’s the strangeness of this mix that is exactly why it’s so beguiling.

James Blake - I Want You to Know

I find the new James Blake album Robots Playing Into Heaven to be close to his weakest so far. As excited as everyone else was to hear he was flipping completely back to more enigmatic, beat-driven music, I don’t toe the party line that this is picking up where CMYK and The Bells Sketch left off - the sense of distance and the way he quickly abandons his vocal presence reminds me more of The Colour in Anything more than, well, anything. My main complaint is his tendency to use trap drums carries over from his latest albums, but without his songwriting, they are left to be uninteresting all on their own, especially in the flaccid midpoint of “He’s Been Wonderful” and “Big Hammer”.

One big shining beacon in this album though, is “I Want You to Know”, a shadowy future garage cut that takes the swagger of Charlie Wilson’s line in Snoop Dogg and Pharrell’s “Beautiful” and extracts the inner atrium to render it earnestly intimate. James enters first with a raw croon (“I just wanted you to know that you are really special”), then looped into a quick, warbled motif. I love the levitating vocals that are like the flutter of Tinkerbell’s wings, spiralling above echoed drums and a woodblock beat that drips like an old tap in an abandoned apartment.

The way Blake sings that line is what ties it all together, repeating it as though he’s saying it to a lover for the first time. There’s a shyness in the way he trails off a little, almost in fright to drop his guard, but knowing it’s out in the open and he can’t take it back. Blake’s discography is a journey of self-acceptance, and Playing Robots Into Heaven is the first time he’s had the confidence to go back and try something again with fresh eyes. On “I Want You to Know”, you get the sense that he’s singing “…that you are really special” partly to his lover, and partly to himself.

Sharda NTS Mix, 16th September 2023

Manny DJ Sharda’s latest NTS mix opens up the war chest for just a peek, but from what few tunes are revealed, he’s all set to move NUKG to bracing new frequencies. “Morph” is a breakbeat sizzler that borrows Sam Gellaitry’s knack for glowingly squiggly synths, while “Sweetheart” is like if PC music worked with Kylie, piano house taken to a sugar-rush extreme. “Have You Here” chops French house disco bass with a guillotine and adds flip-flopping diva house vocals à la Whitney Houston that trip over themselves chasing the beat in an energising way. Finally, “Keep It” laces 2step with vocal samples that are twisted into the sound of screeching mice, and a second sound that sounds like high-pressure wind skating through your ears. If Sharda released these as a four-pack, it would be up there with Hudson Mohawke and Nikki Nair’s Set the Roof for EPs in 2023.

Wildcard: YAKUO - Spiral X

In my investigation into CloudCore for No Bells, I mentioned that there are other labels on Bandcamp that have spawned with variations on the limited-time, artificially scarce business model. Emoticons is one such example. Based in Japan, they have a reduced output of a new track every month rather than every week, and the CloudKey-equivalent is a JPEG of artwork available to every buyer with a changing password that gives access to the Emoticons Discord server which gives you temporary access to bonus mixes. One creative feature is the “Archive”, which opens up and gives you access to other tracks from the label if you have a historic JPEG still saved. Label head YAKUO has snuck passwords in every Emoticons JPEG for later use, so there’s incentive to buy every new track for potential goodies later down the line.

This month, YAKUO himself is responsible for Emoticon’s release with “Spiral X”, a Two Shell-indebted UK bass tune that collects many of the producer’s alien sounds. The first breakdown has a dark, sustained bass note pierced with dry claps but before the second, he lets in a swarm of atonal scratching textures that have no musical rhyme or reason other than sticking with and intensifying the beat. Together with the single bass note that could have been lifted from a horror soundtrack, the track can appear fast and slow at the same time, like some sort of parallax effect.

2 Steppers Invite Strictly Flava - Rinse FM, 17th September 2023

Rinse’s French cousin is home to community group 2 Steppers, who invited prolific London label Strictly Flava to take the reins of its radio show. As cosmopolitan and glossy as the mix can sometimes be, the grooves are far from stiff and they show not just variety in musical style but mixing style.

The mix starts with three heartfelt vocal tracks that could invade pop radio in an alternate dimension, but this is before Strictly Flava shuffles into a pattern of showing love for the 2000s era of garage. There’s Duncan Powell-powered French touch, a track that mimics Milk Inc’s “Don’t Cry” and a loop that uses DJ Koze’s technique of giving you a window view of an old disco-soul track.

Halfway through, the mix becomes a rapid onslaught that dishes out beats like it’s a fire sale. It’s as though DJ EZ has just crashed the set, with transitions from Todd Edwards into Kobe JT & On1 that swivel on a dime. Fish Go Deep’s “The Cure and the Cause” dampens it back down to a simmer, another nod to the 2000s (between this mix and Pangaea’s new album Changing Channels, we’re on the cusp of seeing many long-gone naughties sounds come alive again, mark my words). With so much material out there, garage DJs have become more known for being selectors than for having a distinct mixing style, and this mix makes me wish for more DJs that can throw a surprise by how they play and not what they play.

The Thunderkats - Trane 2 Win

The Thunderkats is a mysterious alias that has had previous releases on Vibesey, Dr Banana and Amigo Dubs, and has now released a new triptych for Timehri Records, Wormhole Dojo EP. 

“Trane 2 Win” is a 2stepper that unfolds in unexpected ways, namely sliding in with an extra-long jazz flute sample. The junglist-like beat is simultaneously rickety and laidback, missing two cues to snap back with a snare before finally resolving the kick’s demand. Bird noises and cosmic sparkles are added, but the aforementioned flute becomes the subject of fascination part-way through, fluttering up and down the scale in a rousingly unpredictable way.

“Trane 2 Win” is like a remix of one of the many ‘YouTube wormhole’ jazz fusion songs that have accrued hundreds of thousands of views for being hidden gems, like tracks from Cymande or Penny Goodwin. They exist to be incredibly life-affirming music, and The Thunderkats borrows some of that magic here.

Rossi - Feel It (Garrett David Remix)

From the BEEYOU hive based in London, Chicago DJ and professional vinyl head Garrett David warps Rossi’s disco-loving ‘Feel It’ into a slapstick UKG groove. This remix finds propulsion from a steady bassline that descends down a spiral staircase, while what sounds like a fairground organ in lower octaves falls right behind said staircase. Like the Thunderkats track, so many vocal hits and sound effects appear and fade into the fog - it’s atmospheric without forgetting its duty to make bodies move.

Speed Garage Bootleg of the Month: Skeler - Arcadia (DJ Window Speedy G Remix)

DJ Window is the tongue-in-cheek speed garage alias of Ramon Pang, the co-head of the Tabula Rasa label who was recently selected to open up a Skrillex B2B Jyoty club night. His remix of Skeler’s ‘Arcadia’ is a mad experiment akin to Cronenberg’s The Fly, where big-room trance and speed garage mania slip into a teleporter together instead of a human and fly. DJ Window understands the speed garage bootleg on a memetic level and leans into it, stuffing as much weird and rhythmic flourishes and samples as he can, from a Metal Gear alert sound effect at the top of the build to reverbed dub sirens and a Memphis rap sample. Hear this on the right soundsystem, you’ll feel like a pair of festival shoes after a serious go in the washing machine.