Grime has been seeing something of an uptick in mainstream visibility these days, about a decade or so after its first Stateside crest: Drake, an avowed fan (you know it’s real when he gets a tattoo), recently signed to genre figureheads Skepta and Wiley’s label Boy Better Know, and longtime rising artist Stormzy freestyled over a SOPHIE beat last week and gave an Oxford lecture on Monday. It’s in this context that London-based instrumental grime impresario Slackk — host of the city’s long-running, eminent club night Boxed — will release his latest EP, Aviary, via Belgian techno stalwart R&S Records on March 25.
“Hundred Flute,” the second listen off of the six-track effort and the first off of its B-side, offers a reprieve from the first half’s menacing dissonance and crumbling subterranean booms. As the title suggests, Slackk threads Japanese modalities through a landscape of off-kilter blasts, both from woodwinds and the more down-to-earth frequencies, hitting just right somewhere between your mind and solar plexus. Listen below and keep an eye out for Aviary‘s arrival in a few weeks.
