- Exciting grime experiments recorded in the hours following an afterparty.
- PIFFD's leftfield sound makes it easy to believe its backstory. DVA allegedly turned up inebriated at Gage's place one morning, straight from an afterparty. The two then sat down to make the mind-bending title track. It's hard to imagine a sober person producing "PIFFD," yet these two aren't known for making straight-laced music. As a DJ, producer and former Rinse FM host, Scratcha DVA has championed and released increasingly leftfield takes on grime and UK funky, while Gage introduced himself with aggressive club tracks like "Telo," and has recently explored a more abstract sound. The two have played an important, possibly underestimated, role in grime's mutation to more experimental forms.
The same goes for Keysound Recordings, Dusk and Blackdown's label, which has been behind some of the genre's seminal releases. The results of this meeting of minds are as good as you'd expect. "PIFFD" is a sparse but heavy grime track, a mess of bass and glitches anchored by a sampled vocal shouting the track's title. Where "PIFFD" lurches and stutters, "FLYTNURSE" plods and swaggers, the pulse disrupted only occasionally by harsh noise, like a train derailing. On the "DARQMIX," some elements are toned down, but subtly, and the EP's weirdness is made more vibrant by gentle melodic interludes. Grandiose breakdowns create a faux sentimentality that's destroyed and mocked by outrageous basslines. This music is exciting, brutal and cathartic.
TracklistA1 PIFFD
B1 FLYTNURSE
B2 FLYTNURSE (DARQMIX)