Son Raw‘s looking at the night sky.
Mr. Mitch is another Grime producer who’s been putting massive amounts of work which is now coming to fruition. His Beatfighter blog has rapidly become a must-see destination for DJs looking for new talent while his most recent single “The Last Stand” is a thunderous production that takes the Grime template to the planet Tantoine on some sci-fi Star Wars shit – when he debuted it on the radio Terror Danjah nearly went apeshit. Throw in a label (Gobstopper) and this freshly released free album and you’ve got a serious contender in a seriously competitive field… and one who’s not afraid to carve out his own lane.
Described as the first in a series of thematic releases, Searching for Venus focuses on love and relationships, an interesting switch-up in a genre best known for masculine aggression. Removed from the pressure cooker environment of 8 bar switch ups and crowd hype, Mitch stretches out into meditative half-time swingers that sound somewhere between G-Funk on opium and a funkier version of the Mo Wax sound. The result is an off-kilter, lurching funk that’s drunk on champagne and unafraid to simmer at a low boil rather than explode with pirate ferocity.
In our discussion a few weeks back, Hyperdub artist DVA noted that he was frustrated by the limitations of the Grime massive’s demands, choosing instead to operate outside the genre. Here however, Mr. Mitch stays within DJ-friendly 140BPM boundaries while disregarding any other constraints: lest you tap along to keep time, you’d swear these tracks were that much slower. M42 bounces along in a sedate dream, Dinner Jacket is Trip-Hop in all but name, Troubadour is sour-patch synthesizer pop and The Clock’s Broke plays with Brainfeeder ideas all while keeping that London shine.
As such, it’s the kind of project that deserves exposure beyond its hardcore audience: fans of Andre 3K’s The Love Below or Indie’s current wave of blissed-out ambient-pop will find much to love amidst the synth washes, stumbling beats and low key moods. Even the exceptions – the euphoric No Other Lover, the menacing Crash and the almost-aggro Bitch manage not to perturb the mood too much, this is very much an album you can throw on and vibe to. Now how many Grime releases can claim THAT?
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