Felix Hall

$hotta Tapes 015

Genre: ELECTRONIC

Cassette

Boomkat Product Review:

Strictly bashment and dembow murder from one of the UK’s leading dancehall DJs, throwing down a 90 minute mixtape on Tom Boogizm’s $hotta Tapes, after cultish razzes for The Trilogy Tapes and Cav Empt.

Nowadays also known as CEO of Chrome, the label behind that momentous ‘Now Thing 2’ retrospective, Felix Hall is regularly hailed as one of the key nodes between the UK and upfront sounds from the Caribbean and South America. Never one to blow his own horn, Felix has arrived at this point via obsessive attention to up-to-the-second club movements from Kingston to Medellín, and respect for the artforms therein - as opposed to social media posing - with a celebrated NTS show presenting the freshest rhythmic reportage to keen ears everywhere. However, it’s on his meticulous mixtapes where Felix’ tekkerz really come into focus, drawing for blue-rare cuts flawlessly stitched into a proper education.

Blow for blow, Felix’s $hotta Tapes 015 session is world class heavyweight. The A-side sees him go for the bashment jugular, juggling dancehall’s most upfront iterations in a pyroclastic flow of soundsystem melters, voiced by some of the dance’s biggest gobs and lathered with FX overdubs, and including some absolutely nutty, near-industrialised body music variants that go harder than your life.

Not letting up, on the B-side he fully embraces dancehall’s Caribbean cousin, dembow, bringing baga snares and fast chat to the table with equally on-point skills, only this time a little sexier and slinkier, with gnashing tresillo patterns helmed by hardcore, slamming bass direct from the source that has held heavy sway over club and pop paradigms since the turn of the millennium, and never more so than now.

what a fucking doozy‽‽‽

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