NUKG Monthly: HUNA, Gemi, Ollie Rant and more

New Wave Magazine writer Nathan Evans's UK garage and club music column covers the latest songs, remixes, bootlegs, mixes and albums that captures his attention.

Photo credit: Seoul Community Radio

Mix of the Month: HUNA - Course Music Takeover (Seoul Community Radio)

London DJ HUNA’s set as part of the Course Music Takeover of Seoul Community Radio lays flat on the table how club genre boundaries are as thin as the patterns of kick and snare.

His first move is a blend of coochie raps and electro beats that make it sound like a schoolyard rhyme, before cutting into UK bass with a mean edit of Fugees’ ‘Fu-Gee-La’. From there, he stir-fries baile funk, UKG, Baltimore club and drill alongside edits of Four Tet, Playboi Carti, Jeremih and Crime Mob.

The energy transfers from the balls of the feet to the tips of the toes regularly as skittering percussion plummets into subterranean bass, and HUNA wins bonus points by loading up Villager’s ‘Ow Wow’. You still get an understanding of HUNA’s favouring for sexy R&G, hip-hop edits and slinky, saturated bass that will heat the room like an open oven. But this set also cracks wide open the full scope of his tastes, in a tight 55 minutes.

Ollie Rant - Rinse FM 17/03/2023

I’ll be honest, it’s been a tough month trying to keep up and branch out with discovering new music. I went to see Ed Banger’s 20th Birthday celebrations at Printworks and salute twice, so my fix was definitely satisfied. But life gets in the way and the rate that new music is coming out as winter ends is relentless.

Which is why I’m thankful for Ollie Rant’s Rinse FM show, one of the best functional tools for finding new UKG out there. His two-hour slot is a shimmery, cosmopolitan take on the genre most of the time, with this edition also going down a spectral UK bass wormhole, a trance-like progressive house and a tribute to the recently-deceased legend Jason Kaye with some of his classics (‘I’ll Take You There’, ‘Bubblin’ Sound’ and ‘Baby You Make My Heart Sing’, all under his Ordinary People project).

London-based Rant makes sure to give you the track information every time on the clock like a train announcer, meaning you’re hearing great new, upcoming and undiscovered tunes off the shelves with the details for those that tune in. Now to try hundreds of guesses at what producer names he said.

Itaq - Lapis’ Cockpit

Japanese MC Itaq partnered with producers DJ.DAI and NoB to create one of the best hip-house tracks you’re likely to hear this year. Most Westerners will have only been exposed to MCing in Japanese through the Teriyaki Boyz (or, at a stretch, the opening dialogue to Missy Elliott’s ‘Get Ur Freak On’), but ‘Laptis’ Cockpit’ is strikingly close to the sort of hip-house you’d find in the UK or US with a garage shake-up. The track begins with watery Chicago chords chandelier crystals raining down, but that mood is pulled into a more athletic shape when the beat kicks in. Itaq comes in absolutely spraying, but manages to raise an already-bubbling energy by the second breakdown. Between his rolodex of flows and the ping-ponging bass, ‘Lapis’ Cockpit’ finds so many satisfying pockets.

DJ CDQ - COME TAKE A RIDE

No UKG label has a greater piss-take sense of humour than Bristol’s BELTERS. Custodians of the donk and purveyors of the most brain-rotting garage stonkers you can hope to find, their new free download ‘COME TAKE A RIDE’ from Wales’ DJ CDQ is a G-funk whistle whirler with a French-flavoured disco sauce. Crydamore would have snapped this up back in the day.

Wildcard: Průvan - Freeze Out

Czechia-based producer Průvan’s ‘Freeze Out’ is pitch-black bass music formed from the bowels of a gigantic gulping kick drum. It’s the way the producer peers into the snowstorm in the track's beginnings before sucking you into a vacuum when the bass hits, and in the second breakdown he lassos some hardcore-nodding keys around and lets them fly too. The rest of the accompanying Zlobivá EP has ‘The Stomper’, which centres around a drum pattern that rivals The Bug’s Fire album for tremoring force, and the restless jungle machine that is the title track.

INVT - GOZA

About three months ago, Miami duo INVT released the GOZA triple-tracker on Bandcamp for a limited time only. It was all-2step for the first time on a project of theirs, and they have seen fit to revive it from the archives due to popular demand. ‘PRESHA’ puts three bass tones in the exact right places for a hunkered-down groove, but ‘LECHITA’ charges up a steamy 2step clinic that, fittingly, is the stickiest moment on the EP.

Speed Garage Bootleg of the Month: Gemi - Crush On U

Gemi’s flip of Nero’s ‘Crush On U’ follows the same dichotomy as the original - adorable pitched hook bottomed by a crowd-igniting underbelly. It’s not as lightning-hot as Nero’s now-dated brostep version, but Gemi still creates a bubblegum bomb.