8. Low DeepThe Instrumentals

I feel like Low Deep is deeply underappreciated and to me this is also a really incredible album. Obviously there’s ‘Straight Flush’ which is the bait one and there’s a couple of others, but talking in terms of R&B-sample led, chopping the fuck out of things and making something out of something else in a grime context, it’s something that’s coming through a bit again. People like Milktray to an extent or Gundam are coming through with variants on that sound now, but Low Deep was the best at it, and to me this is just something that I can listen to a lot. I think this resonates with me mainly because there’s a period when I was listening to this quite intensely when I’d been back in London for about a year. I don’t know why I started picking up on him again but it was the summer and this is a perfect summer album. I could just sit there and blaze and listen to this album repeatedly.

It was quite a specific period in my life in terms of the music – the funky thing was going on at the same time and I’d started being picked up and played by certain funky DJs that led to me getting signed on Numbers. In a way I wish I hadn’t been signed so early because I don’t really like all that stuff so much anymore. If anything, the tunes I feel were my better ones never came out, but whatever… this was a real positive summer. I’d finally started getting bits played and was starting to make headway in terms of actually getting DJ bookings and this was one of things on my phone at the time and it just never ever came off. It’s a happy, joyful album and I guess that’s why it’s on there. It’s also one of the only sort of successful instrumental grime albums that I could sit there and listen to. So when I was sitting there thinking, fucking hell I’m doing an album, I did go back to it and think how did he do it? As much as it’s a collection of instrumentals, the flow of it works and it does work as an album.