Grime in 2016 comes in many forms and we think thats one of the most beautiful things about it. It constantly welcomes new sounds, ideas, producers and labels adding their style to the scene. Bristol’s Blanklink Sound is a label that for the past year, has been pushing some of the most forward thinking instrumental grime. The label has been an advocate for dubplate culture through its constantly solid vinyl releases; its next one comes armed to the teeth.
Bristol based label boss Modelle has lined up a four-tracker for the imprint’s next edition of its Black Label series that comes equipped with tracks from Strict Face, Tarquin, Marcx and this cut from Manchester based Grizzle. The track came together when he unknowingly sampled Trey Songz; as he explains, “What helped most when writing this track was that I hadn’t ever heard the song I was sampling for those vocals in its original form. A lot of the time I think ‘bootlegging’ can feel like trying vainly to impose a new structure on something you know so well already, and since I didn’t have that problem of over-familiarity the interplay between the voice and the instrumentation ended up feeling more organic… I didn’t arrange the lyrics in a way that I thought would be coherent, but the finished product sounded (and still sounds) to me like kind of a tragic story.”
Press play on the i-D premiere of Grizzle’s entreaty below and pre-order the release, out February 29 here.