Already a staple of Slackk et al's Boxed club night/movement, 19-year-old Shriekin is now ready to release his debut EP for Local Action. Interestingly, his Gold and Featherwork EP continues in the same vein as Slackk's recent Palm Tree Fire, which explored the outer limits of grime, positing that there's more to the genre than MC clashing and 8-bar riddims. Lead track "Steel Ships" is a suitably weird production, with a shuffling beat that maintains the tempo amid the chilling atmospherics.
At its heart is a space-age beat full of backmasked echos and spectral washes that sound like swirling fog from which a ghost ship emerges to make its way to a deserted port. The clipped not-quite spoken word vocals do little to alleviate the troubling atmosphere, as Shriekin deploys them sparsely and out of context, only adding to the listener's distress. Shriekin's four-track EP, Gold and Featherwork, is out via Local Action on October 13. Listen to "Steel Ships" below.
