- The latest from Night Slugs' white label series, Helix's "Drum Track" is the curious case of the grime track that wasn't. It's a hybrid tune that makes no bones about being hybrid: there's a specific lack of the sonic elements that would mark it as current. Neither backwards-looking dogma nor big ticket futurisms, "Drum Track" is nothing but the essentials: punctuated, staccato rims and hats, straight pummeling kicks, and a touch of bright synths repeated bar after bar after bar.
Anyone with the least bit of exposure to London radio, pirate or otherwise, will recognize the phrasing immediately (and the second cut, a heat-seaking vocal remix featuring veteran MC Flirta D, should make those connections especially clear). Nonetheless, it's just as much a drum workout as it is a gun-finger track. It's all economy of means scrubbed of context, and refreshingly so. Or in the words of the remix, "No hooks, No BS."
Tracklist A Drum Track
B No Hook No BS feat. Flirta D (Drum Track Vocal)