Heartless Crew: where Garage met grime and got on outrageously
Plus Blawan, Sónar 2025 and more
In the early 2000s one of the reasons that many Americans (especially but not uniquely) had such a hard time getting their heads around grime was that it didn’t come from hip hop, for all the two genres’ stylistic similarities. Most grime artists were fans of US hip hop. But the genre had actually evolved out of the MC + DJ format of UK Garage, which in turns had roots in jungle, which borrowed from dancehall and so on.
Inevitably, the transition from UKG to grime was slightly messy. But there are three groups who best illustrate the change: So Solid Crew, Pay As U Go and Heartless Crew. Each came out of the Garage scene and their records are recognisable as such; but with the heavy emphasis all three put on the role of the MC - very important at UKG clubs but not so much on record - you can feel the shift into grime, where MCs dominated. The debate about the first grime record is never going to have a definitive answer but I don’t think Pay As U Go (Cartel)’s Know We, recorded in 1999 and released the following year, can be too far off it.
Of the three, So Solid were by far the best know - as I have mentioned before, they were a genuine Sex Pistols-style sensation in the UK - while Pay As U Go are today largely remembered as the starting point for Wiley and Roll Deep. Heartless Crew - MCs Bushkin and Might Moe and DJ Fonti, who are still going today, after a hiatus from 2010 to 2016 - are arguably the least known of the three acts, perhaps due to the fact that they haven’t released a great deal of music. But they produced my favourite record from all three acts, in the form of their Heartless Crew Presents Crisp Biscuit Vol 1 mix CD from 2002.
It is a mix of charm and utter joy, one of the few pieces of music guaranteed to put me into a good mood, no matter what is happening in the world. But it is also a mix that is very instructive to the eclectic roots of grime as well as reflective of the gloriously perplexing mixture of sounds that London was listening to in the early 2000s. Given the small amount of original music that Heartless Crew have released over the years - just a couple of singles - Crisp Biscuit stands as the perfect tribute to one of the liveliest, most fascinating and important crews in early 2000s British music.
I am, to be clear, talking about CD One of Crisp Biscuit. CD Two is an entertaining mixture of jungle and R&B; but goes too heavy on the jungle to be particularly revelatory. CD One, by contrast, is all over the place in a way that feels more fitting to the Crew’s roots. The CD’s first seven tracks alone take in classic 70s funk (Earth, Wind and Fire’s Let’s Groove), deep house (George Morel’s Morel's Groove), UK Garage (The Anthill Mob’s Burning, Big Bird’s Flava), proto 2-Step (Tina Moore’s Never Gonna Let You Go), New York house (Reel 2 Real’s I Like to Move It) and classic R&B (Missy Elliott’s Lick Shots), mixed up with a healthy dose of reggae and dancehall, courtesy of guest vocals from Sweetie Irie and Specialist Moss.
Later on, CD One will branch out into breakbeat garage (Mr Red’s Closer, Jammin’s Hold On), proto dubstep (Menta’s Sounds of the Future and Hatcha’s Bashment) and classic house (Roy Davis Jr.’s Gabrielle), while still making time for Heartless Crew’s signature tune The Heartless Theme a.k.a The Superglue Riddim, a tune whose genre seems to shift from UK Garage to grime according to the context in which it is taken. There are plenty of classics on CD one but also underground tunes, like Pretty Boys’ Sexy Boy, which I have only ever heard on this mix.
In some mixes such an eclectic collection can feel slightly forced, as if the DJ is trying far too hard to show off the barely believable range of their tastes. (Which is ironic, really, as about the only people whose tastes AREN’T utterly eclectic these days are DJs.) On Crisp Biscuit, though, the mixture feels entirely natural, a reflection of London’s wide-ranging musical tastes and Heartless Crew’s own musical upbringing.
Bushkin and Fonti met at school in North London in 1992, with Mighty Moe coming on board later. Before becoming known for UK Garage, the trio ran a mobile soundsystem and, as Bushkin explained in a 2017 interview with Gigwise, this helped to forge their wide-ranging tastes.
“[Soundsystems] played music for everyone and they played a variety of music, they’d do it to set times as well, from the warm-up section to the climax and the wind down hour at the end of the night,” he said. “We’ve adopted that ethos ourselves. Fonti knows how to take you up, maybe dip you down for a bit to let you cool down. And you know when he brings you back up the journey up is going to be even more exciting.”
“Some DJs don’t know any better as well,” Fonti added. “If they haven’t experienced a Jamaican soundsystem, or a UK one even, then you wouldn’t really understand how to blend genres. A lot of DJs are specialists. We’re like a new age soundsystem, with the ethics of that culture. We can be specialists for any genre; meaning we could play a whole set of reggae, a whole set of house, a whole set of jungle, R&B, hip hop… even a whole set of rare groove if we have to. To keep it moving we make sure there’s diversity in our sets.”
Combine this music - reggae, house, jungle, R&B, hip hop and rare groove - and, in both spirit and sound, you have something close to UK Garage, which emerged in London in the mid to late 90s. Given Heartless Crew’s commitment to diversity and the trio’s relative youth, it was no surprise that they were quick to incorporate Garage into their sets.
As Crisp Biscuit shows, though, however much Heartless were thought of as a Garage crew and however much success they had within the Garage scene - from 1Xtra residency to a major label deal with East West - they were never Garage snobs, tuned into the UKG sound at the expense of all else.
The songs on Crisp Biscuit, as brilliantly mixed as they are by DJ Fonti - and especial respect for mixing the two-stepping bump of Never Gonna Let You Go into the half-time R&B spectre of Lick Shots - are only half the story. The group’s two MCs are not the most cerebral lyricists. But this really isn’t the point, as Bushkin explained in a 2016 interview with RBMA. “My lyrics have never been complex they’re simple, catchy, melodic,” he said. “Some MCs overdo it. You get really loud MCs, shouting their lyrics - people just switch off.
One reason for this is that the duo’s inspirations as MCs didn’t come from the complex word play of US hip hop. Instead, their roots are buried deep in soundsystems, dancehall and jungle - genres where hyping up the crowd at gigs is more important for the MC than impressing listeners with lyrical dexterity.
“I take inspiration from dancehall and sound system culture,” Bushkin said in a recent interview with Urban Syndicate. “Artists like Ninja Man come to mind, his whole stage performance, the things he says and his actions. I take a lot of inspiration from him.
“Also, MC Shabba, the jungle MC, is probably one of my favourite MCs of all time. He definitely inspired me growing up. Then there are other artists like Tiger, Papa San, Lieutenant Stitchie, Yellowman, Bounty Killer and Beenie Man, Vybz Kartel mostly from the dancehall and reggae culture. That’s where I draw the most inspiration from.”
Bushkin and Might Moe’s lyrics are rarely clever clever. But they are lithe, agile, fun and catchy, lyrics that come in service of the music, serving as the perfect accompaniment to Crisp Biscuit’s party sounds, in the way that, say, Dizzee Rascal’s heavier chat wouldn’t be. Bushkin and Might Moe have serious rhymes, nonsense lyrics and deft interaction. But they also know when to stay quiet and let a record play: Roy Davis Jr.’s Gabrielle, for example, doesn’t need much chat and so they let it play largely unimpeded, save for the odd shout of “listen”, which is sage advice when Ray Davis Jr. is playing.
Their vocals are also transformative in their own way. There is a glorious moment towards the end of CD One of Crisp Biscuit where Bushkin and Might Moe are MCing over Hatcha’s skeletal, bass-y Bashment - a record generally considered to be an early dubstep tune from the South London producer, made in the legendary Apple Records Studio in Croydon - and it sounds exactly like a grime tune, a full year before Dizzee Rascal released I Luv U and grime blew up.
What I particularly love about this transformation is that it doesn’t feel like Heartless Crew are trying to do anything particularly different or new on the album; it is a reflection of Heartless Crew as they were in 2002 that also brings me back instantly to London 2002, when grime and dubstep were bubbling up through the underground, UK garage was still massive and jungle had yet to go entirely dark. (Incidentally, Heartless Crew’s 2001 clash with Pay As U Go is another pivotal moment in the transition from UKG to grime.)
Sadly, Crisp Biscuit Vol. 1 was the only volume of Crisp Biscuit. The trio released a pair of slightly underwhelming singles in 2003 and that was the extent of their recorded career (beyond a few unofficial mix CDs that appear on Discogs in very little detail.) Heartless Crew are still going today, though, and I can imagine they can still absolutely stun a party when they in the mood.
In any case, we still have Crisp Biscuit, a 2002 jewel. The album came at a fertile time in British musical history, as genres formed, reformed, adapted and mutated - and yet on Crisp Biscuit Heartless Crew skip through it with the ease of a child stomping on puddles, making it possibly the most party-starting history lesson you could ever hope to hear.
Some listening
Blawan’s last two solo EPs, Woke Up Right Handed and Dismantled Into Juice, felt like bizarre, brilliant excursions into new and very strange electronic directions, which took some of the ultra-toughness of his work with Pariah (as Karenn), joined it to the novel musical shapes that he forged from modular synths on his solo album Wet Will Always Dry and played merry hell with them. With the arrival of Bouq, the third EP in the sequence, it feels like we can genuinely talk of a new musical identity for Blawan, one that defies characterisation. The music is as hard as techno but has nothing of the genre’s gridded feel; as aggressive as punk, but twice as funny, like a kind of diamond-tipped electronic psychedelia that occasionally throws up brilliant pop moments. Fire sounds a little like Diva Industrial, which is a genre I am very much hoping to push into 2025.
Incidentally, Blawan will be going B2B with Skrillex, of all people, at Sónar 2025, which is something I very much want to see. (Blawan is also playing live.) In fact, some of the most intriguing things on the Sónar 2025 line up are collabs: Actress & Suzanne Ciani, which could be amazing, Rone x (LA) HORDE with Ballet National de Marseille, Raül Refree with Niño De Elche and Dania with Mau Morgó, in what are some agreeably unexpected hook ups.
On a local (ish) tip, Sónar 2025 has Maria Arnal, Yerai Cortés and Tarta Relena; then there’s Peggy Gou (who I have still yet to see, despite coming close on about 15 occasions), Honey Dijon, Sama’ Abdulhadi, Tim Reaper and loads more. Then, in terms of former Line Noise podcast guests (which is how I like to count things, boringly), there is Plastikman and Jayda G.
Nilüfer Yanya - Call It Love (Jam City remix)
I almost wish the electronic music media would revive the best remix category in their end-of-year polls just to I could vote for Nilüfer Yanya and her My Method Actor - The Remixes package. It contains three stunning works, in the epic Boy Harsher remix of Just A Western, the UKG delight of Empress Of’s take on Mutations and now Jam City’s breakbeat 2-Step remix of Call It Love, which manages to be delicate, dreamy and extremely sharp, like getting a paper cut from a book of romantic poetry. I’ve said it before but the fact that Yanya’s songs stand up to all kinds of remixing is testament to their extreme core strength. Also: the breakbeat garage revival is on. Someone call the Stanton Warriors.
Arthur Baker and Pharoah Sanders - Love Hymn
The recently released Transa compilation, in support of trans rights, has a number of standout tracks, notably Sade’s ultra-poignant Young Lion. But perhaps the best song, for me, is the rather mysterious collaboration between Arthur Baker and the late saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. I say ‘mysterious’ because there don’t seem to be any details about how the collaboration came about, given that Sanders died more than two years ago. But the song itself feels enigmatic, like a beautiful old painting you found gathering dust that you have no idea how you came by. Sanders’ saxophone playing is gorgeous throughout, gleaming with the transcendent energy he brought at his best, while Baker has produced a background that is interesting enough, in its mixture of dub-y bass, tabla and weird vocal effects, without threatening to take attention away from Sanders playing, which is really the way it should be.
Jaden Thompson’s latest single strolls the line between soulful house and something a little bit weirder, sporting a collection of vaguely tortured clicks and trills and a vocal that is pure Chicago heaven. Light a Fire does a lot in its three-minute spell, suggesting an abundance of idea to be squeezed in, with the abundant enthusiasm of youth. It also makes me think of prime Herbert meeting Mood 2 Swing, which is a potent combination indeed.
Things I’ve Done
No sounds are out of bounds: how The Orb brought ambient house to the masses
I adore The Orb and was absolutely delighted to be able to write about them for DJ Magazine, as a new compilation, Orboretum, was released. “It’s almost easier to ignore The Orb than to try to get a grip on the 35-year history of this most ludicrous of electronic acts. But you can’t talk about the history of electronic music in the UK without talking about The Orb. Hundreds of thousands of people saw Nirvana on Top of the Pops and went on to form grunge bands; thousands more saw The Orb farting around with a chess board on the same show and got into electronic music. That’s how important they are.
My guest on Line Noise this week is legendary Japanese producer and DJ Ken Ishii, a man who did more than anyone to bring techno music to Japan, bridging the gap with old school Japanese electronic music as he did so. We spoke about the 30th anniversary of his classic Reference To Difference album, the joy of weird noises, appearing on the cover of Newsweek, Pac Man, anime and more.
The playlists
In a few weeks it will be the end of the year, which means you had better get your best albums and songs lists in order. Should you want a helping hand, I have my Spotify list of the best music of 2024 - which I guess turns into a pumpkin on December 31 - and that old faithful playlist of the best new music of the last four or so years. Follow them, who not?