Great work on this one! Have there been any notable inspirations behind the release, particularly outside of music?

Bigups thank you! It was definitely very inspired by the Boxed sound. That era of grime was so vital to me discovering what I actually want to do with this whole music thing. It was such an important era of music for me and I was lucky to be there at the right time in the right place, going to any night with that sort of vibe whenever I could find it. I even managed to see AJ Tracey in a 100 person capacity venue which was a wild one. Particularly the more experimental stuff had a massive effect on me. With all of that happening... Well, I discovered that there's a whole other world out there.

It was fantastic. I wanted to make this ep more of a homage to a particular moment in instrumental grime than my usual just inspired by it stuff. One particular tune, Slam the Breaks, was somewhat inspired by my own stuff as well, as strange as that sounds. Highs & Lows was a break up tune, but I wanted to almost tackle that from a different angle. Something more angry with more or less the same theme. Outside of music? I wrote this in a pretty grim time in my life. I won't go into that here, but I needed to vent. Make some wild shit. Escapism was well needed at the time, and I find making more stripped back stuff helps to not overthink stuff in real life.

What would you say was the biggest challenge in putting this release together?

Picking the tunes! There are a lot in the catalog that no one has ever heard at the moment, so picking them was particularly hard, but I reckon we got it right with this one. And of course who to remix and what tune do we want remixes of? LMajor and Nova Cheq absolutely killed it. Proper bangers.

Huge fan of the transient control here, are you using any special processing or tools that you could share, to achieve this?

Now, the problem here is that, well, I haven't got a fucking clue what I'm doing. I've been using transient shapers a bit more, and a tad more compression and limiting I suppose. I've also been using the Drum Buss thing in Ableton which has definitely helped I reckon.

I try not to over think these things, I just like throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks. I think your ears get better and easier the longer you go on, you don't even think about it, it becomes almost like muscle-memory or something. Except mixdowns. Fuck mxdowns.

Any other stuff in the pipeline you'd like to share?

Yes yes! The album should be getting sorted at some point soon. Obviously there's still a lot to do behind the scenes, but I'm looking forward to getting that out there! I've also got like 50 demos sitting about so we'll have to see what happens there.

I've managed a shortlist at least. So time to start sending that about. I'm also working with a few different vocalists at the moment which is a lot of fun. It's good to work with others as usually I'm just making stuff for myself, so it's definitely a breath of fresh air!

Any other artists/labels that you're feeling right now?

The current thing I'm most excited for is the new Murlo album. Dolos was fantastic so I'm really keen to hear it. The new Hudson Mohawke (Cry Sugar) was brilliant as well, very inspiring for sure. Scaring The Hoes by Danny Brown & JPEGMAFIA, G Jone's Illusory Tracks EP, everything Jeshi is doing is absolutely sick. Oneohtrix Point Never, the Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow soundtracks as well. always guaranteed to be great.

I've also been going back a bit recently. Stuff like Dream a Garden by Jam City, and Unknown Memory by Yung Lean. Chromatics, Ed Scissor, FKA Twigs, Ta-Ku's Songs To Break Up To. They've got a vibe from a certain point in my life and I think it's very inspiring to revisit that from time to time. Oneohtrix Point Never, the Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow soundtracks. Oh, and a Shit load of Rustie of course.