It’s a pleasure to bring you Wen for this week’s podcast - taken from his set at our party with Circular Jaw in Birmingham last weekend. An hour of everything from spacious techno-orientated rhythms to no-nonsense grime.
@w3n
To achieve real progression in UK underground music, it takes individuals with the inclination to push sonic boundaries; artists that build on precedents and mutate strands of pre-existing sounds to create something genuinely fresh and exciting. Over the past couple of years, Wen has undoubtedly been one of the producers to move things forward, with his output helping to shape the next chapter of dark, bass-gravitating, broken rhythm beats. Throttling the tempo of grime and dubstep but maintaining their murky aesthetics, Wen amalgamates rhythms from a range of percussive influence and constructs ominous, spacious compositions underpinned by the impact of his taut low-frequency engineering. His considerable promise had been apparent to many from his early productions, but it was his debut 12†‘Swingin’ on fellow Kent-based label ‘Badimup’ and his devastating ‘Commotion’ EP that garnered Wen widespread attention, a release that sounded quite unlike anything else out at the time. Tastemakers Dusk & Blackdown, whose seminal Keysound imprint put out ‘Commotion’, worked fast to sign the veritable mountain of deadly Wen dubs they were sitting on, and his debut full length, ‘Signals’, is due for release this year along with his notoriously fierce Dizzee Rascal bootleg, ‘Strings Hoe’ out on white-label.
The unique and ultimately heavy sound Wen has forged has helped him reach landmark personal achievements at a blistering pace, with the Keysound support followed by working his tracks into the record boxes of everyone from Oneman to Benji B on Radio 1, even receiving plays from the usually dubstep-focused Youngsta. Appearances on the legendary Rinse FM airwaves have come thick and fast, as have bookings at revered events such as FWD, Outlook and Reconstrvct, not to mention the constant stream of sets at other nights across the UK and beyond. Wen’s debut LP, ‘Signals’ is set to cement his reputation as one of the country’s most compelling young talents, with him having pushed his production levels through the roof; every beat hits harder, tighter and lower, and it features an early contender for the rowdiest track of 2014, the ridiculous Riko Dan collab, ‘Play Your Corner’, that is already out there damaging soundsystems.
https://soundcloud.com/loose-lips123/loose-lips-mix-series-039-wen
Published on Fri Oct 09 2015 17:59:18 GMT+0100 (British Summer Time) by Loose Lips
