Mala / Cooly G – Level Nine / Weekend Fly

The Hyerdub 5 compilation was really all about Cooly G’s ‘Weekend Fly’. First heard on Cooly’s Fact mix some months back, its been one of those tunes that’s been more or less permanently lodged in the back of our minds, like some kind of subconscious soundtrack to our year. It’s hard to sum up exactly why the track has had that kind of effect – it’s made up of the most stripped components – so bare that it’s actually impossible to categorise. It isn’t really UKFunky, or Garage, or Broken Beat or Dubstep – but it contains the seed elements of all of the above, like some kind of percussive chromosome that contains within it the unique code structure of UK bass music at the turn of the decade. There’s something unbelievably knowing about the track too – despite the fact that its nothing more than a simple loop for the first 60 seconds and does very little after that, it still manages to imbue an understanding of music that could only come from a producer intimately familiar with the nuts and bolts, the construction of sounds beyond the narrow frequency of dance/bass music most producers on the scene out there seem to be familiar with. For us – it’s just the track of the year. The flipside doesn’t disappoint either – Mala’s long sought-after ‘Level Nine’ at long last available on wax complete with its strangely moving bass reduction and melody.