Bok Bok's new mix is really very good

Text: Charlie Robin Jones

Most of the descriptions and art direction of Night Slugs (the clubnight and label collective Alex – Bok Bok – Sushon heads up) revolve around neon lights. It’s an easy fit – the label’s sound takes huge inspiration from the gleefully inorganic compounds of grime, R&B and other forms of self-consciously futuristic club music, which all sound like neon looks. But what I love about this mix, and the upcoming output of this furiously exciting label, is its hyperreal side. The artwork that recreates a black city. The mixes that sound as thrillingly abandoned as you remember thinking all clubs would feel. Ironically for a label whose music is so hook-filled and instant, the elements of discordance that do this, oddly – the moment in a mix when a tune is cut into too swiftly, the judicious use of a synth hiss, a purposefully gully EQ. In a sentence, Night Slugs’ genius is the use the impassioned sonic signifiers of dance music with the attitude of the dancefloor itself and the gift for abstraction and glamour of dancing thoughts.

Ned Beauman, a novelist (and, funnily enough, one-time web editor of Dummy), once wrote that Times Square’s neon signs burned so bright that they looked as though they were “lit by the light of all things, if their surface could be scratched.” It’s a lovely phrase from a book full of wonderful similes, and Bok Bok’s latest mix reminded me of it. Rattling through just under 30 tracks in just over an hour, it less reverently shines a light on a selection of tunes as rips them into a new space. Though bedroom grime fans such as myself will be glad of a pointer to Geenus’s Log Off and some wonderful new material from Lil Silva and Girl Unit, the tracks are really quite irrelevant – as the ownership of music into facts feels. It’s what DJs the world over have always done, but a hard trick to pull off on and internet mix – the absolute decontextualisation of the song into the whole. It’s club music, through and through, but it’s also nothing less than the construction of a fictional reality, an exquisite vision of how sound can conjure new fictions, new spaces. The eternal night, created on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, carved with a light so bright the day feels peeled. Download the mix now at nightslugs.net

Tracklist:

01 – BOK BOK – On A Journey [cover]
02 – LEVON VINCENT – Six Figures (Novel Sound)
03 – KOWTON – Des Bisous
04 – BOK BOK & TOM TRAGO – Pathfinder BB VIP (Night Voyage)
05 – BOK BOK – Midnight Stop
06 – KOWTON – Jam01 (Levity Sound)
07 – COOLY G – Last Nite (Dub Organiser)
08 – GIRL UNIT – Cake Boss (Night Slugs)
09 – SOUND STREAM – “Live” Goes On (Sound Stream)
10 – JAM CITY – Her [BB Dubplate mix] (Night Slugs)
11 – BOK BOK – Silo Pass [VJUAN ALLURE Remix] (Night Slugs)
12 – HELIX – Damson.wav
13 – JAM CITY – How We Relate To The Body [12” Mix] (Night Slugs)
14 – HELIX – Pul$e Remix
15 – LIL SILVA – [untitled]
16 – ANTHONY SHAKIR – The Floor Filler [SKUDGE’s Floor Killer Mix] (Rush Hour)
17 – GEENEUS vs SLIMZEE – Log Off (Dump Valve)
18 – BOK BOK – MJT [The Torture Trak] (Night Slugs)
19 – HINDZY D – Target Remix
20 – KAOS SOULJAS – Melody Refix
21 – YOUNGSTAR / FLIRTA D – Shottaz Riddim vocal
22 – HELIX – Drum Track [BB Devil Tool] (Night Slugs)
23 – GIRL UNIT – Double Take (Night Slugs)
24 – LLOYD DEVASTATING JACKMASTER – Magic Fingers (Dance Mania)
25 – DIZZEE RASCAL – Wheel (Dirtee Stank)
26 – BOK BOK – Charisma Theme Remix (Night Slugs)
27 – MORRI$ – White Hood (Night Slugs)