It’s not often we reference a mix. They demand time and determination to play, cut and efficiently spread the choice tracks. Blawan presents a strong exception.
Premiered May 3 in his live mix for Canadian pain pill Grimes, “Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage” hasn’t even been released. Still, someone liked it enough to cut the song out of the live mix and post it to YouTube (bottom.) Just give it time to melt down the internet. We’ll get that mp3.
Deep in a Boiler Room mix, Blawan got careless. He left the key off the latch and let peek a pale, mucky little monster. As the track emerges from the 25 minute mark of Boiler Room #92, we’re forced to walk a bridge made of suspended cables, listening to them bend and echo with metallic twang as we run from the monster purring in our ear. Just wait, you’ll hear it too. Blawan’s sound is undoubtedly his own.
The R&S Records man about town has attached himself to London’s streets for the past few years, honing and shaping his style (hear last year’s “Getting Me Down“) with his peers in a very active club scene. Blawan’s had the privilege of working in the epicenter of the most prolific country in the world for quality bass music, watching the passing caravans of William Bevan dubstep, the Benga buzz, America‘s hijacking of the genre, the UK’s retort with post-dubstep, and the always evolving, ever present sounds of UK funky and the garage underground.
So, anyway… “Why they hide their bodies under my garage?”
Blawan’s ability to bend and stretch a voice is heavy. This time a voice repeats the growling question of the track’s title and people like me try too hard to look for the meaning of the sample. I can’t help it–let’s figure out these bodies under the garage.
Follow the breadcrumbs of past DJs leading all the way to Blawan, and we find more information about the bodies in the garage. The “bodies” in Blawan’s garage may be the sweaty ones who filled the illegal warehouse parties of the 90s dance scene. These legendary raves would pop up in parking garages, warehouses and basements all over the UK, serving a hungry, bass loving swarm with a place to lose their minds and lose their drugs. Many called them “massives,” and with the help of a few special producers, those parties may be coming back.
Blawan has a kung fu grip on that same spirit of skin and concrete, infusing his music with the agitated tension of rush hour traffic coupled with the loose stride of a city walker who can handle the heat. Blawan’s giving people a reason to see beauty in their gray surroundings (and a way to dance to it) by choosing not to coat anything with glitter.
An abandoned, rotting warehouse? That could be a party. The sound of monster’s roaring? That could be a subwoofer. The ability to turn the shade into a rave? That’s a state of mind.
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