FACT Mix 328: Beneath

FACT mix 328 comes from Beneath, the hardest-hitting newcomer in the UK underground.

Whether it’s a reaction to things becoming a little too soft in the last 18 months is a debate for another day, but there’s a refreshing ruggedness to the UK’s dancefloors right now (see LHF, Slackk, Champion, Jook 10, Eastwood, Mistamen and Swing Ting). Perhaps more than anybody though, this shift seems to have been encapsulated by the success of Beneath.

Raised in Stoke, but now based in Sheffield, Ben Walker makes razor-sharp, brittle club music that feeds off a desire to “make something [that you'd] immediately know was from the UK”, with UK Funky and dubsteppers/former dubsteppers Digital Myztikz and Kode9 as immediate reference points. Beneath’s music might be house tempo, but more than anything it reminds us of the ruthless minimalism of early grime and dubstep: it’s lean, stripped-back music made for ciphers and the dancefloor, and there’s simply nothing harder out there right now.