10 Tracks That Prove The Boxed Movement Is Pushing Grime Forward

These are the anthems people will be remixing and remaking 10 years from now.

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It's hard to believe that instrumental grime night Boxed is already celebrating its third birthday. What started as a tiny event at Peckham Palais dedicated to hearing instrumentals on a good system has since evolved into a veritable institution: a trend-setting Rinse show, an ever expanding series of events, and a network of interconnecting labels pushing the grime sound forward into new spaces. Building on Butterz' efforts to bring grime back to the clubs, but predating the full-scale scene revival currently pushing grime up the charts, co-founders Slackk, Logos, Mr. Mitch and Oil Gang have helped develop countless new producers and DJs who've taken original school grime concepts like devil mixes, eskibeat and R&G and twisted them into new shapes.

Along the way, the collective has accumulated its own catalogue of underground classics: anthems for a hyper-specific scene of die-hards fiending for exclusives and the newest, most forward-thinking UK rave music. It’s no longer a stretch to compare what's going on at Boxed to classic parties like Metalheadz and DMZ, so with that in mind, here's 10 of the finest tracks you may have heard at Boxed over the past few years. These are the anthems people will be remixing and remaking 10 years from now.

Words by Son Raw

Spooky – "Coolie Joyride" (Murlo Remix VIP)

Spooky made the dancehall-sampling "Joyride" back in grime's heyday, only to update it by mashing it with yet another bashment classic to make "Coolie Joyride" a few years later. The result was a tune that mainlined grime back to its Jamaican roots, but that wasn't the end of it—Oil Gang then released a vinyl-only remix EP, including an outstanding Asian-inflected flip by Murlo, complete with his trade mark synth leads. Finally, to top it all off, with that remix in the hands of the public, Murlo made ANOTHER VIP to play out himself, abstracting the original even further. It's an approach emblematic of a scene that's continuously recycling and reinventing itself.

DJ Milktray – "Hotel"

SoundCloud is full of down and dirty club edits flipping pop songs for the dancefloor, but the Boxed set has been particularly brilliant at it: the friction between the syrupy source material and grime's roughneck aggression makes for brilliant musical alchemy that enshrines urban music's early 2000s chart takeover as a true golden age. Of all of those cheeky remixes Milktray's "Hotel" is the best, pilfering little more than a few guitar plucks and an R Kelly come-on from Cassidy's original of the same name, and rearranging them into a minimalist 140BPM banger. Proof that less is more.

Mssingno – "124th"

Mssingno's late 2013 Goon Club Allstars EP was a major tipping point for instrumental grime's resurgent popularity, staking the genre's claim as some of the most boundary-defying music in the world today. While it's his R&B-sampling numbers that have been most imitated, "124th" is a true outlier: a frigid roller reminiscent of Rapid at his most screw-faced. Perfect as a standalone listen, but built for shelling of the highest order.

Mr. Mitch – "The Man Waits"

Paradoxically, none of the Boxed club night's residents actually produce music that's overtly clubby: Slackk's material shifts between the eerie and the romantic, while Logos' brilliant Cold Mission album was spacious to the point of near-ambience. It's Mr. Mitch who pushes grime's experimental tendencies the furthest and at first glance, "The Man Waits" sounds like a better fit for an art-film than a dance. This refusal to be constrained by expectations or limits is a key part of what's allowed the collective to capture the ears of listeners worldwide; you never know what you'll hear.

Dark0 – "Sweet Boy Pose VIP"

Bursting with energy, Dark0's "Sweet Boy Pose" took grime and video game music, a natural pairing, to new heights. Rather than replicate the 8-bit era's primitive charms, "Sweet Boy Pose" combined London's rhythmic template to the type of lush melodies typically associated with Japanese RPGs, to wonderful effect. A major spark to Dark0's career, the track has been remade and remixed half a dozen times, but for our money, the VIP on Boxed's 1st year anniversary compilation is the best of the bunch, twisting that euphoric melody that much further.

JT The Goon – "Twin Warriors" (Rabit Remix)

JT The Goon is a grime legend who didn't get his due, a behind the scenes force that produced countless gems for the Slew Dem crew to little acclaim before returning to the scene backed by Boxed resident Oil Gang. "Twin Warriors" was his big comeback, re-imagining Iron Soul's classic "Chinese Water" as a flute-led slice of high drama. From there, American producer Rabit zeroed in on the latent emotional intensity, remixing the track into a dubby, minimalist reduction to sign off JT's long awaited King Triton LP.

Mumdance & Novelist – "Take Time"

Boxed is rightfully known for its instrumentals. The night itself makes a point not to book emcees so as to retain its focus, but in recent years an increasing number of clued-in artists have tapped the night's producers for beats, with Novelist leading the charge. Tellingly, "Take Time" with Mumdance went far beyond the confines of Boxed, helping propel the teenager's career: the minimalist, hardware-led backing track providing a perfect mix of old school grit and new school sounds. As for Mumdance, he's balanced his career between 140BPM bangers and more technoid leanings for Tectonic, helping connect various strands of contemporary UK music into a coherent whole. Shout out the Hardcore Continuum.

Slackk – "Blue Sleet"

Slackk's "Blue Sleet" predates Boxed, but it's exactly the kind of track the night was conceived to play: weird, uncompromised grime that simultaneously paid tribute to the old school while pushing those classic sounds in new directions. Heavy on the classic square wave melodies, "Blue Sleet" nevertheless distinguishes itself from what would become a glut of Wiley clones, as the synths don't just wiggle like bass lines, they provide the high end's melodic push as well.

Samename – "Harajuku"

Though comparatively quiet these days, Samename's Japan-inspired grime riddims were foundational to Boxed's early days, with dubs circulating among the tight-knit crew that made up both the event's roster and crowd. "Harajuku" never even saw an official release, existing mostly as a SoundCloud loosey, but it's a personal favorite, matching intense percussion to pitched up vocals and what sounds like a digital shimazen. We'd kill for an album’s worth of this stuff…

Logos – "E3 Night Flight"

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LogosCold Mission took all of grime's weidest sonic ideas—the bird chirps, the beatless devil mixes, the pirate radio chatter—and intensified them into this decade's greatest art album. Avoiding the middle ground entirely, it's a high and low art at its finest, the kind of record inspired by the road but aware of grime's serendipitous musical connections to Japanese synth-music composers like Ryuichi Sakamoto. "E3 Night Flight" is the kind of record that expanded what the word grime could even mean, and proposed a future where grime could generate as many sonic variants as hip-hop or dancehall.

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