Bleepy chart treats from Sammy Virji, Calvin Harris, Sonny Fodera & Rudimental

Sammy Virji – If U Need It

Not that new a track from this UKG producer, having being released some time last year. It's currently bobbing around in the very lowest reaches of the UK top 100. Nice use of the Prince-style "U" in the title – I assume that's the reference, and not my A-Level maths result.

Calvin Harris / Ellie Goulding – Free

Another collaboration from these two. This piano house banger made a noted debut in Ibiza earlier this year. The track is yet to break the UK top 30. I can only assume Harris has annoyed the chart gods somehow.

Sonny Fodera – Somedays

This London-based EDM producer is building up a string of collaborative hits. At number 14 and threatening to break the top ten. He hot the top ten last year with the pretty similar-sounding Asking. Pretty good work for a guy named after a hat.

Rudimental & Karen Harding – Bring Me Joy 

A deliriously happy banger from the Rude boys, fronted by former X Factor contestant Karen Harding. Ten weeks in the chart and it's at its highest position of, er, number 63. Maybe we're just not in the mood for joy these days. Sigh.

[All these tracks are new entries or risers in the current UK singles chart, dated 30th August 2024]

Don't be rattled: it's just drum 'n' bass

In a Salford pub yesterday, as I leant against a snoozing cat (pictured), I was reminiscing about the moment I discovered the full beauty of drum 'n' bass.

It was at Tribal Gathering in a tent dense with dry ice. It was like walking into a shisha pipe, only with a sillhouette of an MC rising out of the cloud. I'd got a load of vinyl, but it was the first time I'd seen "liquid beats" (ugh) in a live setting.

Here's a remix of LTJ Bukem's classic track Music. It's just a clip (full version here), but this is the kind of loveliness I walked into.



For those not used to this kind of drum 'n' bass, you need to get over the busy-ness of the beat. It is, after all, running at 175BPM which is enough to leave your rattled bones scattered over the dancefloor. Let the loop become one. And then lose yourself in the chords swirling around the centre.

Despite the likes of Rudimental hooking up with Ed Sheeran to bring a clunkier - yet still entertaining - form of this music to the Hozier generation, the genre has stayed pleasantly underground. Yeah, there was that Olive track a generation ago, and that woman totally addicted to bass. But really...

But the smoky, airy Bukem stuff remains fairly pure. And, when done well, absolutely one of the most liberating styles of music alongside acid house.

A particular favourite of mine was Big Bud. a regular on Progression Sessions and someone whose sound seemed to cut a little deeper. Listen to High Times below.

I like cats. I like drum 'n' bass. Maybe there's a corrolation between the weed-hazed jungle ambience and a domesticated jungle cat that sleeps 22 hours a day.

Maybe this, and exactly this, is what cats hear in their head all the time.



Further Fats: Bleep Years day nineteen - LTJ Bukem's Horizons (2012) 

Further Fats: The precarious future of Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud (2016)