- Brooklyn's flex dance music has been around for years, developing alongside the hyper-fluid flex dancing style whose battles it traditionally soundtracks. It's had plenty of outside interest, right up to cosigns from Rihanna and Nicki Minaj. But it makes sense that the dance world is just now taking an interest—the style's circa-100 BPM collision of pop-culture samples, steely sound design and dancehall-like grooves chimes with a scene in search of pop abstractions for the club. When scene heavyweight HITMAKERCHINX released a compilation on Fade To Mind and Night Slugs this summer he credited the labels with "bringing my music into a club environment." Now it's the turn of the Manchester label Swing Ting to bring an FDM figurehead to a new audience.
Going by Late Night FlexN, Epic B's sound is airier than CHINX's, favouring space and sway over sci-fi intensity. "One Time," coproduced with Uninamise, is the sweetest of them all, a delicate confection of twinkling arps and sinuous bass garnished with a vocal from B himself. The others get more abstract, foregrounding the producer's patchwork arrangements: melodies tease, twirl and disappear, grooves start and stutter-stop while dramatic buildups vapourise and drift away. "Be With Me" has the hookiest melodies and the weightiest drums, but the others are also good—"Eazy" for its inky mood and jet engine climaxes, and "Serenity Riddim" for its breakdowns, which are as peaceful as the title suggests.
Tracklist01. One Time
02. Be With Me feat. Eddie Hill
03. Eazy
04. Serenity Riddim