Novelist - Mercy (Skee Mask Remix)

  • Jungle. Drill. Skee Mask. Novelist.
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  • The new track from Novelist—due out as the first release on new London label Obligated Records—is an intoxicating jungle and drill hybrid with an impassioned verse from the rapper and impassioned chipmunk soul from producer Sus Traperazzi. It also, notably, comes with a Skee Mask remix, which flattens out the track's melancholy into sweat-soaked paranoia over a coiled breakbeat pattern that feels like a boxer's jab. Compared to Skee Mask's beautiful album-oriented material, this one's a blunt-edged weapon, but it does have a gorgeous build-up courtesy of some gilded organs that might have been lifted some old Eurodance tune. The track ends on an uncertain note, with bits of hope gleaming in light sunlight through cracks in a windowblind. In typical Skee Mask—and Novelist—fashion, it's both emotionally wrought and a little ambiguous. It also bangs.
RA