flyover 5: allen hz
“One of the things about UK garage [UKG] that needs to be made fun of is the artwork, because every release has some cartoon character on it. And it’s not just [the label] Timeisnow with the cartoon artwork, it’s every UKG label. It’s like, what’s that game? Cup Time or something? I think the scene is single-handedly keeping the rubber hose animation industry alive.”
Not one to mince words, Ben’s flyover mix is a fittingly sunshine-drenched up-tempo tear through contemporary UK garage. It marks his debut as Allen Hz, a handle he coined for his post-quarantine DJ sets and production. Prior to COVID, Ben produced house music and helped run Why Not?, a monthly open format dance night with co-conspirators Amy Pickett, Travis Stearns, Jim Frick, and Robert James. I recently caught up with Ben in his Northeast Minneapolis loft and studio. We talked about his turn towards UKG, the social and financial capital that powers its ongoing revival, and the genre’s slick new veneer that labels use to push records.
“It’s just cartoons, cartoons, cartoons...I guess it’s of its time right now, that whole aesthetic. I’m sure it makes it a lot easier for these label managers to put out records, because it’s like ‘let’s slap a Looney Toon on the record and call it a day, or let's turn these producers into characters and put that on the label’ or whatever...that’s why it’s so easy to find UKG now...it’s all self-referential...if you see the record cover, you know it’s UKG..sometimes you can hear this approach in the actual music, and not in a good way."
After months of digging, Ben emerged with new tracks and a deep historical knowledge of UKG, its influences, and its offshoots. With its roots in house music, the UK was primed and ready for the emergence of a faster, R&B-tinged variant. As with jungle, the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in the UK helped foster a vibrant scene where genres developed in conversation with each other.
According to Ben, UKG came “out of a party scene on Sundays where DJs played US and Italian house music sped up to cater to partiers coming out of raves and clubs from the night before. The UK producers took the spirit of these house records and added their UK spin to it.”
After quickly finding commercial success, a state crackdown on clubs in the early aughts killed the scene. Attention turned elsewhere; UKG splintered, it got darker, more lyrically focused, and offshoot genres like grime and dubstep rose to prominence. Throughout the ‘00s, UK funky and bassline took up the mantle. Recently, renewed interest in UKG has led to a proliferation of new labels, producers, and reissues spearheaded by a new generation of passionate 2-step connoisseurs.
Reissue labels like Dr Banana helped set the stage for UKG’s revival. By shining a light on older tracks, they’ve brought renewed attention to the genre and put the music in front of an online, international audience. Other labels facilitate critique and discussion among listeners, DJs, and producers of the genre new and old.
“What really sucked me in is the community-oriented labels like Shuffle and Swing or Kiwi Rekords. These label heads host groups on Facebook and Discord for people to share rare and new UKG records, as well as their own productions for feedback.” This organic rise in prominence allows larger labels to capitalize on the renewed interest in the genre. In 2017, a Shall Not Fade sublabel called Lost Palms helped popularize the fuzzy tropical sound of lo-fi house through releases by producers like DJ Boring and Earth Trax. In 2020, Shall Not Fade launched Timeisnow, another sublabel with a genre-specific lean. UKG is the focus, and the label both takes advantage of and helps facilitate the revival. “I think they’re making a lot of money on this genre. [UKG is] selling like hotcakes, and they’re like ‘okay, let’s keep putting out shit, more and more shit.”
As a dance music obsessive and keen cultural observer, Ben keeps tabs on the UKG revival. He painstakingly crafted a mix that highlights the tensions in the genre, blending many new UKG releases with reissues of tracks first released in the nineties. The mix itself focuses on the lighter side of UKG. Ben described digging for the mix (with lighter tracks in mind) as a distraction from COVID.
“With the pandemic...I really fell in love with that lighthearted side of UK Garage, because it helped keep my mood normalized a bit. It was like therapy I guess, [listening to] really catchy UKG music that gets stuck in your head. I would wake up in the morning [with] a melody in my head, and I’d be like ‘I need to find this melody’ because I’ve heard it within the past two or three weeks in a mix...sooner or later you come across it and you’re like, ‘That was it! That was the track that I’ve been obsessed with or hearing in my head for weeks.’”
“All About U” is one of those tracks. In this bouncy reinterpretation of Mýa’s smoldering 1998 R&B hit “It's All About Me,” Wilfy D chops up and lays out Mýa and Sisqó’s vocals over a 2-step beat and an understated piano melody. The track’s subtle bassline is in stark contrast to that of DJ Swagger’s “On The Block,” which could’ve been ripped from a Seinfeld interstitial.
Next, Ben goes darker; he brings in the reverb-laden dancehall toast on Main Phase’s “Nice ‘N Sweet,” which he follows not long after with busy and stuttering percussion on “Move 2 Me.” That Pluralist track features a dark, potent bassline and chopped Charlie XCX vocals, and is followed by Anz’s “Unravel in the Designated Zone,” a UK Funky track with a sour G-funk synth line. These tracks keep the mix in conversation with some of UKG’s offshoot genres. Only when the bass hook from Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” (famously sampled by A Tribe Called Quest for “Can I Kick It?”) comes in on MILq’s “Hybrid Vitality” does Ben return to the lighthearted vibes he opens with.
Throughout the mix, percussion is syncopated, plentiful, and in the foreground. This maximalist approach to drums draws Ben to UKG. “The percussion is very dense, but it’s all perfectly sequenced in a way that can create a groove...you can’t even place what is happening at once, it’s all happening so quickly...every percussion sample is cutting off the other percussion samples, but there are a million different percussion samples happening at the same time. That’s what fascinates me about the genre, the crazy amount of detail that goes into those UKG beats.”
Ben dug deep to piece together so many upbeat UKG tracks. In comparison to UKG from the nineties, he describes the newer stuff as “a lot darker, and it’s a lot heavier, bassier...and more focused on sound design.”
“There aren’t a lot of artists [who] are producing newer music [how] producers were making UKG in the 90s, which was a lot lighter and melodic R&B influenced...with this mix, I wanted to find those artists [who] are making that type of lighthearted fun danceable UKG music. It was kind of a challenge, because there’s a lot of darker stuff that’s being put out right now...it’s not just that warm summer sound, that sunny UKG vibe that I want to explore. I want to explore the deeper aspects...then there’s the sick, darker, sound system-oriented stuff. I have tons of that stuff that I really want to mix.”
He’ll have a chance to do that soon. Allen Hz makes his live debut at Bliss on Saturday, October 9th at Part Wolf in Cedar-Riverside, Minneapolis.
Tracklist:
DJ South Central - Really Got Me [Nice 'N' Ripe, 2000]
Peaky Beats - Delicious [Peaky Beats Records, 2019]
Tiago Walter - Dat Girl [JISUL, 2020]
The Heavyweight Kru - The Drea-MM [1999]
Interplanetary Criminal - Who On Da Mic [Timeisnow, 2020]
Zero FG - Knock Knock [Entity London, 2019]
PROZAK - Sunshine [Timeisnow, 2021]
Strickly Dubz - Realise [Strickly Dubz, 1999]
DJ Swagger - On Tha Block [Timeisnow, 2020]
Wilfy D - All About U [Vitamin D, 2020]
Main Phase - Nice 'N' Sweet [Dansu Discs, 2020]
DJ Swagger x DJ ÆDIDIAS - Don’t Call Me [Timeisnow, 2020]
Pluralist - Move2Me [Panel, 2020]
Anz - Unravel In The Designated Zone [OTMI, 2021]
MILq - Hybrid Vitality [Punchline, 2020]
Pinder - Forever [Instinct, 2020]
Moodswing - New Direction [Obstacle Records, 2019]
Soul Mass Transit System - I Cant Wait [Dr Banana, 2021]
DJ Swagger - Smartphone Love [Thirty Year Records, 2020]
DJ Perception - Groove Me [Timehri Records, 2021]
Jhelisa - Friendly Pressure (From Midnight Mix) [Dorado, 1998]
Follow Allen Hz: SoundCloud / Instagram