To follow up from the release of Scott Diaz’s Chancery Lane / On High, Strictly Flava turned to the skills of house and garage producer Qualifide.
Strictly Flava strive to push the boundaries in UK bass music and the brief to Qualifide was: “To experiment and do something different, that didn’t necessarily fit into a genre but still sounded like his style”. Matt thought about it for a while and the result was the ‘Deep End EP’. 4 tracks which embrace UK garage, house, Bass and grime.
Track one ‘Block Them’ in a nod back to Qualifide’s ‘Look Shook’ era, but with a soulful sample loop and well cut up hooks which subtly change throughout the duration of this groove making a unique merge of styles.
The title track ‘The Deep End’ has a sub bass designed to destroy sound systems, you are without doubt going to be drawn into this broken groove which is a cross between broken beat, garage and old skool 2 step.
Tracks three and four: ‘They Run’ and ‘They Run (Dub)’. These two versions are a trip back to the vintage US garage ‘Dub Mix’ sound with a trance like twist. A hypnotic synth hook loops throughout the duration, which is broken up with various spooky samples and well delivered drum edits & progressive drum programming.
Take a step back, listen to this EP well, as it is will take you straight into the deep end of Strictly Flava’s vision of the future of Bass music.