Wiley, Remixed.

Wiley is on the up and up, I tell’s ya. Our boy from Grime City, aka. East London has been making waves of late. The widely-held and oft self-proclaimed ‘inventor’ of grime – that genre typified by complex 2-steps and strange and stranger samples (read: the extravaganza of sound on Wiley’s most recent LP ‘See Clear Now’; taking in everything from 80s Bee Gee-esque disco to the dulcet tones of Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor) – is back, but not returning through the usual avenues. Instead, Wiley has announced his return to the scene with a couple of well-timed, well-thought-out cover/mashup/remixes that, staying true to the modus operandi of all that is grime, take the boundaries of rap and push them that little bit further. Thanks to a couple of nifty remixes on the following two, Wiley will be heating up your summer (as if you needed any more mercury) or Snowmageddon for a while to come.

The first I came across his collabo with Riton and Primary 1 was yesterday afternoon as, having had my faith in commercial radio renewed by a rejuvenated Nova 969, I was banging along back from the beach in a rejuvenated Honda 1989 Civic (thank you Mr I’ll-hit-your-car-but-leave-my-details!) At first, I was almost 100% sure it was an old Presets track. On later, closer inspection with brother J as a confirming figure, we discovered that it has pretty much identical undertones to our favourite Australian electro duo’s ‘Kicking and Screaming’. In a world where ‘it’s hard to be original anymore’ (sigh, cynics), one can’t help but pick out obvious sonic influences. Whether this particular influence borders on that kissing cousin of copyright law (aka intellectual property theft) remains to be seen. Still, the Presets track was a ripper and, adopting equal part Presets, equal part Sidney Samson was bound to be a hit. Sprinkle a little Wiley and you’ve got something as club-ready as they come.

Riton and Primary 1 (Wiley Re-edit) – Who’s There

Doing a tad of research into Riton, their Primary and other assorted things (who the fuck thought that douchebag name up?), I came across what is a relatively more recent (the Preset appropriation circa Sep/Oct 09) effort on Wiley’s part and, given to personal biases as I am, my favourite of the two. That fact might well be contingent on the simple truth that the song covered, a one-hit-wonder for White Town in 1997′s ‘Your Woman’ is one of my all-time moderate-obscuro faves. While I could never get past the fact that lead vocalist Jyoti Mishra is a guy crooning ‘I could never be your woman’ (something I didn’t have the guts to delve too deeply into back in the early 00s), the violin line on that thing is a beast, near-equivalent to the mastery of The Verve’s ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, I reckon. With the rethink has come the dropping of the strings, a (perhaps more fitting) female chorus line and a couple of Wiley verses which somehow, in their incongruous beauty, manage to offer the perfect fit. Mixed by Englishman Herve, this is the more cohesive remix of the two doing the rounds (soz Shy FX). Well good.

Wiley ft. Emeli Sande (Herve Re-work) – Never Be Your Woman