In a general sense, grime is generally not thought of as party music, especially the melody-focused brand championed by Rabit and Visionist in recent years. It’s not necessarily after-club music in the night bus variety either despite the fact that it elucidates a neo-futuristic urban landscape better than just about any other form of electronic music. That doesn’t mean it can’t function in either of those settings though. Northwest London’s Dark0 proves that squarewave-based instrumental grime can soundtrack a night out with aplomb. It just might be a night where you got entirely too faded. With an ear for early grime producers like Davinchi and Maniac, Dark0 has a keen ear for the canon’s classics, but that’s the point where he stops looking back.

Last year’s Zero mixtape saw him matching classic acapellas with his brightly melodic, synth-focused productions, showings his ability to adapt the old and the new with a refined hip hop aesthetic. 2013 also saw the release of the I Ain’t A Sweet Boy EP, a more concerted effort that added blistering percussion to his shimmering melodic prowess. Last week, the adeptly titled Sin EP hit the streets, Dark0’s biggest release to date, disseminated by the aforementioned Visionist’s Lost Codes imprint. Sin is a large record in more than just its scope, adding a rough hewn amphetamine edge to his already efined template  To celebrate the release, he laced us with a 30 minute mix detailing in blurry cognizance a night out, matching distinctive grime instrumentals with some of the funnest rap tunes to come out in recent years. It’s a fragmented 30 minute journey through Juicy J chant-alongs at the club, bleary-eyed public transpo rides and the eventual attempt to piece together the events of the previous night. In this context, Dark0’s take on melodic grime makes the connection between the before, during and after of the club experience and while the individual components might come off as incomprehensible, the whole makes perfect sense.

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