TNGHT

Scotland’s wunderkind Hudson Mohawke and Canada’s Lunice managed an incredible feat in 2012: the electronic producers, who have both been making waves for a few years now, got together and created a handful of productions that tapped into a moment shared by both the UK and US club scenes. From their instrumental hip hop and glitchy bass backgrounds, they managed to meet commercial hip hop somewhere in the middle: at dubstep’s successor, trap. Of course trap music has been around for yonks, having originated in Southern US hip hop, but what TNGHT managed to do was freshen it up; expertly so. Suddenly, every club – whether underground or mainstream, whether in the US or Europe – was playing their tracks ‘Higher Ground’ and ‘Goooo’ from their self-titled EP. Even when I went to see gigs from chart-bothering rappers like Kanye West or experimental electronic music like Flying Lotus, they were all dropping these massive basslines; these choppy, infectious basslines were ubiquitous. I’ve seen both HudMo and Lunice separately multiple times, but only managed to see TNGHT once before their recent hiatus: at Field Day 2012. Here they absolutely smashed it with the best set of the weekend, effortlessly fusing off-kilter beats and sparse sound effects with those massive, trademark basslines. Seeing a few thousand people bouncing and swaying as if their legs were made of jelly, hands thrown in the air, was pretty special. Here’s hoping the kings of modern trap reunite ASAP.

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