Words by Eddie STATS Houghton
There is definitely some kind of moment happening around soca these days–a cross-pollination of ideas from house and UK funky that is threatening to breed its own Trinitech genre. At the same time, the traditional groovy and road march categories of straight ahead soca are threatening to replace dancehall and one drop as the engines of innovation both in the Caribbean and abroad. Case in point: Germany’s Schlachthofbronx. If you’re the type that hangs out on Mad Decent, you already know that Schlachthofbronx are the cool kids from Munich, experimenters in both tropical bass and just-plain bass who get a lot of forwards on your hipper dancefloors. For their new EP, Mudders–which just dropped a few hours ago–they have turned their sensitive antennae towards the sounds of Carnival, coming up with their own distinctive, rave-y spin on the ever-changing soca genre (if you follow my Ghetto Palms column you may have heard me slip a sneak preview of two tracks from Mudder into this blend). So of course we had to go deep with them on their inspirations. The result was this Toppa Top 10 of Schlachthofbronx Carnival picks–including some LargeUp favs from JW & Blaze, Busy Signal and Lil Rick–and a few curveballs (the whole session kicks off with what sounds like more of an Oktoberfest fav). Enjoy, go cop the EP here and stay tuned for more on Mudders and Schlachthof’s soca fetish to come…