Inflo is almost ubiquitous in UK music despite most not knowing his name or who he is. Many would be surprised to know he is the leader and main producer of the band SAULT, a band known for their intersection between neo-soul, chill-hop, funk, and UK rap.

In the last 6 years, Inflo has  produced a critically acclaimed string of albums, starting with Michael Kiwaunka’s Love & Hate, Jungle’s For Ever, Little Simz’s GREY Area and Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, and most recently, Adele’s 30.

With the last two aforementioned albums, Inflo has credits on two of the five albums nominated for BRIT Awards’ album of the year.

He has also produced albums for fellow SAULT member Cleo Sol, both Rose in the Dark and last years Mother. 

Not only is he the first Black artist to win in this award category, but indeed the first non-white person to win it at all.

“There is no one more deserving of this award”, says rapper Little Simz.

“Flo is a true creative in every sense of the word. Music is in his DNA. He really loves, lives and breathes this.”

Speaking of the win, Inflo says “I feel honoured to be a part of change.

“All the Black producers before me, I’m in awe and have studied you. I am you. Thank you for both paving the way and for your integral contribution to British music.”

The award, traditionally given to producers of rock and indie music, including producers like Paul Epworth, Brian Eno, and Peter Gabriel, is now being increasingly given to artists of electronic and hip-hop music. 2020 saw Fred Again win the award, an artist who went on to produce for drill artist Headie One. Now with Inflo, we are seeing the industry increasingly recognise the underground music emerging from the UK.

This years BRIT Awards is to be the most ‘inclusive’ iteration of the ceremony, with the erasure of gendered categories for the Best Artist catergories, along with more female artists nominated than ever before. Voting for the BRIT Awards closes on the 3rd of February and can be found here.

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After moving to Brockwell Park for 2018 and Drumsheds for 2019, they are moving back to their old stomping ground of Victoria Park in East London for the 15th anniversary. They first returned to the famous Victoria Park in 2021, which represented a homecoming after they missed out on Summer 2020. The 2021 edition sold out in February, even when the UK was deep in lockdown with no end in sight, showcasing the festivals popularity in the scene.

The previous time the festival was held in Victoria Park was 2017, a day which hosted an impressive variety of acts including Death Grips, Flying Lotus, Run The Jewels, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and a headline act from Aphex Twin at the massive Barn stage.

Acts to perform at 2022’s Field Day include Floating Points, HAAi, Kareem Ali, Otik, and Tourist, as announced in November last year alongside the headliners, Kraftwerk and The Chemical Brothers.

A few artists on this line-up are returning acts, such as Moodymann who performed at the 2017 edition and Floating Points who performed a live set at the 2019 edition in Brockwell Park.

On their website, Field day revel in their return: “Field Day festival is set for a glorious homecoming, with Victoria Park in East London unveiled as the location for this year’s anticipated show. Taking place on Saturday 20th August 2022 as part of the APE Presents programme, the festival will showcase some of electronic music’s most revered artists.”

Gareth Cooper, Field Day’s Director, said: “Off the back of a successful year last year, we’re delighted Field Day is returning to Victoria Park to celebrate its 15th edition.

“This year will be our biggest yet and we’re excited to welcome two of the most iconic acts in the history of electronic music to the festival, as well as a selection of the most ground-breaking artists in the industry.”

Tickets for the festival have been on pre-sale since November and are already on their fifth release, although these tickets are now likely to sell out after this new line-up announcement. You can buy tickets on their website here.

Taking place during the June Bank Holiday weekend, from the 2nd to the 4th, Creamfields South will align with the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Other headliners include Andy C, Patrick Topping, Maya Jane Coles, Pete Tong, Charlotte de Witte, Jamie Jones and Amelie Lens.

Additionally, Creamfields South will host Eric Prydz’ HOLO show. His last show of this kind in London, EPIC 5.0, held at Victoria Park, was a dizzying array of visuals and lasers, which came with the promise that it would “blow your head off”. It is hard to argue that he didn’t deliver on this promise, considering the footage taken from that event. The HOLO show will surely try to 1up his already high standards.

Taking over Hylands Park, Creamfields South in Chelmsford will host over 50,000 people, despite being shorter than its Northern counterpart in Daresby. The steelyard stage alone will hold 15,000, a stage purpose-built for Creamfields flagship festival and has previously hosted another massive Eric Prydz show. Creamfields has also gone further afield than England, holding events in  Chile, Ibiza, Abu Dhabi, Malta, and Argentina, as well as numerous others.

From their wesbite, Creamfields say of the upcoming festival: “Creamfields, one of the world’s biggest electronic promoters, have revealed plans for an all-new 50,000 capacity two-day camping festival in 2022 which will see them bring their award-winning festival South, taking over the stunning Grade II listed Hylands Park for Creamfields Chelmsford.

“With the iconic Hylands villa as its backdrop, the multi-stage festival will also give fans the chance to experience the colossal 15,000 capacity Steel Yard superstructure is scheduled to take place on Friday 3rd and Saturday 4th June Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend, which has been moved to a four-day weekend next year to celebrate her Majesty the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

“Creamfields Chelmsford is an exciting new addition to the UK Festival calendar and for fans in particular who can expect an all-star line-up of dance music heavyweights to be announced.”

See ticket information here.

The COLORS series, a product of the German-based ColorsxStudios, is the ideal platform for an artist like Skiifall, whose golden years are soon to come. The platform is unique for their wide variety of artists from all modern genres and styles. On their website, this ethos is stressed: “In the context of an increasingly fragmented and saturated scene we seek to provide clarity and calm, offering a minimalistic stage to shine a spotlight on the artists and give them the opportunity to present their music without distraction. All colors, no genres.”

The series, which features artists solo against a monochrome background, is unique in providing the bare minimum for a music video, simply featuring the artist(s), some musical equipment, and little else. Rather than NPR’s Tiny Desk series that features artists atop a cluttered backdrop and foreground, and BBC’s Live Lounge which mimics a live concert, the COLORS shows force the viewer to focus only on the music and the monochrome backdrop that typifies the aura (hence the COLORS name).

Also unlike other live music channels on YouTube, COLORS offers the videos up on streaming platforms, with each performance spawning its own single. The shows potential to launch careers is anything but a speculative remark; Chartmetric researched the growth of particular artists after their featuring on COLORS, showing that artists who featured on the platform averaged a 3.5% growth after the feature. In fact, Mahalia is quoted as saying COLORS was the moment that changed my whole career”, speaking to TIME. Up next on the platform is Dominican-Italian singer YEИDRY alongside Lous and the Yakuza.

Listen to Skiifall’s 2021 EP WOIIYOIE TAPES Vol. 1 below:

Despite its disuse in the courtroom as of yet, limits have been placed on the musical freedoms of drill artists, where Digga D among other rappers were under a CBO order that required them to submit lyrics to the police before their release. But now, the community is fighting back.

Civil liberty campaigners and activists alike have now pushed the CPS to perform a “listening exercise” to unpack how trials can be unfairly affected by drill lyrics, as well as stereotypes around Black men. Nick Federici, a youth worker at the Pythian Club, told the BBC that drill is misunderstood as a cause of violence: “Drill is just the youth expressing themselves,” he said. “Drill doesn’t cause crime in deprived areas. It’s poverty, it’s envy, it’s so many other things going on, underlying issues.”

While drill may not directly caused violence itself in his belief, Federici acknowledges that drill may accelerate the occurance of inevitable violence: “Obviously if somebody gets on a song and calls my name out and tells me this and that, it’s going to provoke me,” he said.

Eithne Quinn is an academic from the University of Manchester, who has been a rap expert in court cases for a number of years. Her take is that “any new guidance to prosecutors that restricts the flow of rap into our courtrooms will be very welcome.

The fabric presents series is one of three series of compilation albums mixed by artists in the broad UK dance scene. The most recognisable of these series’, FABRICLIVE, is well known within the rave scene for its featuring of massive drum and bass artists, including LTJ Bukem, dBridge, Grooverider, and DJ Marky. Additionally, it includes other huge UK dance artists from garage, house, techno, and dubstep, with their last iteration in 2018 featuring Kode9 and Burial. This series ran from 2001 to 2018.

Conversely to the pedigree that FABRICLIVE has within the scene, fabric presents began relatively recently, in 2019, with its first artist being Bonobo. This release was, however, a hit, with a one of its bespoke tracks Ibrik becoming hugely popular despite never having a studio album release. Despite fabric presents relatively recent history, it has still hosted some huge artists, including Chase & Status, Overmono, and Maribou State.

Leon Vynehall is still shimmering from the success of his last album, Rare, Forever, a record that found its way into many of 2021’s end of year lists. A record that saw him move away from the house that defined him, he displayed his myriad of influences from outside his familiar genre, with the first track “Ecce! Ego!” sounding as if it were lifted from an early Boards of Canada album. More possessed by movements and motifs, the album was a refreshing shift in style that built on the experimental tendencies of his previous record, Nothing is Still, that at times felt more of an experimental jazz record than anything close to resembling UK house.

His new single, “Sugar Slip (The Lick)”, is a comparitive return to form, yet still an experimental endeavor with a pulsing beat and stabbing synths. Released by fabric records, the single is to feature on the upcoming fabric presents mix blended by Vynehall.

His last compilation album came in the form of a DJ-Kicks mix, which displayed a stunning variety of artists from distant genres, including Haruomi Hosono, AFX (Aphex Twin), and Ellen Fullman. Heres hoping his fabric presents mix revels in a similar disregard for genre convention.

The teaser created a significant amount of hype, spawning its own memes and reaction videos. The track samples G-Units “Stunt 101″ for which the track is named in homage to. Digga even interpolates the flow of 50 Cent from the track, borrowing his signature gansta rap flow in a departure from his usual drill style.

‘Pump 101′ is unique for a track that borrows so much from another, as it is a playful departure from what we have come to expect from Digga and the drill scene at large. Perhaps this will start a trend of drill artists looking back to older styles of rap for inspiration, within a genre that many long-term fans believe to be growing stale.

The track was announced after a minor controversy where many thought that Digga D had been arrested by Emirati authorities. He was trending on Twitter for a number of days as reports suggested he was facing life imprisonment for stabbing someone while on holiday there. Amongst the confusion, Digga cleared up the matter, saying that while he did get arrested, he was not involved in any criminal activity and released without charge.

Many suspected this to be a publicity stunt, with some pointing fingers at Digga’s management who they suspected ran false stories and circulated rumours of a possible sentence in order to generate hype around his name on the eve of this tracks announcement. These suspicions come without much evidence, however, as it was true that Digga was in fact arrested. It is more likely that rumours of life imprisonment spawned from the original fact of his arrest, given Dubai’s reputation in the West of having harsh sentencing laws.

“Pump 101″ is available to stream and can be listened to below:

ready for some performers? here’s who will be taking to The BRITs stage:@Santandave1@DojaCat@edsheeran@HolHumberstone@liamgallagher@LittleSimz

+ more to be announced

don’t miss The #BRITs on Tuesday 8 Feb on ITV (UK) and https://t.co/QjEmDoNxZW (International) pic.twitter.com/8sUq91d90T

— BRIT Awards (@BRITs) January 21, 2022

This year’s BRIT Awards will be held on Tuesday the 8th of February on ITV and on their YouTube channel, which can be accessed here.

The awards ceremony is becoming increasingly digital and social-media oriented, with a new public voting system taking place on TikTok. Covered here on mxdwn by Izzy Eddies last month: “Voters will be free to access the ‘BRIT hub’ specialised voting platform via the organisations Tik Tok on January the 20th and will be free to cast their votes until the 3rd of February.”

On top of this, the 2022 iteration will be perhaps the most inclusive we have seen the BRIT awards, “with there being more female artists on the shortlist of nominees than we have encountered in more than a decade.” Additionally, Jack Whitehall stepped aside from the presenter role to allow newcomer Mo Gilligan to present, alongside Maya Jama and Clara Amfo (see featured image).

Nominations for the award ceremony were revealed in December last year, with Dave and Little Simz taking the biggest swoop of four nominations each. Both their albums, We’re All Alone in This Together and Sometimes I Might Be Introvert respectively were huge international successes deserving of the highest acclaim within the UK.

Of the nominations, Little Simz said: “It’s an honour to be nominated for 4 BRIT Awards and I can’t wait to be performing on the night too. I’m so happy and grateful the music has connected and resonated. Congratulations to everyone nominated.”

Other nominees for this years BRITs include Central Cee, who controversially won the inaugural Best Drill Artist award at the MOBOs, and Tion Wayne and Russ, whose hit ‘Body’ became the first drill track to reach No.1 in the charts. These three artists owe much of their success to TikTok, whose music went viral as sounds on the platform, so it is fitting for the BRIT Awards to be incorporating TikTok into their electoral system.

Voting for the BRIT Awards closes on the 3rd of February and can be found here.

The surreal music video is a dizzying collection of snapshots; shadows, silhouettes, and crowds meander and duplicate themselves into grids and gauzes. It is hard to tell if Mr. Rakei himself makes an appearance in the video, all the more adding to the music video’s disorienting feel.

Directed by BWTV, the video for “Shadows” emulates their previous video-making styles, comprising of distorted clips in a retro style, though typically such clips will be overlayed on footage of artists. Their video for Man of Moon’s “Strangers” video read like a broken VCR tape, whose real had been sunburnt only in the best, most aesthetically pleasing spots. Their style befits artists like Bonobo, whose staccato deep house drums befit the choppy visual style.

Bonobo’s Fragments album is his first in four years, since 2017s Migration that landed him a number one spot on the dance album charts. Certain album singles that were release prior to Fragments went on to see huge popularity and acclaim, with “Rosewood” alone earning a number three spot on Spotify’s Best Electronic Songs of 2021.

Speaking on the album, Bonobo discusses the sonic influences that went into this project: “It’s all come full circle now — that emotional rave music. I think there’s some really fun stuff happening at the moment; this resurgence of breakbeat, like the slow, deconstructed junglist kind of stuff.” In an interview with DJMag for their cover feature last year, Bonobo praises Overmono with spearheading this new, welcome trend in UK dance: “They’ve done some amazing stuff. I love that approach to it, where it’s stripped down but emotional… it’s almost a throwback to people like Mike Paradinas, that Rephlex era of breakbeats. That was something I was into.” 

Listen to Bonobo’s Fragments below:

Opening for Field Day 2019, a timeless rendition of the event featuring Skepta, Earl Sweatshirt, Death Grips, and HOMESHAKE, it has since operated as a solo venue, albeit for a shorter amount of time that anyone would have hoped for. The decline of London’s venues is a well-documented and saddening phenonemon, a cultural trend that the Drumsheds had hoped to counter. A new, large venue in a city where these sorts of venues were only decreasing in number was supposed to be a minor source for hope, but with COVID piling on there seemed to be no other alternative.

The ambitious venue combines 10 acres of outdoor space with four interlinked warehouses, all featuring separate acts when operating at its full potential. As it is an appropriate distance from residential properties – situated on the old industrial area of the Tottenham marshes – music can play on until much later than residential venues. The venue was part of the Meridian Water project in Enfield, a £6 billion fund to regenerate the formerly-industrial marshlands into a cultural and creative hub.

Promoters The Hydra were supposed to host their Not To Be event on the 18th of December, yet this was postponed until the 29th of January. The event, featuring Four Tet, Floating Points, Jon Hopkins, and Joy Orbison, will be the Drumsheds last. This sad announcement was made on The Hydra’s Instagram, which you can view below:

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“Thank you for your patience while we’ve been working to reschedule our NOT TO BE show, which was unfortunately postponed in December,” the statement from The Hydra reads. “As many of you recognised, postponing the show wasn’t a decision taken lightly – but it was the right call and we appreciate the ongoing support.”

“After a great deal of negotiation, we’re pleased to finally inform you that the show will now be going ahead on Saturday, 29 January 2022 at The Drumsheds.”

Tickets for Not To Be can be bought here.