During a period of enforced (but much welcomed) lack of touring as an in-demand DJ and club music hero brought about by a little global shitshow / internatty bread baking contest that was known in the trade as the COVID 19 pandemic Tesfa Williams aka T. Williams pka Dread D, like the best of us, found himself with time on his hands. Using it wisely T. spent countless hours reconnecting with and cataloguing his extensive vinyl record collection, diving headlong into 25+ years of rave music ranging from UK Garage and grime to jungle, d&b and everything in between. Listening to records end to end, trawling liner notes and generally doing it like it used to be done before the world became a much busier place and every piece of information and art in your life was served up to you algorithmically and in high-definition via a little black mirror.

Whilst embarking on this sonic journey through the past T also bought himself a futuristic new tool: an Elektron Digitakt, and got to work on a bunch of music unlike anything he’s made before. Love All You Squares is the opening transmission from Raves Of Future Past, his debut album for Purple City celebrating the underground culture he has been immersed in since day dot and conveniently (for marketing narratives) landing just in time for the anniversary of the twentieth year of his career as a producer and DJ, which all kicked off with the certified first wave grime anthem Invasion released on Jon E. Cash’s Black Ops imprint back in 2003.

Built during a flurry of creativity which was unlocked by his trip down a music history wormhole, the revelation that was his now trusty Elektron Digitakt and a Korg Triton he copped from UKG legend Wilfy D, Love All You Squares is a futuristic ode to a time long since gone and come back around only to be declared dead again... which is basically now Modus Operandi in contemporary rave history.

As such we have no idea what genre this is.

Melding sounds from grime, sublow and jungle with the meatiest of square wave bass lines Love All You Squares is T. William’s gunfinger salute to the original Eski sound, East London in general and the ravenous hordes of underground music nerd, bloggers, collectors and journalists who used to clog the aisles of Black Market Records, the doors of Boulevard in Ealing and pages of Dubplate.net before algorithms, Big Data and faceless streaming services turned the entire world into an infinitely looping 60 second Fred ..Again promo.

Is it a sound from the future? Is it a sound from the past? Does it really matter when it sounds this contemporarily banging?