Sinden: Fabriclive 43: Get Familiar

Sinden: Fabriclive 43: Get Familiar | |
| Label: | Fabric |
| Format: | Album |
| Media: | CD |
| Release Date: | 2009 |
| Genre: | Club Music |
Speaking in DJ terms only, Londoner Sinden is sort of a house version of Diplo, a restless, traveler's DJ with an ear for primed-for-export dance music genres. Baile funk, Baltimore club, grime, South African house--it's all probably made its way onto Sinden's radio show, Fabric party, or into a Sinden remix, though his hit, the Kid Sister rhyming track "Beeper," felt pretty damn American. His DJ/production style is known in dance music circles as fidget-house, a quick-cut style that "fidgets" between genres, making it a sort of combo between proper house and more severely ADD mash-up styles.
His Fabriclive mix--though it's "presented" with Switch, it is very much Sinden's mix--isn't terribly house-y, instead dancing around genres with more of an interest in showcasing hits or hits-in-training than a unified style. Sinden introduces the mix with a pair of tracks that, unfairly, paint the thing as a hip-kid playground--a number from spastic novelty rapper Juiceboxxx and a bombastic party-rap track from Yo Majesty. The gems appear later on--Scottie B and King Tutt get a quick number in, the self-explanatory club track "African Chant," which Sinden follows up with two of his own remixes. "Township Funk," a jaw-dropping house track from South African DJ Mujava, gets made over in Baltimore club style, and he reworks a track from bhangra hybrid duo Tigerstyle.
Past the halfway mark, the mix segues nicely into a dubstep-themed section with solid tracks from steppers Skream, Zomby, and Caper before closing on an eerie, somnolent dubstep creep from UK dub-punk outfit Salem. It feels more like an epitaph to the mix than a proper part of it, but it's a satisfying close nonetheless.