Grindie music: what happens when indie and grime collide

Beccy Lindon on the latest sound clash to gain ground in the capital

Thursday, 29 March 2007

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Genre-crossing collaborations can be a real hit and miss affair and the rock and rap fusion teeters on the edge of genius and heinous. The Americans have been mixing things up musically since Run DMC and Aerosmith in 1986, but the UK urban and indie scene have traditionally remained poles apart.

Then in 2006, London producer Statik turned out a couple of quality grime re-workings of Bloc Party and The Rakes tracks and everyone started hopping up and down in excitement. Statik promptly jumped on the positive feedback by coining the term "grindie" and releasing a mixtape where he threw grime MCs over Larrikin Love and Ladyfuzz tracks and had Pete Doherty handling the shout-outs. Statik declared that grindie was a new "movement" but there was something slightly incoherent and synthetic about the sound. In a time when music fans are searching for unprocessed singer-songwriters like Lily Allen and Mika, the cut-and-paste nature of grindie felt slightly uncomfortable.

Fast forward to 2007 and a new brand of grindie has slowly begun to emerge. Bands and artists who are genuinely influenced by both genres are giving birth to an energetic hybrid of grime and punk and the indie kids are eating it up.

London 20-somethings Hadouken! are paving the way with their savage first single "That Boy, That Girl". Poking fun at the same scene kids who are downloading it from the band's myspace page, the single is energetic, anarchic and most importantly, organic.

Lead singer, James Smith is a former grime producer who fell in love with the indie scene when he moved from London to Leeds to study art and design.

"Our music is essentially a fusion of indie, punk, post-punk, electro, grime and drum and bass and is a result of the eclectic mix of genres that we all enjoy as a band. I was into UK garage when I was younger and then grime and drum and bass later on. Then when I got to uni, I started to get into indie music and so all of those elements have naturally come out as I've been producing for Hadouken!."

Grime has had something of a love/hate relationship with the UK music industry. Created by 16-year-old kids on London estates at the start of the new millennium, grime started as a vibrant underground movement and quickly became the subject of every A&R man's wet dream. As the genre was courted by labels and music journalists, it was continuously being pummelled by politicians and the media with regards to its violent lyrical content.

What they failed to recognise was that grime provided an outlet for a frustrated but creative youth. Take away the lyrics and what you have is a sonic landscape that is both simple but emotive, dark but energetic.

Chris Reed aka The Plastician is a grime and dubstep DJ, producer and label-head of Terrorhythm Records. For him, the appeal of early grime was down to the open-door policy of the movement.

"Grime is street music so young people can relate to it. In the beginning, the appeal of grime is that the production was simple and that opened it up to a lot of people. The levels of production in UK garage at that time were so high that it was hard to get anywhere but grime was open to everyone. Even now, the people at the top level still have time for new producers and MCs, so anyone can come in and get involved."

Perhaps that's why the rest of the industry seems to be looking to grime to inject traditional genres with an edge. It's not just the indie scene that is cribbing from the grime sound. Camden-based Man Like Me's forthcoming single "Oh My Gosh", takes elements of grime and grinds it in a pestle and mortar filled with electro and pop and there's a clique of artists following suit. Despite the negativity that has often plagued it, it seems that grime possesses something everyone can associate with.

"I think the appeal of grime to artists right now is that it's cool. It has that link to the punk movement in the sense that it's rebellious, it's young and it's new. People don't know exactly where it's going so they want to buy into it," says Reed. "I worry that people see it as something they can exploit. It's an easy marketing tool because grime has been talked about so much in the press over the last couple of years. People are using it as a stepladder to get themselves noticed."

Smith on the other hand isn't stimulated anymore by grime in its current state. He finds more motivation in the pulsating indie scene but feels that the sonic elements of grime still have much to offer.

"There just isn't that much inspiring grime around at the moment. When we reference grime in our music, we take those elements of aggression, energy and momentum but leave aside the warring, violence and misogyny," he says. "I can't identify with gun lyrics so we reference everyday things that happen to us. We're upper-middle class white kids who are just talking about what's real to us."

Hadouken! see themselves primarily as an indie act with a predominantly indie fan base and are quick to distance themselves from the current grime landscape.

"The grindie tag is OK in the sense of our music as a mixture of those two words. I would say that's a fairly accurate description but if you start thinking of grindie as an actual scene that exists then you're definitely on the wrong road. Grime is just a sonic influence but we're not a grime act and we're not part of that scene, we don't give our tracks out to grime DJs."

Reed is equally unconvinced by the "grindie" tag. "Grindie will never be a scene. It's just indie that sounds completely different and whenever an artist is doing something original, people have to label it. These are just musicians that are trying to push boundaries and linking them to some kind of movement is a way of drawing attention to them."

"The fact that those kind of artists are linked to grime is important because it potentially opens up the spectrum to new listeners. If people associate grindie with grime then they might go further down that route and listen to real grime artists and that's good for the industry."

A glance at the all-important myspace friends lists of grindie acts such as Man Like Me, Hadouken! or Plan B reveals a fan base that leans heavily to the indie side. A scan over the faces and attire of their live audiences shows exactly the same thing. So why aren't the grime kids embracing grindie with equal force? According to Reed, it's down to narrow-mindedness.

"Listeners, supporters and those within the grime industry can be quite blinkered. Eighty per cent of these kids listen to hip-hop and grime is like "our" hip-hop. They won't ever have listened to an Oasis album or The Kooks so it's difficult to see how grindie could ever really break through."

Ben Drew, aka Plan B, is a Forest Gate rapper who has one foot in grime and hip-hop and the other in indie. He spits quick-fire lyrics about death, rape and drugs while playing guitar and then breaks into song, beautifully. His music is difficult to pigeonhole and his fan base is equally eclectic.

"The people that buy my music and come and watch me perform are people who don't give a fuck if anyone else likes it. They're in to whatever they're in to. I'm not part of any scene. I don't watch what else is going on around me and I just make music the way that I want to."

Like Reed, Drew believes that the lack of interest from grime fans is down to the tunnel vision of its core members.

"Grime is dead. It was formed by ignorant adolescents who had something raw but they didn't want to progress. They have this gangster mentality which doesn't allow them to open their minds to something new so the industry turned their back on them. Grime kids aren't interested in grindie because they can't be seen to be making music and mixing with white kids in skinny jeans."

Nonetheless, the grime and indie fusion is a musical force that is thriving and a new set of grime-influenced genres are following suit. Just what is it about grime that proves so enticing to music fans and artists across the spectrum? Smith's theory is that adolescents are joined together by their common frustration. Whether it be peer pressure to try drugs, anxieties about body image, gang-violence, the temptations of under-age sex or just how they can afford those new trainers, kids from all walks of life feel disaffected. Grindie takes the most obnoxious sounds from indie and the aggression of grime and marries them in an attempt to provide release for an irate audience.

"Nowadays mainstream indie is in the Top 10 and that's meant to be 'alternative' music but kids' dad's are going out and buying it," says Smith. "Kids want a bit of hostility and that punk element to music and I think that's where the grime element appeals to them. We're filling a gap in the market with something that kids can relate to."