(HIJINXX/Island)
The Bradford producer confidently tethers her breakbeats to a pounding four-to-the-floor kick drum – which would have been unheard of in the 90s – on a pop-facing, innovative record
Judging by the cameraphone footage, Nia Archives’ support slot at the last of Beyoncé’s 2023 London gigs was not an unqualified success. Archives has suggested she “got a lot of hate for playing jungle” at the show: the audience certainly look like it’s the last thing they want to hear. Then again, you could divine a lot from the fact that she was there at all: drum’n’bass producers from Bradford rarely attract the attention of US superstars, but Nia Archives did. Born Dehaney Nia Lishahn Hunt, she counts Goldie among her mentors and currently seems to occupy a roughly equivalent position in the firmament of “next-gen junglists” – her phrase – as he did in the 90s drum’n’bass scene: a striking, charismatic figurehead for a genre traditionally lacking in striking, charismatic figures, dance producers seldom being as exciting or intriguing as the music they make.
Moreover, she clearly wants to do the thing that no 90s d’n’b producer did and become an actual pop star. Two EPs, 2021’s Forbidden Feelingz and last year’s Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against tha Wall, underlined her qualities as a producer well versed in her chosen genre’s past but not in thrall to it: the fantastic 18 & Over and Baianá’s skilful reboot of the samba-infused d’n’b style pioneered by Brazil’s DJ Marky were built to unite 20-something ravers and sniffy superannuated original junglists alike. But they also offered up tracks that posited Archives as a singer-songwriter, a weightier counterpoint to PinkPantheress’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it breakbeat pop.
