Bullet Tooth and the Bootleg Boom
Nathan Evans' UK garage and club music column covers the latest songs, remixes, bootlegs, mixes and albums that capture his attention. This edition features an interview with mysterious new bootleg shipper Bullet Tooth, a weigh-in on the edits discourse from a UKG point of view and many Rinse FM shoutouts.
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Cover image credit: Bullet Tooth
Bullet Tooth and the Bootleg Boom
If you’ve been looking for a UK garage bootleg on Soundcloud over this past summer, there is a high chance you’ve come across a production from the hooded guise of Bullet Tooth. The producer, whose identity is not publicly known, has seemingly come from nowhere with a flurry of dark bootlegs of Jorja Smith, Chase & Status, Ms. Dynamite and more, and racked up unthinkable numbers for a newcomer.
He’s uploaded a new bootleg every few days and has done so for the past four months. Despite following no one on Soundcloud, he’s got some incredible connections. Certainly enough to appear on Conducta’s recent Rinse FM takeover and be the talk of Boomtown without being there in that short time span. His rise has coincided with an ongoing debate in the club music community around the value of unofficial remixes, and it’s interesting to see such a contrast between the fallout and his gain in traction. What’s his secret?
Questions have been swirling around his identity, with rumours that he’s from the drum and bass world. He’s almost certainly an already-famous name starting a new alias and swearing by self-confidentiality - when I asked for an interview, he insisted on wearing the balaclava in his profile picture.
“I’ve always liked dark, heavy tunes with a big bassline since I was a kid,” Bullet Tooth tells me. “I grew up on garage, jungle, breakbeat & hip-hop, so the heavier side of those genres has been ingrained in me since a very early age.” His sound is very testosterone-fueled, bringing in the percussive bite of drum and bass, dark garage basslines and gruff rap vocals that are used rhythmically and for added venom. After listening to a Bullet Tooth bootleg, the main quality you’ll remember is the sheer amount of force he puts into his productions.
“I never actually planned on doing the bootlegs,” he admits. “I made the “Booo!” one for fun and didn’t really think anything of it. I never actually finished it to be honest - the version that’s on Soundcloud was just an early bounce of the idea. It started to gain some traction so I thought I’d do another one the following week, and then it just continued.”
Intentional or not, Bullet Tooth clocked the popularity of bootlegs and has since saturated Soundcloud with them to great success. Again, Bullet Tooth has prior connections and is working them heavily, but his rapid ascent is indicative of the culture around bootlegs right now, where they are being made with regularity and marketed as heavily as original songs. Where Sammy Virji was, for example, known for many years for ‘Never Let You Go’ and other bootlegs released over the course of years, now producers can become known for an entire series of them.
Australian producer KE-YEN is using a similar strategy with his run of free download. “It started with me making music derived from tracks I liked but I ended up with a bunch of tracks and wasn’t playing many sets,” he explains to me. “So I thought, what’s the use of them just sitting with me? I released music that other artists could play in their sets regularly with the goal of building more of an audience on my platforms, mainly Soundcloud. Now I feel like I’ve built a decent audience [with the series] so I can now focus on original releases.” This may be what Zefer meant in my interview with him for NUKG Monthly when he said, “When I started out, I got told that being a ‘proper artist’ meant putting original music out. Now I’m seeing people build careers off of edits.” Edits, plural.
But this craze for bootlegs is rubbing some people the wrong way. This past month, a few choice tweets from Skee Mask and Sam Binga have caused a rift amongst DJs and club music goers. There’s been pushback on certain aspects of unofficial remixes, with the former tweeting that DJs are, “dropping some commercial bullshit mashup/edit of whatever songs they heard on the radio when they were still shitting their pants”, which Shawn Reynaldo has already covered. Binga’s addition to the discourse was simply, “too many bootlegs and they ain’t even interesting ones”, and there is truth to this.
One aggravating aspect of club music today is whenever a song comes out and manages to capture internet pop or club circles, producers rush out edits as though there is no time to spare. J Hus’ ‘Who Told You’ and Skrillex & Fred Again’s ‘Rumble’ are prime examples this year: ‘Rumble’ came out on 4th of January and there were edits by the 7th. ‘Who Told You’ came out on the 8th of June, edits were coming out on the 9th. That the turnaround got shorter later in the year illustrates how well-trained producers are getting to react to a song dropping that has set the internet abuzz. There’s no time to live with the song and build a bond with it, not enough to make an inventive or transformative remix of it. It’s low-hanging fruit and there’s obviously a market for it, but this slapdash, gimmicky approach to bootlegs contributes to the attitude that they are “lesser” than original tracks.
On a deeper level, there is a fault with the modern iteration of bootlegs that puts it at ideological odds with its original form. “Bootleg” started a colloquial term for a remix that wasn’t available officially or even widely. It was something transmitted through radio rips or super-limited hush-hush dubplates. Now, it’s been rewired to use its exclusive connotations as a means of marketing through reverse psychology. Aside from true bootlegs coming out labels like e2ca, it’s become a buzzword for what is just a garage edit, and doesn’t line up with the original definition in any way - they aren’t limited, they are actively promoted.
This very column is complicit in that redefinition of what a bootleg means with the ‘Speed Garage Bootleg of the Month’. I like to think my reporting on dubplate culture does well to let people know what it used to mean, at least.
Is the saturation of bootlegs killing the form and doing a disservice to the culture? While there are a few gripes currently, the overall effect they can have on the advancements of artist careers is still a net positive. Historically, a majority of UKG artists have broken through because of bootlegs, from Artful Dodger to Architects to so much of the bassline scene of the 2000s, and that’s still the same today. “I’ve discovered so many sick producers through bootlegs that I might not have come across otherwise,” Bullet Tooth says to me. “It’s allowing these people to get heard and make a career for themselves further down the line with original releases, bookings, records deals, et cetera, which is great.” As record labels seemingly continue to have tunnel vision of artists designed to blow up on TikTok, this is a huge win.
On an artistic level, bootlegs are an opportunity to change the perception of an artist’s sound, a remixed track or the listener’s tastes. “For me, the bootlegs are a chance to experiment with different vocals and genres and make something interesting that people wouldn’t have thought the original could sound like,” Bullet Tooth explains. The results show when done with enough effort to preserve the original soul of the track; while Skee Mask tires of underground artists playing pop edits, other artists like Four Tet embrace it, challenging the barriers between pop and underground music with loving edits of Taylor Swift. Personally, I love to see someone edit a song they love that not many people would think to touch, such as TEHN’s ‘KIM POSSIBLE’, salute’s edit of Claudia Telles’ ‘And I Love Her’ or Spooner’s ‘4AM (Speed Garage Mix)’.
With the accessibility of production software and the speed at which internet culture progresses now, there’s always going to be a flood of people looking to hop on a trend. But the cream rises to the top over time and the disposable bootlegs will quickly be forgotten, whereas the inventive ones will stick around longer. However, as bootleg culture reaches a peak in popularity, perhaps we should be mindful of exactly why they are so effective.
Mix of the Month: Timehri Records - Rinse FM (With Outlet Label), 12th August 2023
Timehri Records has recently done god’s work by creating a Discogs recommendation system that is infinitely better than the site’s paltry digging tools. The label’s Rinse FM show is a dub-blotched underbelly of UK club music. This month, they invited Kassel, Germany-based label Outlet, who cycles through their roster for an odyssey of mini-mixes that twist and turn between garage, dubstep, jungle and footwork.
Mixes that zigzag between styles often feel quicker than those that tunnel into single genres. But here, Outlet takes the genre-crossing so far that it horseshoes to the latter effect, as one minimix is succeeded with what feels like the polar opposite like a game of dominos played with magnets. Some sections sound like Ghost Phone if it was more pastel and flexed its dubstep muscles more, others like a smoke-up in an apartment you’ve never seen before.
Outlet’s resident garage head is Ease Up George; his mix sounds as if Gerdo G had more interplanetary tendencies. Organ-splicing London aesthetics are blended with shoegaze guitar, extraterrestrial tones and basslines nicked from dubstep and grime to bring the multiple sides of the capital together.
However, DJ State provides the highlight mix of footwork, trance and ambient pop edits that should be raved about on No Bells. He liquefies pop and hip-hop initially into murky, head-down footwork, then into the sort of vocally immersive edits you’d find on E+E’s Edited / Remixed (2008-2012) compilation. 21 Savage’s “X”, Nicki Minaj’s “Plain Jane” verse, Tyla Yawek’s “All the Smoke”, Timbaland’s “Give It to Me”, Taylor Swift’s “Karma”, 454’s “Florida” and Sonny Digital & Black Boe’s “My Guy” are all put in the same cauldron and regularly ducked for a quick breath of air. Finally, there’s a remix of ‘Fireflies’ by Owl City that adds a fast house beat with organ and piano to the original’s childlike wonder.
The only other true-blue UKG section comes a quarter way through the second hour before eventually turning into Aphex Twin worship. It’s all anchored by syncopated dub reggae keys; no matter what paths they venture down, they’ll always find the way back to home soil.
Pure Sleek - Shuffle ‘n’ Swing 004
Shuffle ‘n’ Swing started life as a Facebook page and has flourished into its own vinyl micro-brewery. The label’s latest export is a vinyl-exclusive EP from French producer Pure Sleek, a collection of stripped-back kicks and percs doused with suspense.
The first side shows off how he embellishes garage house with the sort of crime jazz that you could hear on the L.A. Noire soundtrack, be it the shimmers and sax hits that fold over the bundled-up bassline on “Wanna Get High”, or the flared marimbas that marinate in the double kicks on “Mystical”.
“The Other World” is the standout, and Ben UFO thinks the same way given his play of it on his August Rinse Show. Pure Sleek builds an airy drone that initially sounds like an ascending chord progression but cleverly becomes the rise into a breakdown that pumps like a ventricle with crisp hi-hats. An alien influence burns into the track with X-Files-like sound effects and Korg flecks that could have come from the astral plane. The black and white TV vocal sample that says, “Greetings from another world” adds a grainy texture to this otherwise unblemished track.
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk’s Soundtrack Brings Contemporary Club Music Full-Circle
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, the new video game by Team Reptile, was released this past month with a soundtrack featuring the likes of Hideki Naganuma, GRRL, Swami Sound and Knxwledge. Sitting at the dead centre of the PS2 generation in spirit, the soundtrack to this Jet Set Radio spiritual successor is housed in a radio station akin to EA Sports BIG, and I couldn’t be happier to see it exist.
It’s a full-circle moment for so many club music producers who grew up in this era of games. NUKG Monthly has reported on the connection between club music and video game soundtracks multiple times in 2023, from Hideki Naganuma’s influence on club music to how Yellow Magic Orchestra originated it all. Now, these independent artists have their music alongside Naganuma, and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk has hit it out of the park by doing this rather than the usual orchestral scoring, chiptune or major-label EDM.
The grasp of the nostalgia of Jet Set Radio and other soundtracks of its ilk is top-notch, with breakbeat funk from 2 Mello and Ethan Gethammer and the minimal 2000s hip-hop that the Neptunes, Timbaland and Scott Storch (BXTREME’s “AGUA”). Then there are the tracks that are curated so well that it reveals hidden influences within the artist. Having Color Plus’ Baile funk, GRRL’s electro and Swami Sound and Chediak’s track “Refuse” all simply make sense in the colourful and cell-shaded world of BRC. The funk does reek like a cheesy ringtone sometimes, but that’s part of the faithful recreation - it’s all the richer for it.
L’adila - Ride the Water (Big Ang Remix)
Nottingham label Wot U Sayin? treats bassline and garage with an outward love and as a sandbox for creativity never seen before. Their well-studied knowledge shows in their niche mixes covering certain sounds and time periods, yet their UKG: Chopped N Screwed mix and J-Organ, Vol 1 EP show they are putting together new ideas to see if they strike gold in ways no other label is even thinking of.
So to have Big Ang, the queen of bassline, remix a track for them, is the biggest co-sign they could have. Yorkshire-through-and-through Ang is one of few bassline producers to have transcended the scene and impacted the mainstream, and has become its iconic figure that embodied its Northern sense of sincere, unpretentious boisterousness. Big Ang lends her hand to L’adila’s “Ride the Water”, and retains a lot of the original’s signatures. The original’s popcorn bassline rollicks all the same, but Ang then marmalises into a sawtoothed variation on the same tune. An Ang remix is usually just a few touches, but here, she sits back and says, “I didn’t have to do much to it”.
Macarite - Clean Sweep EP
Manchester producer Macarite treats female vocals as a chic centrepiece on Clean Sweep EP. The sample material is bedheaded 90s R&B, but no vocal walks out without a touch-up of reverb and those delicious vocal runs. He shows a bit of teeth with alarm-like synth hits on “Crush”, but this EP is mostly a care package for those who want their diva house to still command a shuffle.
Vurbank - GOOD OL' GARRIDGE MIX
New York producer Vurbank (aka Vurb) has made a mix of 2000s garage to accompany his hyperactive new EP Spitstring. This oldies mix hops from track to track wallowing in the nostalgia like a pig in filth. Gilded hits from Tuff Jam, Todd Edwards and MJ Cole mesh with lesser-knowns from Crazy Bald Heads and Underground Solution. Plus, the ending is good memes.
Speed Garage Bootleg of the Month: AURAMATIC - JUST SKANK
A rare case where the most obnoxious bootleg is the finest. “JUST SKANK” by Manchester’s AURAMATIC is a weapon only to be deployed at the peak of the night. The beat brings along the ringing synths of the Lady Gaga OG right from the beginning, flooding your mind with images of sleaze and debauchery. AURAMATIC’s cheekiness shows in the rising synths that sound like they are about to peter out, until the drop locks you in like a game of seven minutes in heaven with the cast of Spring Breakers.