UK-based listeners and the internet radio-savvy may have already come across Mr. Trick and Waxfactor’ Rhythm Incursions radio show on London’ Resonance FM, which for two years has seen the duo throwing anything from glitch remixes of Usher to The Bug’ violent dancehell into their unpredictable live mixes. Billing their show as “picking up where hiphop stops’, this second in a series of mix CDs reflecting the content and style of the show follows on the heels of recent guest mixes for both Ninja Tunes’ Solid Steel and XFM. With the duo apparently reaching a point where they felt it was time to unleash their “definitive’ mix, “Up The Anti’ represents the fruits of an entire year of work by Mr. Trick & Waxfactor and shows them throwing a headspinning 130 tracks into a one hour long party mix session (with absolutely no track information to tell you what’s coming next).
In this case, Mr. Trick & Waxfactor have fashioned a heaving, multivaried mashup mix that rolls with the force of an earthmover through alternating hiphop, dub and dancehall styles and is sure to delight heads enamoured with Solid Steel or DJ Rupture’ sweeping mix sessions. In fact, there’ so damn much going on in this mix (at one point, virtually every classic sampled hiphop callout seems to rear its head) I was hard-pressed to spot individual tracks, apart from suitably dub-heavy dancehall reworkings of Missy Elliot and Method Man’ “Release Yo’ Delf’. Above all, the focus here is upon maintaining a room-shaking level of bass-heavy groove – something that “Up The Anti’ accomplishes with perhaps more style and substance than any other mix session of its type I’ve encountered during the last year.
