Choice Mix: Swing Ting

“Bassline has obviously always been popular up north, but it felt like it existed in its own little pocket. While it definitely didn’t need any help from us, something happened when UK funky rolled around where we started to join the dots between that, 130 BPM bashment and garage.” Ruben Platt is explaining how he and Balraj Samrai arrived at their unique sound as Swing Ting.

Citing garage producer Mosca and bashment crew The Heatwave as key figures, the pair saw a new niche developing in 2008 and wanted to know more. “The first time that bassline really clicked for me was when I heard Toddla T play it at [Manchester bashment club] HOTMILK, alongside dancehall, hip hop, garage and grime,” says Samrai. “We started picking bassline bits up in second hand and charity shops [after that].”

HOTMILK was started by residents Joey B, Amanlikesam and Bobby Irish, who schooled the pair on ’80s and ’90s dancehall riddims and inspired them to dig deeper. Samrai’s job at Manchester record shop Fat City made it easy. He and Platt had access to label re-issues as well as up-to-the-minute riddims: from Johnny Osbourne hits to labels like Donovan Germain’s Penthouse Records. At the same time, the pair were also sweating it out at Leeds’ West Indian Center, a focal point for Caribbean and British bass-led sounds in the Midlands. (They would make the monthly journeys there for the dub and roots party, SubDub, and the DMZ label party, Exodus.)

“The soundsystem, crowd and vibes were so on point,” remembers Samrai. “Those days have definitely stayed with us. It was accessible and fun, yet there was an acute musical focus, too.” Platt nods in agreement. “The West Indian Center was my first experience of a proper, proper soundsystem,” he says, with a strong Yorkshire lilt. “It definitely planted a lot of seeds about how we felt club nights should be.”

Inspired to play their favourite “street rave” sounds within a soundsystem framework, Platt and Samrai decided to host their first Swing Ting party in December 2008. Seven years later, bringing uptempo UK ravers into a Caribbean-influenced party remains the core. “We’ve created a style in which we play funky house and bashment together, and then apply dance music techniques to playing hip hop music,” Platt explains. “We use loops of instrumentals to transition from one track to another, so we can get to a place where we’re comfortable mobbing through various styles and tempos.” Samrai admits that they’re “not really turntablists,” but that their style is more of a teasing out: “mixing and blending in a dance music style.” Joey B, one of the HOTMILK resident DJs, is now also behind the Swing Ting decks, and they praise him for his ability to “sharp-cut and drop” 45-inch dancehall and bashment singles, which complements their more dance and hip hop ways.

Then there’s MC Fox, the buoyant host. They met at a HOTMILK dance in 2010, and Fox was MCing at Swing Ting within a year. A resident of Kingston, Miami, New York and Manchester, Fox has been embedded in dancehall, jungle and hip hop, moving between dialects and tempos with an impressive ease. “If you play certain records, whether it’s Ninjaman, Busta Rhymes or Tubby T, he’ll immediately start singing and rapping along perfectly,” marvels Samrai. “As DJs, this is great for us: we can weave in and out of different styles, but he’s able to be the constant for the crowd. It’s hard to imagine Swing Ting without him now. He binds everything [about the party] together.”

Also binding the party together is the label of the same name. It came about from “wanting to give an outlet to great music that we were playing at the party, but didn’t seem to have a home” and served as a testing ground for Samrai and Platt’s own productions.

There’s also an impressive catalogue of cohorts, including the Equiknoxx Crew, based in Kingston, who reached out to Swing Ting after hearing “Bad Riddim.” There’s been a close production bond ever since. “I’m flying out to Jamaica this week to hang out, party, eat, trek and hit the studio with Equiknoxx,” says Samrai with excitement, “so hopefully you’ll be hearing more UK and Jamaican hybrid sounds on the label really soon.”

Although the Equiknoxx crew are their homies, Jamaica is just one place that they’re musically drawn to: in forthcoming Swing Ting releases and in their ever-changing party sets, the “street rave” sounds of the mid-’00s UK underground that they came from have been folded into the sounds of Jamaica, Trinidad, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. “Many people have said to us that they see Swing Ting as more of a party than a club night, and I think that’s definitely a compliment,” says Platt. “We know our shit musically, but we know how to throw all the extra elements together in a way that leaves people smiling.”

Listen to Swing Ting’s Choice Mix on RBMA Radio here.