Black Rave Culture - Black Rave Culture Vol. 4

Blending together music from across the Black diaspora, the trio were intent on reclaiming dance music from its gentrification across the globe. Even their name, Black Rave Culture, felt radical.

That moment of change never arrived. Six years on and, if anything, we’ve gone backwards with the retrenchment and amplification of reactionary politics across the globe.

But that hasn’t dulled the revolutionary vision of Black Rave Culture. As their latest transmission, ‘Black Rave Culture Vol. 4’, testifies, the sounds of Black diasporic music are just as potent now as they were then.

The record is a celebration of Black dance music in all its shapes and sizes. We have everything from the groovy summertime house bounce of ‘Smoke Em Out’ to the dubby syncopated swing of ‘Herengracht’ to the compressed East Coast breaks on ‘Urban Classix’.

The net is wide here — they draw from footwork on ‘Geekin’ and a mix of amapiano and UK garage on ‘Fried Behavior’ (also check out the baile funk meets sultry house on the VIP version of the latter).