“Who is Riffs and where did he come from?” are questions I’ve heard often these days, and to tell you the truth – I don’t know too much about this 22 y.o. producer from Bristol myself. Stumbling upon him during one of my many intriguing digital explorations for new sounds, I had a heightened “mind blown” moment when I went through his oeuvre on Soundcloud. Riffs is the man responsible for the track Don’t Leave Ur Girl Round Me, a track that appeared in a handful of mixes over the last couple of weeks and got quite a few people pulling their hair out and offering greenback for a track ID. Sampling the introduction to Murs’ “Bad Man” and tagged with “who gives a shit” it’s only fair to label this tune as future badman post-baller sounds, but to be a little more precise, the track could be described as heavyweight bass meets a bit of footwork meets everything you’d need to strike and damage a party after midnight. It will only be a matter of time before this sees a proper release, but until then we can collectively reduplicate the play count on Soundcloud. It’s definitely one of my favourite tracks I heard this year so far.

Don’t Leave Ur Girl Round Me by Riffs

The following track has been on Swamp81’s radar for a while, which is a lovely thing. “Windy City” is definitely a lighter song than aforementioned “Don’t Leave Ur Girl Round Me”; not only by atmosphere but also by different layers going on in the track (which you can also see in the waveform, but as we aren’t a blog about waveforms I can’t say more about it at this point unfortunately). The production is equally impressive however. On first listen I heard some subtle influences of a certain other Bristol bound producer, Riffs being his friendly alter ego. The first one to guess who I’m hinting at gets everlasting credits.

Riffs – Windy City by Riffs

Head over to Riffs’ Soundcloud here to find more tracks. “Tell A Trick” is the newest one which is on a bit of that Chicago tip, and once again the sampling is faultless. The big difference between this one and the two tracks I posted is that it’s way more melodious, but the bass is fairly unmistakable still (in a good way). “Fantasize, Be Denied” is a 808 ode to Beyoncé and her Jamaican sidekick, which you shouldn’t miss either. What am I saying? Just go to the first track and leave it play until you end up at “Clubadub”, then repeat, and repeat, then repeat again. Hey Usher, you think you’re a true player for real, yeah? Ask your nigga Pharrell though, but don’t leave your girl around Riffs.