Rudimental, Original Koffee & Winny - Send Shots

This is the most fun Rudimental have sounded to me in years, and I say that as someone who checked out around the third radio-friendly ballad. “Send Shots” drops the stadium-soul earnestness and remembers the crew came up making drum and bass that actually moves. Pulling in Original Koffee is the move that makes it — that unhurried Jamaican bounce that sits half a step behind the beat and drags the whole track into a swagger. Winny takes the faster bars and the two trade off like they’re winding each other up. Underneath, the drums do proper liquid-dnb business, rolling and warm rather than technical, with a bassline that hums more than it snarls. What I like is that nobody’s straining for a festival moment; the drop is almost polite, and the groove carries everything anyway. Rudimental have always been better when they let the low end do the talking instead of a key change, and this is them trusting the pocket for once. I’ve had it running through a whole afternoon of email and it never once faded into the background — every pass I catch a new little vocal ad-lib I’d missed. It’s the sound of a group that used to be inescapable remembering why they were worth chasing.

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