Elle Andrews lands on Rat Heart’s $hotta Tapes with a 70 minute drum odyssey arcing from cascading chimes to martial snares, drill, amapiano x post punk x footwork inversions into bare-boned UKG, dancehall and jump-up jungle. As far as we can tell the first properly released mixtape from MAL Recordings co-founder Elle Andrews - and it’s a real one, building from skeletal drums into full bodied rhythmic madness in a perpetual forward motion that seems to intensify endlessly despite persistently jerking outside the lines. Poised between two worlds - one where flawlessly mixed business often leaves us cold, and one where selection is everything - Elle basically manages to sound like someone running through all their secret weapons - one after another - somehow making them all shine. There’s no jive bunny grid-riding here, it’s loose as f*ck, a perfectly selected, multi-tempoed rinseout that plays the elusive trick of sounding both completely off-the-cuff and like it could have been planned and trimmed for years. For all the proclamations of so many contemporary "genre-agnostic" deejays who inevitably always end up playing it safe, this one really does sprawl into multiple directions without ever sounding contrived - just the sickest tunes, selected with deep knowledge and the tightest grip of yr energy levels and limb movements. An essential $hotta, no less. Elle Andrews: $hotta Tapes 017 - out now at boomkat.com