Diggin’ In The Crates: Skream- January 2004 Mix

​Here's a treat for all of our readers out there. This is a very rare studio mix by Skream from January 2004. It's all his own tracks, but only a 4 track EP of them was ever released. This mix used to be hosted on a site called Big Apple Records, which was the first ever exclusively dubstep online record store (back before digital downloads were the norm), and really the only place you could get most of the early tracks on vinyl. Big Apple also pressed some of the really early dubstep tracks including the first releases by Benga, Skream & Loefah and was the only place you could really buy many of the dubstep records at the time from the dozen or so producers that were pressing it. The store closed down around 2005, because there weren't enough people buying dubstep records to make it worth it. This is also the reason why much of the earliest dubstep was never released, but just handed around between producers & DJs who knew each other. There wasn't a dubstep forum or anything, so you couldn't even DJ dubstep successfully without knowing the guys in the UK. As a result, there were very few DJs in the US playing dubstep in their sets.

This mix doesn't (and never did) actually have a name or a tracklist (which makes it even harder to find these days). The tracks that appeared on the Acid People EP on Big Apple Records were the only tracks that saw a release from this mix, and it's too bad because there are some great tunes on here. This mix perfectly showcases the period when people were just beginning to make tracks that were half speed throughout the whole track (yes, there was dubstep before there was 70bpm dubstep), and Skream was the first producer to really start experimenting heavily with that. This mix showcases a far different direction than the direction that Skream eventually took with his music, and we feel that it's a lot better in many ways. Download/stream the mix below.

Big ups to eNonsense of superfuture for diggin' up this mix for us and also for providing us with the words in this post.