For a while now, Peckham has been a hotbed of heads playing jazz-tinged house in converted pool rooms and straight-up jazz in the backrooms of boozers, and it’s from this (once) never-ending party that Pinty has popped. The 24-year-old MC and King Krule affiliate’s EPs, this year and last, embody that nocturnal sound of south London, with his lambent two-step ditties and introspective rapping evoking bedroom pirate radio freestyles and lively club queue chatter.
Comparisons with another slight white geezer with a preference for skippy garage beats are, perhaps, inevitable: Pinty grew up looking to Mike Skinner, as well as drum’n’bass MC Skibadee. But his main inspiration was his late brother, a garage MC and graffiti artist. City Limits, from last year’s EP of the same name, released on Peckham’s Rhythm Section label, is a tribute to how “1999-2002 was the real golden era” – his brother’s era, where soulful dance styles like UKG, broken beat and house coalesced.
Last month, Pinty released the Midnight Moods EP, on the new label he co-runs – it’s a slight update of a similar 2015 release, but it sounds box-fresh, with guest production from Krule, under the alias DJ JD Sports, on opening downbeater It’s Just Life. All Nightly squeezes the nostalgia grapes with beep-beep horns similar to MJ Cole’s Sincere, while Go To Bed Pt 2’s dazed synths evoke night bus rides through an empty capital after the clubs have closed. They may still be closed for some time, but these tales of all-night escapades can bring the dancefloor to your living room any day.
Midnight Moods is out now on Winged Feet