The bass on this one never sits still. It sputters, ducks under the kick for half a bar, then comes back up chewing on itself. Under it the drums skip at that UK tempo you feel before you count.
Then the vocal lands. MPH and Skrillex built Mirage on a chop of Red Rat’s “ShellyAnn”, the early-2000s dancehall cut, and run it as percussion more than lyric. When the chords open up behind it the record tips into the giddy register garage finds when a room is already soaked. I lost the thread the first time and just moved.
MPH says the whole thing came together in one afternoon. “Skrillex would do some bits and pass the laptop to me. I’d do some bits and, pretty soon, we’d married our sounds together.” That tracks. None of the stiffness a big-name collaboration usually carries is in here, and it keeps the melodic streak MPH showed on Long Goodbye without dragging the tempo down.
Garage is not my usual lane and I still had this running through the kitchen speaker at one in the morning. It is out on DisOrder/Capitol, months after MPH played it at EDC in May and the rips went around as Bunga. A record that survives a summer of phone audio and still hits this hard clean was never going to need the hype.
