If Nia Archives is shouldering the weight of expectations, then she’s not letting it show. Over the past 18 months, the Bradford-born, London-based producer has scooped up pretty much every UK industry accolade available to her (including a MOBO win, NME nod, and spots on BBC and BRIT polls) and seemingly been bridled with the responsibility of resurrecting jungle music for an entire new generation—all on the back of just a handful of tracks, along with many electrifying DJ sets. Yet she moves with the lightness of someone who’s just floated out of the club and into a cab, grinning for whatever’s next.
She seems, rightfully, thrilled by the whole thing, and it’s arguably this unfettered, joyous touch that has brought so many flocking to her flurried breakbeats. On Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against tha Wall, her second six-track solo EP, she pulls her jazzy vocals to the fore and dispenses with some of the more meticulous production tricks that so impressively peppered last year’s Forbidden Feelingz. This puts her knack for documenting the minutiae of party life, and all the emotional tangles that trail it, front and center—and reveals the makings of a uniquely talented pop writer.
But first: “Baianá.” The opener here, built around an accelerated, dissected sample of Brazilian body-music troupe Barbatuques, is fun with a capital Fuck Yes. Voices are repurposed as rave sirens, no drum is too many, and the only sign of a let-up comes in the brief blips when she lets her bass and shattered snares rumble on alone and unaccosted. After peak time, there are moves to be made at the afters. “That’s tha Way Life Goes” offers bittersweet rave gear as Nia Archives’ pirouettes towards a revelation: “Cos if it ain’t you, then it’s nobody/I gave you my soul, my mind, and body.” It's that most binding of vapid modern idioms—“it is what it is”—injected with the potent surprise of life and love. Plumped on marshmallow basslines and cooing chorus vocals, accepting your fate never sounded so lush.
The strings that glisten over the bridge of “So Tell Me…”, meanwhile, are reminiscent, with all the same tender feeling, of the soundtrack to Mike Skinner drying his eyes back in 2004. Like Skinner, though with less affectation, Nia Archives has the ability to depict life’s sordid, perhaps even regretful, kitchen-sink situations with unguarded honesty, empathy, and understanding. When it’s not Nia singing, she turns her obsessive break-splicing skills to give Maverick Sabre’s roll-neck vocals an injection of funk in a classic lovers’ back-and-forth on “No Need 2 Be Sorry, Call Me?”
If only there were more of all this. For the most part, these tracks offer snapshots and fragments that might otherwise unfurl into more fleshed-out stories. Then again, maybe that’s the point: This is an EP about dragging out the night’s short end, and making well-intentioned plans for life’s daylight hours. It’s party music for people beginning to feel the tug of seeing a full Sunday for the first time in a while.
