Hear Paul Woolford remixing Daniel Avery under his ruffneck Special Request alias

As we pointed out when he put together a mix for us last year, Paul Woolford’s recent revitalisation has been a pleasure to behold.

Woolford has been a key player in UK house music since the mid 2000s (the stonking, if somewhat of its era, ‘Erotic Discourse’ is a particular favourite), but the past two years have seen him simultaneously ascend further up the house and techno tree (a release on Carl Craig’s Planet E label was a landmark) and embrace the bleeding-edge sounds of the UK’s new school.

This latter move is encapsulated in his new Special Request project: a multi-genre homage to UK pirate radio sounds, which has already seen the producer dabble in frenetic breakbeat and jacking industrial house.

Woolford has now used the moniker to craft a remix of Daniel Avery’s ‘Taste’, which you can listen to below. It’s meaty, swung breakbeat – owing as much to Shed as it perhaps does to forgotten dubstep legend Toasty, or the darker strands of early noughties garage – punctuated by hard, metallic synth stabs reminiscent of ‘Erotic Discourse’. The track will receive a limited 12” release on Erol Alkan’s Phantasy Sound imprint – it’s due out next week.