Mistress - 7/10

Halcyon Veil founder Rabit once told us that he gets “a similar feeling from Southern rap, grime and noise”.

They’re also the reference points for Mistress, someone Rabit connected with a few years back over those same interests. Mistress is a New Orleans native from the Hollygrove hood where Lil Wayne grew up, which has a lot to offer both in its musical heritage and the kind of urban dread that’s crucial to those aforementioned reference points.

In this new, still evolving manifestation, the club becomes much more mysterious rather than an outlet for hedonistic pursuits.

These instrumentals, made with vocalists in mind, aren’t functional club tracks as such, even if some of them could be read as updated boom-bap. They’re mutated, evocative homages to a legacy, completely free of nostalgia and looking straight ahead to what’s next.

Mistress is part of a scene, but it sounds like he’s about to carve his own path.