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Music

Grum Signs to Anjunabeats, Drops (Progressive) Progressive House Tune

"It's a cross between Spanish folk music and Booka Shade, which on paper sounds weird, but I really like it."

"I actually wrote "Builder" while on holiday in Barcelona, sat on a rooftop with my laptop," says Leeds, UK-based producer and recent Anjunabeats signee Grum. "It was a national holiday there and they had a mariachi band down in the street playing traditional music. I kept hearing little bits of it echoing up to where I was sitting, and in my head it sounded like the riff that I came up with. So it's a cross between Spanish folk music and Booka Shade, which on paper sounds weird, but I really like it."

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"Builder" is one of three on the Trine EP, Grum's first on the legendary trance label, and he took his foray away from the familiar grounds of the Heartbeats imprint as an opportunity to experiment. "I've been taking a lot of inspiration from the late 90s heydays of progressive house, but I guess try and inject a modern twist to keep it fresh," he says. "Really this EP shows a bunch of different sides to that. 'Builder' is almost deep house/techno, but with my synthy stuff. 'U' was quite inspired by the Charlie May/Sasha era tunes like 'Xpander.' And Light speed is a full-on trance romp!"

Despite Grum's penchant for pushing progressive house themes to new places, he's not flying the flag of prog-house revolution. "It's such a broad and all-encompassing genre now that there's room for everyone to work in their own niche," he says. "I'm just really doing my thing, which really I find hard to describe…It just sort of comes naturally. To paraphrase a million old house records, "[Prog] House is a feeling".

Currently on tour with Above & Beyond throughout the United States and Canada, the Grum/Anjunabeats love-in looks set to continue. Whether A&B like Grum enough to let him push the button is yet to be seen.

Grum is on Facebook // SoundCloud