Dancehall: while a friendly iteration of this sound has made its presence felt in the charts, London and Berlin-based MC Miss Red represents the genre at its most dubby and twisted.
Of Israeli-Moroccan and Polish descent, Miss Red – real name Sharon Stern – was discovered by Kevin Martin, AKA intense industrial producer the Bug, at an underground club in Tel Aviv in 2011.
Martin was DJing, and Stern was the inebriated punter relentlessly insisting on having a go at MCing. Martin was immediately taken aback by how good Stern was, leading to an impromptu recording session. Seven years later, he has just produced her debut album, KO.
It’s a record informed by her experiences of immigration and persecution (her grandparents were Holocaust survivors). But it’s still very much music for the club, nodding as much to the sweetness of Tenor Saw and Sister Nancy as it does to the pulsing, dark bashment of her past collaborator Gaika and even, occasionally, the ethereal lightness of Björk.
Combining beguiling, tender vocals and abrasive production, this music possesses the heat of old-school reggae while reflecting our unpleasant political climate. “For me reggae is the foundation of this record,” Miss Red has said. “But the album’s movement is freer. It mirrors my need to move and keep challenging myself.”
