“Grime as high art,” Logan Sama said. This is how he endorsed FabricLive 83. A curated exhibition of 24 exclusive instrumentals featuring  66 of the UK’s spearheading spitters. But what exactly does his high art allude to? Avoiding capitalising on grime’s zeal, Sama’s ‘high art’ is referring to something all the more intimate. Its principal intention is to elicit the excitement of pirate radio’s salad days, where an artist’s bars would dictate who would be eulogised and who would be defamed on the school playground. Here, Sama recaptures the guileless hysteria of pirated late night sessions with Dewey Decimal precision.

It’s a warts and all collation of glossed up verses and 16 bar whomps. Exploiting his bloating black book of MC contacts, Sama merges a cavalry of renowned mainstays with a swell of upcoming voices. Jammer, Flowdan, Wiley, D Double E, Ghetts, Kano, Bossman Birdie, deliver fire with familiarity, almost acting as pedestals for the likes of Jammz and AJ Tracey to propel from. Signature, archival bars are commonplace, but recycled over disparate production styles. The siren of Footsie’s Brake Light sounds from left to right as D Double E recites Lovely Jubbly, while modern day classics such as Grim Sicker’s Black Bin Bag Him are soldered together with unrecognizable sounds. Across the mix, there is a library of these instances, too frequent to highlight in one sitting.

And that is the cardinal objective of FabricLive 83; to ration every MC’s hunger to deliver standout soundbites. Every 16 is a compendium of hostility; recklessly skittering from one spitter to the next. Sub-bass spills over staple 2-step rides almost racing alongside verses. From the likes of Faze Miyaki, Terror Danjah and Teeza, there are 24 beats spanned over 70 minutes; each as progressive, mischievous, and animal as the last.

Unsurprisingly, almost every MC commends Sama during their time on the mic. This is a ‘credit where credit’s due’ scenario. While openly conceding that he has not physically created anything you hear on FabricLive 83, Sama is piloting grime as a higher form of art; one with a footing in the past but a head locked in the future. Logan Sama’s compilation is the evidence of grime’s inability to vegetate and its itching to develop at an almost infallible pace.