Over the past few years the UK’s 160-BPM movement has hardened from a tempo-obsessed niche into one of the most vital currents in British club music, and no one has dragged it into the mainstream conversation with more force than SHERELLE. Birmingham-raised and London-based, she has been the scene’s most visible champion, its fiercest advocate and—now, with the self-released 160 Down the A406—its newest producer.
SHERELLE’s name was forged behind the decks. Her 2019 Boiler Room set, a breathless hour of footwork, jungle and breakbeat pressure, remains one of the platform’s most-watched, and her co-founding of Hooversound Recordings alongside NAINA gave the sound a permanent home. This two-track EP is her production debut, and it carries the assurance of someone who has spent years studying exactly how records like this are supposed to move a room.
The title track 160 DOWN THE A406 takes its name from the North Circular, the artery that threads London’s rave suburbs together, and it plays like a drive along it at full throttle. A kick that refuses to compromise sits beneath skittering footwork edits and shards of rave stabs, with a sub bass that rumbles like traffic overhead. At over six minutes it never relents, and the periodic drops into stripped-back percussion are timed to perfection. Closer RHYTHM LOVE (FEEL IT) is the hands-in-the-air counterpart, looping a breathy, ecstatic vocal over the same relentless pulse and letting a trance-indebted lead spiral towards the finish.
Even the packaging makes a statement. The artwork, designed by LCY, sets the EP’s title in bold, eye-bending typography that reads like a logo for the scene itself—fitting for a record that doubles as both a love letter to London’s roads and a calling card for the movement that travels them.
There are records that announce a new era and records that consolidate what a scene already knows; 160 Down the A406 does a little of both. The blueprint is familiar from a thousand club nights, but the execution—the weight of the drums, the restraint of the arrangements, the sheer forward momentum—is unmistakably hers. Bandcamp Daily was quick to call it essential, and rightly so: as a production debut it’s a landmark moment for the 160 movement, and proof that its most celebrated selector can do far more than talk the talk.
