The Young Echo collective—consisting of Vessel, Kahn, El Kid, Zhud, and others, have just recorded FACT’s 386 Mix. While the second half of Young Echo’s podcast for FACT steers towards grime and trip-hop, it starts out showing off the odd ends of the collective’s music taste—including long ambient and orchestral stretches interspersed with off-kilter beats and spoken word. Young Echo’s debut LPNexus is out this week via RAMP and I am SO keen for that.

Speaking to FACT earlier this year, the group explained that they treated Nexus – an anagram of “nu sex” – “as much as a compilation as a conventional album – most of the tracks were written before we had seriously began thinking about releasing an album as a group, so most of the music wasn’t necessarily written with this album in mind. Overall with this record it’s been more of a selection process to display the spectrum of our collective sound than a group writing process.”

“It was important that the album had a strong sense of cohesion – that it showcased not only the individual styles of each member but also attempted to join the dots between the various sounds within the group. The focus has been on collating the tracks that would make this possible. The Young Echo radio broadcasts have kept us meeting up on a monthly basis and have also given us an opportunity to share new music with each other, which influenced the tracks we were individually coming up with at that time. This project is really an attempt to communicate the vibe we share as a group and the radio shows preserve that energy.”

The mix is absolutely killer – seriously dark, unique, cracking stuff. Stream and download it here.