Harsh Riddims is a dance-centric cassette tape label based in Atlanta, Georgia. Run by producer Ryan Parks aka Fit Of Body, the label draws on diverse influences from lo-fi electronics and woozy house to soulful synth pop, R&B, hiphop and rap. As Parks points out in The Wire 385, it was his experience of going to school in North Atlanta – some distance from his home in College Park – that influenced his diverse musical tastes and the desire to express a different side of growing up African-American in Atlanta. His experience, he says, is increasingly becoming the norm outside of the mainstream: “Atlanta is kinda changing,” he explains. “I’ll go and skate and there’ll be 15 other young black kids at the skate spot now, man, when I was a kid I was the only black kid in my group of friends. There’s room now to express yourself more in the community, even back to rap, Young Thug is making it cool to wanna stand out, and not necessarily be like, ‘I’m just gonna wear Air Force Ones’. It used to be that if I went to a noise show it’d only be me, but now I go there and I’m like, ‘ahh, look at all these other black kids!’. It’s cool that the community is opening up, and I just wanted to express that… People are really excited about playing music here and doing things differently.”

This selection of tracks is the second in a series of compilations produced by the label. Harsh Riddims features alongside Atlanta based Awful Records in Ian McQuaid's article in The Wire 385. Subscribers can read that feature online via the digital archive. Harsh Riddims Volume 2 is available to download via Bandcamp.