Altered Natives will release a new album, Tenement Yard, this month.

Real name Danny, the half-Italian, half-Trinidadian Altered Natives has been bubbling in the UK’s broken beat scene for the best part of a decade, but reached new fans last year with ‘Rass Out’, a ubiquitous UK house track that still gets played by the country’s top DJs. This month he’ll release Tenement Yard, a new fourteen-tracker on his own label Eye4Eye.

We spoke to Altered Natives when he contributed an excellent FACT mix earlier this year, and he told us that his ” sound’s undeniably London based, my music is kind of pinned between genres. It embraces every bass orientated music out there, new and old. My music is very personal like a diary, it all has relevance to the ups and downs in my personal life. I battle my demons through my music with intent to channel whatever negative into a positive, in that environment I feel free, unstoppable. Life and the world in general is restricted by so many rules, I’ve spent my life breaking rules and paying. So really you could say my sound is the sound of rule breaking.

“I do and can make your in the (genre) bracket music, but my passion is blurring the lines and I guess that’s what people have come to like about what I’m doing music wise. ‘Rass Out’ is a example of blurring lines. When I first played it, it was in a Broken Beat dance and it done its rounds there, then the House guys picked up on it, then the UK Funky lot anthemed it off. When you look at that track, it is all of those elements. Broken, House, UK Funky.”

We’ve been listening to Tenement Yard all morning and love it – it’s rough and ready, but clearly the work of someone with tons of production experience. It’s also refreshing, when there are so many producers around using taut, garish synth sounds, to have a UK house album with a grounded, earthy sound like Tenement Yard. Not that there’s anything wrong with garish synths, we love them. But you know what we’re saying.

Tenement Yard drops on May 28. Another Altered Natives album is planned this year, dealing with bruk house and titled Serial Vendetta. You can hear material from Tenement Yard on Juno now.

Tracklist:
1. Blackvibes
2. Body Gal
3. Afterlife Riddim
4. Oh My Zipper
5. Boneyard
6. What Life Once Was
7. I’m… Sexy!
8. Splintered
9. It’s Just a Crush
10. Restless Native
11. In my House
12. God Made Me
13. 4Four
14. Rage of Aquarius (feat. Lester Diamond)