As we reported last week, seminal grime crew Ruff Sqwad are to have their out-of-print singles compiled in a CD package titled White Label Classics: 

“During the group’s prime, however, they were making achingly romantic street music. As FACT’s Tom Lea pointed out in a past article, every Ruff Sqwad track “seems to be set at sunset, with the most evocative square-wave synths stretched across the skyline”, and singles like ‘Pied Piper’, ‘Lethal Injection’, ‘Misty Cold’ and ‘Anna’ are bona fide classics in our books.

“A comprehensive Ruff Sqwad compilation has been speculated for years, especially given the critical acclaim that Terror Danjah saw in the wake of Planet Mu’s Gremlins, with veteran grime label No Hats No Hoods as natural a home as any (Rapid, who produced a large proportion of Ruff Sqwad’s classics, runs a studio with No Hats’ DJ Magic). And now, according to Twitter, things have started to move: today Rapid tweeted that Ruff Sqwad’s White Label Classics was “at the pressing plant”, while sometime FACT writer and Guardian scribe Dan Hancox has been about as open-lipped as possible about having interviewed Rapid for the project.”

That’s what we said at the time, and now we have a little more information. White Label Classics will feature 22 tracks, kicking off with the exact same four tracks that we cited in our last post (uncanny, huh?). Ruff Sqwad affiliate XTC’s ‘Functions on the Low’ makes the cut, as do the brilliant ‘Tings in Bloots’, ‘Down’, ‘Move 2 Dis’, ‘I’m from a Place’ and ‘No Bass’. The CD also features a 16 page booklet with classic photos and an interview with main producers Dirty Danger and Rapid, by Hancox.

White Label Classics will be released on December 10. You can stream the remastered version of ‘Pied Piper’ above, and ‘Functions on the Low’ below.

Tracklist:
‘Anna’
‘Misty Cold’
‘Lethal Injection’
‘Pied Piper’
‘Functions on the Low’
‘Together’
‘Your Love Feels’
‘Tings in Boots’
‘Down’
‘Move 2 Dis’
‘Knight Rider’
‘An Ting’
‘Underground’
‘Burial’
‘Top 3 Selected’
‘Cheque’
‘Clio’
‘Xtra’
‘Good Old Days’
‘I’m From a Place’
‘Lonely People’ (CD ONLY) / ‘No Bass’ (DIGITAL ONLY)
‘Died in Your Arms’ (CD ONLY) / ‘Cleo Remix’ (DIGITAL ONLY)