Iron Soul is one of the aliases of the producer better known as Kromestar. Under the Iron Soul name, he produces Grime songs, of a particular melodic style sometimes known as Rhythm & Grime.
The music released as Iron Soul saw a hiatus from 2010-2015, with most of Iron Soul’s music being released from around ’05- ’08. However, in 2015 he released a white label E.P. called E-Motion, and from there has released a few more things on his own Soul Music label, including an album in 2017.
“Summer 99” is a very lovely song, with a variety of orchestral hits and chops layered thickly on a grimey track. The drum programming is excellent, with a shuffling, head nodding beat. The bass is melodic and slowly rises in pitch with the rest of the song, creating a gradually lessening of pressure.
All in all it’s a masterfully made song, with a great balance between grittiness and melody, in a way that only a select few producers have ever really nailed.
The song was only released on the 2010 on the Soul Music album, which is fantastic, but for some reason was only sold on Amazon and iTunes digitally, and got pulled after a relatively short time. Luckily, there are a lot of those songs floating about the internet…
Makes you wish Rhythm ‘n’ Grime was more of a thing!