Ekali Releases Edit Pack 5 Featuring “Loyal”, “Mo Bamba” and more
Ekali has given us an early Christmas present with his Edit Pack 5. This 6 track edit pack includes remixes of popular tracks like “Loyal”, “Mo Bamba” and more. Most of these tracks have been in the DJs sets before, with a few new ones mixed in.
It seems there might be a teaser of a new track on this edit pack with “Mo Babmo x ID”. The track is only a minute and twenty seconds long and hits pretty hard which makes me want more. Hopefully, this is a hint for new music in the new year.
The edit pack is free on Bandcamp, but donations can be made through the site which will go towards a mentorship for young musicians in Vancouver. Ekali went to Twitter saying he’s excited to start helping local and growing artists in Vancouver.
“This is free by the way! Any $ you donate will go towards a studio space I am opening pro bono to mentor young musicians and provide them with a space to work in Vancouver,” tweeted Ekali.
For anyone who’s been sleeping on Ekali, this is a great excuse to catch up. Born Nathan Shaw, the Vancouver native actually got his start behind a bass guitar, playing in the indie rock band Said the Whale before pivoting to electronic production around 2013. He linked up with the city’s Chapel Sound collective and hasn’t looked back since, building a catalog defined by moody, bass-heavy edits and originals that blur the lines between trap, future bass, and straight-up pop songwriting. His breakout moment came when Drake sampled his track “Unfaith” on a mixtape, a co-sign that put him on plenty of radars practically overnight. He’s also repped Canada at Red Bull Music Academy and eventually caught the attention of Skrillex, who brought him aboard OWSLA.
Edit packs have become something of a holiday tradition for Ekali, and Edit Pack 5 follows the same formula that’s made the previous four so popular: a handful of festival-tested flips of songs he’s already been rinsing in his live sets, bundled together and given away for free. It’s a smart way to reward the fans who’ve been following the DJ sets closely enough to recognize a bootleg from a scroll through his Bandcamp, while also giving casual listeners an easy entry point into his taste. The inclusion of a teased ID alongside the “Mo Bamba” flip only adds to the appeal, hinting that there’s new original material in the pipeline even as he keeps the community-focused side of his career front and center.
That mentorship angle is really what sets this release apart from a typical edit pack drop. Rather than just farming streams or building hype for a tour, Ekali is using the goodwill from a free release to fund something tangible back home. Vancouver’s electronic scene doesn’t always get the same spotlight as bigger US or European markets, and a pro bono studio space aimed at young, up-and-coming producers could go a long way toward changing that. It’s the kind of full-circle move that fits an artist who’s talked openly about how much his own early scene support meant to him.
Listen to Ekali’s edit pack here:
https://ekali.bandcamp.com/album/ekali-edit-pack-v-2
