“This is not your normal dubstep mix...”

“This is not your normal dubstep mix – this is filled with hyped up, nervous energy, and it gets pretty banging – there’s a techno flavour here, but it’s not minimal at all. In fact, after a sub-aquatic start, this mix represents a maximalist dubstep. As ever, there’s lots of re-edits and FX, as well as a heap of unreleased stuff, and this time, I’ve combined the normal dubstep flavour with a lot of wicked grime.”

-- Paul.meme / Grievous Angel

A few weeks ago a link appeared in my inbox to a dubstep mix – nothing out of the ordinary you might think. But within a few minutes, it became very clear how extraordinary Paul.meme aka Grievous Angel’s mix was. He's since blogged about it. Blending dubstep, grime and a little hip hop, it quickly showed itself to be far greater than the sum of it’s (many) parts, not just capturing the zeitgeist of the cutting edge of dubstep but bringing into question where exactly the boundaries of mixes, live sets and production cross…

Grievous Angel Presents: Dubstep Sufferah Volume 3: download it here

[00:00] Narcossist: No Love (CDR)
[03:36] Caspa: Homesick (CDR)
[04:24] DQ1: Gud Money (CDR - forthcoming on Tectonic)
[05:24] Kano: Mr Me Too (Kano Mixtape)
[10:43] Side 9000: Dhun (CDR)
[13:42] Massive Music: Find My Way (Kode 9 remix) (Hyperdub)
[16:52] TimeBlind: Copy Copy (Soot)
[18:31] Roll Deep: Celebrate (Rules and Regulations CD)
[21:28] DJ JSL: Coyote Dub (CDR) / Slew Dem: Bumbaclaat Badman
[23:19] Monochrome: Mine a Kill Dem (CDR)
[26:44] Narcossist: White Lotus (CDR) / Scare Dem Crew: Take Off
[30:18] Skream: Make Me (Tempa) / Timbaland & Magoo: Get Crunk / JME: Deadout / Caspa: LFO King (CDR)
[33:36] Cloaks: Dark (Version) (CDR) / Kano & Jammer: Tapout (Jah Mek The World The Classics Mixtape)
[37:40] Komonazmuk: Fear (CDR) / Roll Deep: Babylon Burners (Rules and Regulations CD)
[40:55] Coki: Tortured (Tempa) / Ruff Sqwad: Down (Gun and Roses Mixtape)
[43:44] Cloaks: Too On Top (CDR) / Trim: But I Still (Soul Food mixtape)
[47:17] Loefah: Voodoo (666) / Lord Finesse: Check the Method (DJ Premier Scratch Mix)
[52:20] Loefah: Natural Charge (Grievous Angel Edit) (CDR)
[56:40] Loefah: Disko Rekah (Deep Medi) / Cluekid & Cotti: Sensi Dub (White)
[59:41] Cluekid & Cotti: Flashback (White) / Ruff Sqwad: When Itz On (Guns and Roses Mixtape)
[63:07] Skream: Losing Control (Grievous Angel Edit) (Tempa)/ Trim: In the Ghetto (Soul Food Volume 1 Mixtape)
[65:28] Grievous Angel: Culture Killer (CDR) / Trim: Wot Part One (Soul Food Volume 1 Mixtape) / JME: 96 Bars of JME
[70:39] TRG Vs Selector DubU: Losing Marbles (CDR)
[73:37] Kode9: Magnetic City (Hyperdub)
[78:33] ENDS

B: So, can you tell me some background to the mix…

GA: The idea behind the Dubstep Sufferah series was that while dubstep is fantastic when it's mixed live and hyped up, there's still scope for mixes that were coherent, long-form pieces of music in the manner of house or techno mixes. Obviously this kind of approach is fraught with danger - you can suck the life out of the music if you over-egg. Nevertheless I wanted to hear a denser variant of dubstep that was simultaneously more dubby and more vocal. A wide-screen, cinematic experience in a way. In the first Dubstep Sufferah I was wanted to do dubstep in dub, but with proper track sequencing so the mix had direction. In the second, I wanted to create vocal versions of dubstep tunes while emphasising the reggae aspects of dubstep. For the this one, I was originally going to do an all-vinyl mix, but it wasn't really unique enough, and then Paul Autonomic said he wanted to hear some of the unreleased stuff, so I went in another direction. Simultaneously there was - in my opinion at least - an explosion of creativity in grime, and I found that loads of it actually went really well with dubstep. Plus we were working on the first issue of Woofah magazine, and it became obvious just how important grime is right now.

So Dubstep Sufferah 3 turned into a dubstep versus grime cross over mix, while also showing how dubstep doesn't have to be this narcoleptic, mordant trough of despondency that some people are trying to turn it into. I mean, I like my half step as much as the next guy but the reality of a dubstep night is that it's incredibly high energy. As Simon from Whistlebump (he's a house producer and runs one of the best house nights in London) put it, at dubstep events people really really have it, but really really slowly! Plus I'm trying to create this little side-branch of dubstep that's ragga techno - really banging, but funky and syncopated and rooted in dancehall, not electronica, which is where the mix goes towards the end. It's actually slower in BPM than the rest of the mix, but it sounds faster cos it's all double-time. That's not so far from where Skream and Shackleton are going. I wouldn't want all dubstep to go that way and I wouldn't want all dubstep mixes to be like the Sufferah series, but I think there's space for it.

B: While taking it further, this mix really builds on both some of the ideas Kode9 was looking into during 2004/5 and his recent techno-influenced Sonar mix…

GA: Kode is definitely an inspiration and I'd be interested in your comparisons. Obviously he's always been about grime as much as dubstep, and he rightly believes that the world may not need yet another genre of instrumental dance music. But the Sufferah series started as a response to the mixes Paul Autonomic was doing. I loved the way he re-edited all his tunes and mixed dubstep and grime into one throbbing mass - I heard This One Is Computerised and went out and got Live almost straight away. Our release cycle is pretty much synchronised - he usually gets his ones out a month or so before mine - and I deliberately don't listen to his until I've finished mine. His Going South mix is an attempt to break out of half step, reaching back into dubstep's history while tracing out some of its future. They kind of go together even though we didn't tell each other much about what we were doing, though funnily enough a few people have said it goes with Kode 9's Sonar mix, which is a great compliment. I've been following what The Nine has been doing since the mid-nineties, from when he was talking about 2step. My reggae partner John Eden did a conference with him way back when about Dub Architecture, and he used to do this little garage / breaks / electro night in Brixton that was, I think, one of the roots of FWD>>. Plus he used to drop me the odd email encouraging me with my productions - he's a good guy.

This mix started off as all vinyl, but most of that got trashed along the way as I started adding more unreleased stuff in. Pretty much everything has been edited, and absolutely everything has some FX on it, so it's almost as much composition as it is DJing. The “LFO King” / “Make Me” / “Dead Out” / “Get Crunked” section is probably the most extreme example of that. I think it's good but you don't want to take it too far. I went through nine versions of the mix, changing the selection and running order hugely, and to do that you really need something like Ableton. It's interesting to see Vex'd now doing laptop sets live - I just played with Maga Bo who did this amazing Baile Funk / ragga / breakcore / dubstep mix using Ableton. I love it, but it's too easy to make the seamless beat so relentless it's annoying. Sometimes you really need a rewind! I just played sevens and the next couple of mixes are probably going to be vinyl, just for fun. But I need to get a few tunes finished first.

B: Your mix also brings up some of the issues around beat mixing I went into for Kode9’s Dubstep Allstars sleevenotes. On this, Kode was used mixing of two tunes (cut to dubplate) to create new sounds and dissonances, but this can only happen as quickly as he can mix, which can’t be more than about 50% of any given set length. In Ableton, you've made it possible to be permanently in the mix, so the boundaries and ordering between any given track is lost.... is that the intention?

GA: To a degree this has always been the intention of DJing – “give me two records and I’ll make you a whole world” – and it’s particularly evident in house and techno, where the blend creates radically new music. You can do the same with jungle and UK garage, but it’s less prevalent in “urban” music. r’n’b and hip hop tend to jump between tunes even when they’re mixed, and together with the ragga-derived rewind, creates a deliberately discontinuous, even disjointed, progression through a set that at its best massively builds hype and energy. This is most apparent in live grime. Dubstep is actually very mix-friendly, but done live it has lots of rewinds and is very discontinuous. This has actually been a good thing for dubstep (even though the rewinds have been over-done) because it partially inoculates dubstep from some of the nerdier mixing-for-the-sake-of-it that you get in techno. But I think dubstep’s potential for continuous mixing is under-exploited. Go to see Mala play solo at an out of town event – it’s a completely different experience to what you get at DMZ, it’s a revelatory journey, with a flow that is comparable with people like François K, and it’s amazing. But that’s not really the norm in dubstep, which is good, because it means there’s still a range of different experiences that the genre can offer.

[I think Paul’s comparison between François K is uncanny and timely, not least because Mala and François reportedly really connected in New York, with Mala “owning” the house-bastion Deep Space when he played there post-Dub War. Mala’s groove-lead approach is a refreshing and welcome contrast to the drop-contest much of dubstep seems to be heading for. It also fits with the new dubstep/Basic techno axis that Appleblim, Peverelist, T++ etc are pursuing – Blackdown ]

GA: However, the big feature of the rewind heavy, “if it sounds nice we play it twice” style of mixing (or non-mixing) is that it puts the individual track at the forefront – the “text” if you will. You play the record two or three times, until the crowd really drinks in the significance of that piece of music. When I’m doing a mix like Sufferah 3, I’m doing something completely different to that – I’m diluting the impact of the singular piece of music in order to create something new from the combination of different tunes. Which is great, but you don’t want all dubstep mixing to be like that. There’s always a tension between giving the audience something new and tasty from blending, and actually giving the individual tracks room to breathe so their full impact comes across. I’m happiest with my mixes when I’m making something new with the tracks, whether through re-edits or mixing or effects, while at the same time making sure the full force of the original track comes through. An example of that is “Natural Charge.” It’s totally re-edited and combined with a completely different vocal track, and it’s taken from an early, unfinished version anyway cos that’s all Loefah had at the time. But I think you get all the weight and tension of that tune in the mix. And frankly, the mixes would be enhanced by a couple of strategic rewinds.

The boundaries between production and mixing are broken down by Ableton, which do you think is more powerful and why?

GA: Yes, these mixes are almost like sampladelic albums. You have to set a limit to your re-production though. Atomising the music is great, but you have to make a judgement about whether you’re just boring people with snippets of music. Production and mixing became one in a couple of places on this mix – especially on the mix of Skream’s “Make Me,” Caspa’s “LFO King,” JME’s “DeadOut,” and Timbaland’s “Get Crunked,” where these tracks are combined into a new, symmetrical whole, with Timbaland at the start and end, and, and Make Me and LFO King swapping basslines in different verses. It worked, but in the end you’re reliant on the contribution of all these other producers. Mixing is more powerful than production because you’re using the combined talents of many other people, whereas production is just you and a few collaborators. You have the producers helping you, you have Transition helping you, you have recordings of MCs – there is a lot of great music out there to leverage and synergise. In fact there’s so much great music out there you have to weigh up whether it’s worth adding to the pile.

B: with so many tracks to choose from and the ability to drop any bar at any time in Ableton, how did you decide what to bring in where? With so many tracks piled on top of each other, as the mix came to a close the strongest thing you could do was just to leave one whole track in... I love Kode9’s “Magnetic City” at the end, placed there it it's epic. At the very end of the mix, I found myself struck by how powerful silence felt.

GA: I spent a long time getting the sequencing right. So much is down to happy accidents, as well as skill in figuring out what goes with what. I was trying to get this gentle upward drift of energy, with a jump in vibes when “Celebrate” comes in, another jump with Trim over Cloaks, a step down for Loefah, a massive step up for Trim over Skream and over my tune, a massive drop down for TRG and Kode… it’s a deliberate sequence of moods. I really try to make sure there’s one instrumental track that is dominant at all times, telling its story, by doing really sharp changes in level and in EQ when one track is bowing out and another one coming in. And there’s a few sections where the listener can relax a bit and focus on just one track – at the start with Narcossist, and at the end with “Magnetic City,” which has just the ghostly presence of slivers of Flow Dan on “Jah War.” A cut up sample from that begins and ends the mix. “Magnetic City” is amazing, showing how far dubstep can go in terms of subtle mood. I did a lot of intricate FX editing on that, and layered it under the previous track before bringing it in properly. But in terms of silence – that’s the big issue facing these kinds of mixes. Do they, quite simply, go on too much, are they too intense to bear, should they break down to silence at times? I think they should and there’s some strategically placed double drops to try to create those breathing points, but I’m not sure I put in enough. The most important thing is you can dance to it.

B: speaking of Kode again, Kode spent a lot of time in the grime v dubstep territory a few years ago, were you influenced by that?

GA: Definitely. It’s become controversial to mix grime and dubstep and I think that for example Pokes’ arguments are well-made. Dubstep is a beautiful scene, thus far it has been utterly blessed, to the point of being sacred. There was a deliberate distancing from Grime’s endless beefs and that was both helpful and understandable. But the space between grime and dubstep is still pregnant with opportunity. A tight MC over big wobble, projectile steppers or sub-zero infrasonics is unbeatable and I really wanted to show what could be done with this mix. Again Kode is the inspiration here because he combined dubstep and grime with this other-worldly vision that was really personal. I loved that. And again, there’s his relationship with Space Ape, who for all the acclaim he gets in dubstep is still underrated as an MC in the wider music world. Anyone who’s seen him play out of town, where there is more of a challenge, will know that he is an invocatory, transcendent MC.

B: One thing I suspect that ended up hindering/changing Kode’s approach is that once he left Rinse FM he had reduced access to exclusive grime. Your approach gets round this by re-editing and EQing the tracks like they're new, is this deliberate?

GA: Yes, that search for freshness goes across all I do – this mix has most of my unreleased tracks in it on the dubstep side, including fresh talent like Monochrome and Narcossist, but much is familiar and needs an edit or two to keep the ear candy. On the grime side, it’s mostly off mixtapes. But there is such a wealth of great grime tracks that would work with dubstep if you cut them together in Ableton. Even more so if you edit them so the verse structures fit those of dubstep, which can be very different. I think Grime producers should still be sending Kode exclusives – he’s probably more influential now than ever…

There’s a lot of good dubstep releases at the moment but I think what’s going on in grime is at least as important. There is a whole worldview there that needs to be represented and which is being ignored, and a wealth of musical enjoyment that is being spurned – partly, it has to be said, due to political action. It’s not right – and that’s one of the reasons we started Woofah Magazine, to represent not just dancehall, but grime too.

B: what about the Kano track, is it supposed to sound screwed and chopped? It sounds immense when he comes back in shouting (“what the hell have you been looking for…”) pitched down. Have you heard Trim's mixtape with the screwed and chopped “When I'm Ere” on it?

GA: You mean “Mr Me Too”, near the start. It has to be, well not screwed and chopped, but slowed down. It’s about 100bpm originally, so to keep it half-step and in-time with 138bpm dubstep, you have to take it down a bit, to 70 – if it was really screwed and chopped it would be down to 50 or 60 I reckon. It still just about works – it stretches out the malevolent joy of it. I love the hypnotic, overtoning low end on it – it complements dubstep perfectly. But Kano’s flow is just amazing on “Mr Me Too” and it’s a good statement to put at the start. I think the screwed and chopped “When I’m Ere” is OK, but Trim is so brilliant you just want more new tracks from him.

B: Can you tell me some background about yourself…

GA: Like everyone else I went from jungle to garage and for me 2step is the greatest music ever outside of reggae. It's kind of a cliché now but I really liked the darker, dubbier end of it - El B, Dem2, Groove Chronicles, not so much Ghost and people like that who came later. I was totally set up for the first phase of dubstep but I had a kid in 2001 and moved to Sheffield in 2002, so I dropped out of the scene. It's weird travelling 200 miles to get to DMZ when I used to live on Appach Road, which is about 200 metres from Mass.

I've been playing out for a long time, mainly reggae sets. The last one was with the C90 crew, warming up for Maga Bo (amazing Baile Funk / dub / techno guy) and Heatwave (London's best dancehall crew). It rocked. And I've been producing for a while and people have been picking up on it. I do a lot of dubstep but, going back to your thing about tempo intensities, I do work at a lot of different tempos, and I definitely don't just do half-step! I'm trying to push this idea of ragga techno - the 3-2 syncopated rhythms of ragga, done with 808s and stuff, at techno speeds. It's music with a lot of energy and rush without going down the headbanging 4x4 route and it's ripe for MCs. I'm talking to a label about doing something in the Autumn.

[Paul’s idea of 3+2 percussive dubstep is hot, one that Dusk and I have definitely looked into in the studio. Bring it on - Blackdown ]

Finally, I'm a director of techno and electronica label Dust Science (http://www.dustscience.com/) which is the home of the Black Dog; we've done 20 releases from people like Detroit originators like Anthony Shakir, Claude Young and Dan Curtin, new school stars like Derailleur, and of course the mighty Dog. Hopefully we're going to do a release with Loefah - we really think dubstep is a natural progression from electronica so we've been trying to sign dubstep people for a while.

[Dubstep a progression from electronica?! Gah, fucking spare me… ;) – Blackdown]

Some of Paul.meme / Grievous Angel’s mixes:

Dubstep Sufferah mixes:
· Volume 1
· Volume 2
· Volume 3

· Pure-dub mix for Blogariddims

Dancehall mixes with John Eden:

· "Lyric Maker" fast chat mix:
showcase of 80s UK MCs.
· Fast Chat mix
went out on Resonance FM during Dave Stelfox' residence there.
· Boom Boom Bashment:
the follow up, a showcase of under-appreciated nineties dancehall.
· Blogariddims mix.

· The First Taste of Hope Is Fear
a selection of early 80s industrial, in dub.

Forthcoming mixes include: a series of mixes of 94 jungle

Pitchfork pressure: June

It's June Pitchfork column time featuring Forsaken, Pinch, Geeneus, Rinse, UKRecordshop.com, bassline house and Flying Lotus. All feedback welcome.

Alive?

Like many a good idea, it started as a beer-fuelled ramble with a mate in the pub. Where are the boundaries of live music?

For years the live/performance (rock, indie, jazz etc) and studio/composition (dance, urban etc) traditions have, to a certain extent, eyed each other nervously from polar extremes. Rock and indie have maintained their “live” moral higher ground, where the ability to reproduce songs in real time became canonised as a sacred experience. By contrast any studio act unable to compete missed out on lucrative live circuit revenue. So despite the losses in sonic impact or credibility what were ostensibly studio acts took to the live arena. Just compare Destiny’s Child (studio) as produced by Rodney Jerkins and Timbaland versus Destiny’s Child (live) with fat rock drummer and session slap-bassist. Bon Jovi tom solos and atonal Seinfeld bass indulgence are go!

Kode9’s recent performances, at the Sonar and Mutek festivals, have pushed well beyond the realm of mere DJ sets into the live arena. Spaceape takes the mic while Kode mans the live re-edit machine, Ableton. (You can see some of it here, thanks to Tobias van Veen, alongside Kode’s wicked but lesser spotted sense of humour).

With studio composition, via Ableton, increasingly edging into rock’s performance realm, it’s interesting to look into what actually separates “live” performance with “electronic/live” performance. Excluding outfit changes and dance routines (let’s not go there shall we…), the visual medium of performance, in both electronic and rock music, is tied to the physical process of making the music. That much they have in common. The emotional response to the visual element of (say) live rock, however, has long since become tied into specific, learned gestures, perceived and understood by audiences to have known meanings and emotional responses. Even DJing, which doesn’t bare a direct correlation between the movements of the performer and the parts of the track, has come to be visually appreciated by fans – just witness the drooling a technically amazing DJ like Youngsta receives from audiences. What’s interesting, therefore, is how, given the advances of new technologies, audiences respond and learn responses to new visual patterns of the functions of making live/electronic music. Or, conversely, how audiences can seemingly enjoy and respond to the perception of live audio being performed (when it’s not) when all the visual queues are being provided.

Take for example, the hip-hop/ grime-MC-as-live-act. Of course, in the beginning, there were two turntables and a microphone, somewhere in the South Bronx or Bow E3. Yet when grime-affiliate Plan B played “live” in 93 Feet East, Brick Lane, East London last month there was a microphone, two turntables, a drummer, guitarist and a bassist. Only when you looked closely did you notice that the visual guitar actions weren’t correlating with the guitar audio, that something was afoot, or moreover, coming out of the CDr deck. Did the 93 Feet East crowd mind? It was packed to the rafters.

Instead of the live act that isn’t, the electronic act that’s truly live provides a far more interesting set of opportunities. The pub fuelled ramble brought to mind few examples. There was Mathew Herbert as Radio Boy a few years back at the National Theatre, breaking Disney videos and McDonalds boxes and live-sampling them into a anti-capitalist protest, which proved more conceptual than enjoyable musical experience. More recently there’s UK’s Jamie Woon: check the jaw dropping live video here. My friend, who prefers more acoustic stuff, mentioned Argentina’s Junana Molina.

Looking at these three, are the physical processes they undergo to make live electronic music visually stimulating? The answer is probably yes, and definitely more so than a bloke twiddling a laptop, largely because there’s a palpable correlation between their physical movements and their audio output. What this conclusion opens up is the debate whether, given advances of technology, the visual angle of the music making process could be taken into account as much as the sonic considerations. Given an engaging live electronic music making process, that moral live high ground of rock might start to look distinctly vulnerable.

What is surely now up for grabs is whether the live electronic technologies will be absorbed as visually aesthetically pleasing, and beyond that whether at a certain point the visual control of live electronic performance will be a dominant priority in the software/technologies creation. So that software designers ask themselves not ‘how can I make live electronic music?’ but ‘how can I make visually engaging live electronic music?’ Maybe they already have.

Keysound in NYC

I'm going to be in NYC from the 9th to the 14th of July. I've never hit the Big Apple before and like my Tokyo trip last summer, I'm really excited about soaking up the feel of all the boroughs.

If you live in NYC or know it well, any recommendations of "must sees" would be greatfully accepted. I'm all about finding those niche clubs, lost vinyl emporiums, enthralling neighbourhoods, amazing museums or killer unknown restaurants - the kinds of places you don't find in the guide books yet love as a resident.

A comments (below) or emails (martin_clark7@hotmail.com) gratefully accepted.

Nightdrive through LDN

I drive Dusk home late every Monday after studio and, through eyes screwed up with tiredness, it’s a ritual I’ve come to love. These days I often drive to and from Forward>> too. Sometimes, when the wrong MCs have turned up or too much mid range wobble gets dropped and now that the community vibe of FWD>> is intermittent (everyone’s got bookings), I find the night drive the most compelling part of the evening. What is it that’s so enthralling, so deeply absorbing, about a night drive through LDN?



In both cases I now have my route, so I scythe through the city, a pattern of habit liberating me. Traffic at these times is minimal and so I settle into a routine, a rhythm of turns and banks, starts… and.stops. As the beats flow, so does the car, out of phase but united in momentum. As the world rolls past the window, there’s a perfect balance struck between tranquillity and stimuli, change and continuity, edge and comfort.



The joy in night driving, like blogging, is in part the freedom. Accelerating over the peak of a dark, decaying flyover at 2am is an arc of liberation, a celebration of a brief escape from the gravity of life’s heavy daily cycles. While the world sleeps, your stereo blazes. Beats are verbally chopped, plans hatched and dreams ignited. But the night drive is also a joy of observation: of your surroundings, of a city most alive and vivid when it should be dormant.



There’s the joys of catching some kids tagging bins. Bins? Can’t you find something more serious to make a statement on? There’s the girls traipsing back barefoot from some wine bar, high heels in one hand, boyfriend in the other. There’s the guy who ducks down the alley way when you pass, because, like, he wasn’t trying to nick cars… much. There’s the drunk fat bloke outside the Irish pub, gut out, bolsh on, taking on all comers in a four-way brawl. There’s the guys just standing about, at 1am. Just… standing… about. Who are these people that appear in a succession of fleeting 50mph moments, before the momentum closes our door to their lives? Who are they and what are their stories?



Last Friday around 2am, I was clipping down a dark suburban artery. Out my right window comes into view a man. He’s black, looks like he’s in his early 30s and has been out on the town for the night: nice jeans, proper shoes and a designer white shirt. And he’s running. Running for his life. He’s running so hard he’s nearly bent double, parallel to the ground like he’s perpetually flinging himself over the finishing line of the grim reapers’ 100m challenge. 1st prize: his life back. Then suddenly he clips his shoe and piles into the pavement, his shoulder taking the full force of his body being ground into the concrete. He crumples, drags himself up, his shoulder full of grit, and continues to run; run for his life.

It’s over in a split second – the car passes him quickly. I’m left aghast, looking past him to see who or what is chasing him. But there’s nothing, nothing for miles but the dark suburban artery as it trickles into the shadows. I will never, ever know now why that man was running or who he was running from. The night drive just swept me onwards.

Currently feeling...

… that Kode9’s Sonar mix is the quality control dubstep is screaming out for.

… that Appleblim “Vansan” (Skull Disco) is the one. Hold tight for his mix on Mary Anne’s show.

… that Pinch “Whirl” (unreleased) is broken Detroity 2step heaven, sent from Bristol.

… that Skream’s “2D” was simply waiting to happen.

… that Forsaken’s “Last Saloon Swagger ft. Joker and Ben Blackmore” is the biggest dubstep risk taken this year.

…that Y.Dot “I Violate Because I’m a Sinner” from Y.Dot’s free mixtape is the first “refix” I’ve heard from grime in a while.

… that Kano “Layer Cake” (679) hits nail pon head: “I’ll never sell more than an indie band… . Welcome to the layer cake son.” Oh and don’t forget “Be Real”.

… that J2K’s ”Can’t Chat to Me” is the sound of an MC going up a level. “Mixtape, mixtape, mixtape = air…”

… that Movado’s “Amazing Grace” [Tremor Riddim, BigShip] and Busy Signal “Oh No”, as heard on Robbo Ranx’s show, hit the spot. I've recorded them and uploaded them here because I'm nice like that ;)

West goes East

Over the years, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know London’s margins. While tourists traipse around - shudder - Leicester Square while staying in expensive Kensington hotels, it’s long since been the edges I’m most excited by. Over the years I’ve reached a fair few amazing places. I’ve sat in Jammer’s basement in Leytonstone, been to DMZ’s Dubsessions in Croydon and wandered down to Roll Deep’s base in Whilehouse. I’ve had football training in Dizzee’s old school grounds in Stepney and played matches on Hackney Marshes. I’d like to think I’m loosely familiar with most of the main culturally interesting margins of this city – Brixton, Green Lanes, Hackney, Tooting, Croydon, Brick Lane and so on. Except Southall.

I’d never even been to Southall… until last weekend. I’d heard so much about the place, mostly from listening to Panjabi Hit Squad shows on 1Xtra. As my love of UK desi beats has grown, so has my curiosity about the place. So last Sunday I badgered some Sikh friends into giving us the guided tour of Southall.



Southall sits in west London, not the gentrified or affluent areas of Notting Hill or South Kensington, but far further west, out into the suburban sprawl, as the same approximate radius from the centre as Tottenham (north), Norwood (south) or Newham (east). Since the 1950s it has been predominantly Asian area.

Our guided tour began, as it should, on Southall’s main street, The Broadway. With one fabric shop after another, it’s riot of colour. To enter them is to be dazzled by rolls of material, in every possible shade, most bright. It reminded me of our friend’s Sikh wedding. While the men sat to the right in the temple, dressed mostly in suits, the women sat together on the left, their sari’s blending and clashing in an explosion of colour.

While visiting somewhere new, there’s absolutely no substitute for guidance from an informed insider. Although many of the clothes shops looked loosely similar, our friends explained the transitions seen during their lifetimes. What was once exclusively the preserve of local family businesses, The Broadway cloth shops now share the footfall with boutique “designer” sari shops.

As we wandered through a shop, our friend also pointed out the way to spot an Afghan turban from a Punjabi one – quite straightforward when you know what you’re looking for. In recent years Southall has seen large influx of Somali people too, which – with the usual differences in cultures and relative prosperity – has reportedly caused tensions.



Other dazzling shops included amazing jewellery emporiums; widows decked dozens of vast, colour-themed necklaces. At the centre of another hung an immense gold… um… dress? Embedded with South African gold sovereigns, it was large enough to function as the (front) half of a short, yet admittedly very revealing, backless dress, if someone was strong enough to wear it. Failing that, it could have functioned as a kind of chain mail of sorts.

The musical instrument shops were amazing too. Totally devoted to Indian musicians, they featured shelves after shelves of polished tablas and dhols, sitars, vaja (a harmonium variant) and other, large stringed instrument esraj, which is like a sitar that you bow. Oh for a sample CD of those badboys…

We headed off to lunch, at a run down café opposite the Mongolian-themed Bollywood cinema. Again the power of recommendation shone through as our friends ordered Tali and assorted vegetarian starters from the menu. I made the mistake of downing my mango lassi too soon but managed to avoid get laughed at during the dish called paani puri that involved breaking open a fried flying saucer-type pastry, filling it with spicy chick peas and runny sauce and then shoving it in your mouth at speed. Apparently this manoeuvre can get messy at times haha…



As soon as lunch ended, we hit the shops again. Some cloth was bought but I had only one place in mind. I’d wanted to hit ABC Music ever since I’d heard the tale that Timbaland has been taken there by Juggy D and they’d shut the shop so he could blow an insane figure on CDs.



It was easily on par with Raj Deep’s in Tooting that I went to last year, in fact probably better. There was more upfront UK desi material, with that hip hop/bhangra edge I like as well as whole, accessible sections on Ghazals and religious music (both Hindu and Sikh). They were labelled (in English) so I didn’t have to spend so much time guessing the most rudimentary of information about them like: how many people are singing? Are there any other instruments? When is this from?

My interest in Indian/Pakistani and UK desi beats doesn’t seem to have one focus, beyond the peerless Lata Mangeshkar (who poses her own kind of problems herself, by the nature of the size of her immense back catalogue… over 70,000 titles is it?). I still love the early Ghazals by her that my track “Lata” was sampled from, given how brittle and naked they are.



I like a little current Hindi pop stuff, which tends on the whole to be quite sugary. The only one that has ripped my heart out is “Yeh Kya Hua” by Tera Mera Pyar. I like the strings in Bollywood tracks that swoop between tones, they can sound remarkably raw. But equally, lots of Bollywood “classics” do little for me, coming across as bad 1960s rock. I also like the Punjabi desi stuff from the UK, especially the releases on VIP records. With its rolling layered drum breaks, it’s far more energetic than the Hindi pop stuff I’ve encountered. Finally there’s the whole world of qawaali’s, which edge into more abstract, extended-groove territories, but right now, while I have eight or nine Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan albums, they’re a bit like Fela Kuti LPs: the tracks go on forever, all sound very similar, they’re critically acclaimed but I’d rather not have to listen to them all. I’m sure this might change though.

In ABC I bought:

DJ Kunal “The Mixtape”
Jags Klimax “The Album”
A.R. Rahman “Timeless Classic Instrumentals”
Ghazals to Remember Vol 1
T-Series Super Hit Ghazals
Legends: Ghazals

I’ll let you know if any of these turn out to be gems, but in essence, from two years of dipping into this vast sphere of music, if I were to recommend two, sell-your-gran for a copy, stone cold killers, it would be:

Specialist n Tru Skool “Word is Born”
Mughul-e-Azam soundtrack

I was physically dragged out of ABC Music kicking and screaming… OK so not quite but it was a shame to leave (record shopping is not a spectator sport) and headed off to buy some jalebis. I have a very sweet tooth – sometimes I just spoon brown sugar out of the bag, yeah yeah… I know… and what?! – and Indian sweets satisfy it. None more so than jalebis.



In essence, jalebis are deep fried sugar. Health food they ain’t, but they taste amazing, with a soft gooey centre and crispy sugary outside. There are lots of types of other Indian sweets - gulab jamun which are soft damp cake balls served in syrup and others which are squares made from condensed milk – but to date jalebis are the ones that hit the spot.

We headed off for Indian tea and desserts. First we passed Glassy Junction, a pub on the corner by Southall station that, legend has it, used to accept rupees as legal tender so that new arrivals to the area from India could still buy a pint. We headed on past the station and into another section of Southall that started to look increasingly Somalian, until we got to the Sikh temple, the Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha. It was opened four years ago and is said to be the largest Sikh temple outside of India.

The first thing that strikes you about being able to build your religious buildings from scratch is the ability to accommodate modern needs. I hate to think what you’d find if you began excavating under most Christian churches, nor what would happen to the structural stability, but thanks to its award winning design, the Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha has a car park in the basement.

Our friends lead us through the temple. Apart from removing our shoes and covering our heads, in practice there’re few restraints on access. Off the corridor sprang different spaces, like a function/wedding room with a lone practicing vaja player and a large canteen with stand up eating bays. We headed up to the first floor and into the main room.

We found ourselves in an immense space under a dome. There was no furniture, allowing a huge area for people to sit on the large sheets spread out across the floor on one half or other.

While I’m not religious, I felt really honoured to be there. While there were no physical or legal barriers to entry, the reality is I would never have entered the Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha without an invitation or a guide. It was very peaceful place, with live tabla, vaja and singing being performed from the front, and I reflected on why I enjoy experiences like it so much. We all live in this city, share the public transport and the streets, yet in many ways we live within contained within the bubbles of our cultures, peer groups, jobs, upbringing and routines. Stepping outside of it is surprisingly hard. Londoners don’t talk to strangers.

To the Sikh’s praying, this was any given Sunday in the temple. To me it was a moment so out of the ordinary in my daily routine or experience. Living in London, a city that packs us all so near together on the tube, I’m consistently amazed how we can all live in close physical proximity yet there can be such large distances between our respective cultural understandings.

The first time I think I remember feeling this sense of amazement was in 2002, when I first interviewed Dizzee. I can recall being excited by the unique UK language he used – now familiar to anyone’s who’s heard grime or a London pirate. Yet I also recall being concerned how, as the urban and rural divide grew ever larger, how the two sides would ever understand each other if their unique qualities were diverging. Now I realise it isn’t just the urban/rural divide, but an urban class/race/prosperity divide too. This is why I remain determined to try to cross these barriers, whenever I can.



It’s for this reason that I decided, despite being very far west, that my Sunday should definitely include a mission across London to the House Party, squat rave. It’s only been a few months since the first dubstep squat party but given how fun the first one was, I couldn’t resist swinging by, not least because I got to cruise over the bit of the Westway that’s elevated and makes you feel like, amongst the skyscrapers, that you’re in Tokyo.

When I arrived in east, I found myself undergoing a proper acid house/illegal rave ritual: wandering around staring at completely normal buildings, wondering where the party was. I’d been convinced it was at “16 Commercial Road”, which is near Whitechapel. If you look down the numbers on this road, as we did, from 30 and under, 16 seems to be somewhere on a massive roundabout. Or not. Only then did I check my email to find out the party was at 161 Commercial Street, which by car wasn’t too far away, but really not anywhere near the bland buildings I’d been randomly staring at.

The House Party was pretty much what it said it was: a party in a derelict east London Victorian house, on three floors. On the ground floor there was a nice set of dancehall, Prince and jungle being dropped, not unlike Ripley might play. The DJ even had tattoos down her arms too, like Ripley.

Both this room and upstairs had graffiti on the walls, with the top room covered in strange murals. From the windows you could see out over east London and by this time night had fallen. The crowd were a mix as ever, but with lots of the dubstep scene heads, students, ravers but without the squat/crusty vibe that was part of the Dubstep After Hours rave. I didn’t fall over any Mastiffs this time.



In terms of atmosphere, nothing could touch the basement though. “It’s proper, like the parties in the basement of Big Apple used to be,” joked Hijak. “If you look up, bits of the ceiling fall into your eyes.”




Descending the rickety, damp and slightly soft wooden stairs lead you into a dark basement. Bits of dirt did indeed fall on your head and down your neck, probably aided by the fact that Chef and LD were filling the darkness with some deep bassline warfare. I stayed for a bit until a bloke let me know that only the night before, the stairs had collapsed. After a long, amazing day in London, it felt like time to leave.

Pitchfork pressure

My Pitchfork column for May including interviews with Martyn, Appleblim, Plastician, Tanya and the Grime Reaper. For a selection of previous months columns, check this link.

Jus' B...

Early this year I headed down into south London. It was the Thursday before January’s DMZ: Mala and Loefah had been at Transition cutting for their dance. But initiated by the prospect of a feature in Dummy magazine, I began a long interview with the pair of them. It had been a long time since I’d interviewed Loefah. My first and only interview with Mala happened even longer ago, for Deuce magazine around 2003/4, when “Pathwayz” came out on Big Apple. For a collective that have had such a profound and positive effect on my life, I admit I had always wanted to revisit them in interview, just once, to do the weight of their achievements justice – but only when the time felt right. That January evening the opportunity arose: this is that interview. I’d like to publicly thank Loefah and Mala for making it possible.

· Many thanks to George Infinite for the photos.

Blackdown: 2006’s was an amazing year, where dubstep broke out of its borders and went global. Where have you DJed this year?

Mala: America: New York and Baltimore Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Norway, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Scotland, Wales. I haven’t been to Sweden or Danmark yet.

Loefah: I had a booking in Denmark but it was around the time of the bomb scare last year. I spent a lot of time on the roof of Gatwick airport carpark. They weren’t letting anyone inside the terminal building until last minute. I waited for six hours before they went “your flight’s been cancelled mate.”

B: What gigs have been highs and lows?

L: The lows are blatantly when they haven’t got the soundsystem set up right. When you get there any everything’s wrong, usually the soundsystem.

M: It’s always the soundsystem I will moan about. You always look forward to going away, seeing new things and meeting new people. For me the highlights are the people I’ve met. Learning about their cultures, what you have in common with people miles away from you. What I always find funny is that people talk about “you’re from England or London so you’re a certain way, and someone else who lives in another part of the world is another way.” But I don’t see that because I’ve found that there’s people who live thousands of miles away from me that I have more in common with than my own next door neighbour. That’s why I find the categorisation of music nuts as well. “World Music” sections in shops… at the end of the day it’s all music.

B: I came into music because I love the music but I’ve come to love the culture and what you learn about other cultures through music just as much as the music itself. Like Pinch’s “Qawwali”. How many people in dubstep knew what a “Qawaali” was before Pinch sampled that?

M: Yeah that is a deep thing. Like Portugal, walking around Lisbon, it’s nuts. The architecture is all old but it’s covered in graffiti and posters for dances. It’s a mad contrast of history and now. I find these places fascinating. I just feel truly grateful for the moments I’ve been having.

L: Crenshaw is in LA. It’s like, Boyz in Da Hood area. Morgan from Spacek is in the studio next to me but is out in LA mixing his album. He rang me and goes “I went to the shop today to get a juice and boys came up to him, some local kids from the area. He thought they were coming on top but nah, they asked him ‘are you that guy from London?’” Word had got round that he was in the studio. They said to him, “if you’re from London, do you know about dubstep?” He replied “yeah, Loefah is in the next studio to me in London” and they went nuts!” Out there, apparently, dubstep’s the new underground hip hop.

B: That’s the interesting thing: you take dubstep out of London and stick it in the Bay Area and does it come out a bit hyphy? Or Brazil and does it come out a bit Baille Funk? Every person that hears one of your gigs in Portugal goes away and says, “now I’ve also got some Moroccan music, I wonder how that would sound.”

L: It’s kinda like the Kode9 theory: the virus.

M: Music does that. It’s down to you as an individual to be as expressive and creative as an individual with your influences and your ideas. Just because you’re from somewhere or you do a certain thing doesn’t mean that’s how you’re always going to sound or stick to. It’s important to always try and do what comes natural, not box or limit yourself. You talk about that theory [that environment influences music] but then that should happen in every home because everyone’s home is different. Everyone’s quite individual.

B: Mala, your music writing always seems very natural and organic [more heart than head, say]. Do you ever go against that natural flow, say to yourself “I’m not going in that direction” and make yourself go the other way?

M: Not looking at other people’s music doesn’t make me think I am or aren’t going to do that [musical direction], but listening to music I’ve finished or half finished, I think ‘nah, that’s not what I’m on.’

L: Now I do consciously do what you said. Not always but I have done this year. I’ve been writing beats, put an element in and then thought ‘nah it’s not about that.’ I’ve limited myself – ‘I can’t use this, I can’t use that’ – until I’m down to an 808 kit and a sub. Yeah, it’s a mad one. As soon as I heard someone else’s dubstep track with an element that I had in a loop, if someone came with that track before me I’d be like ‘fuck, I can’t do anything like that, ever again.’ For examples arpeggiated sequences [a Skream trademark since “Request Line”]. My synth in the studio I can make the sickest arpeggiated sequences ever, they sound amazing. But I can never have them in my beats, ever.

B: Your sound Loefah, has been built by reduction, it’s the path that got you to “Horror Show” and so on, and your sound is quite minimal. So if you’re down to an 808 kit, what do you do next?

M: Do you think they’re really minimal though?

B: Each element varies a lot but the number of actual elements in Loefah tracks is low, which makes them feel minimal.

M: Loefah beats are deep.

B: I’m not saying they’re not…

L: Nah I’d agree they’re minimal. I’ve got this minimalist style and it minimalist in the truest form: it’s reductionist, taking away elements but…

M: I don’t really think about it that much.

L: I do a bit… I’ll tell you what, I tell you what I can’t do. I’ve tried to write things away from halfstep in the last few months. Not 4/4 but a bit more uptempo, and I can’t do it. I mean I can, I write a loop and bang my head to it, but it’s dry. It’s so not me. Influences man, I personally have got really lost in it.

M: You can have good influences and bad influences.

L: I’ve had a weird year musically. That’s the way I feel. I haven’t liked a lot of stuff I’ve done, to be honest, not 100%. I took a step backwards for a little while. What I needed to do was to stop writing beats for a bit. Consciously I paused for two weeks but if you take into account when I wasn’t finishing things, I dunno, three or four months? Maybe longer. But when I decided I had to get away I didn’t listen to dubstep or write beats and I went and started to enjoy being a music listener again and did it intensely, catching up, finding out about new stuff which I didn’t even know was going on, getting old stuff out I used to love. Just remembering my influences. And remembering what I’m about, musically. I can listen to a country and western tune, a hip hop tune and maybe even a rock tune and they’ll all have something which makes me like them. They’ll have some kind of common denominator.

B: I don’t think people realise sometimes how much music production makes you over analyse music sometimes. You can’t detach from it.

L: I had to though, it was driving me mad. You’re in the studio and even before you’ve turned your computer on, it’s like it’s an enemy of yours, staring at you. It feels like it’s conquering you. There’s a balance too. I got too anal this year into EQing and shit and forgetting to do the rest of the track. I’d spend two days working on a snare and be like ‘the track’s done now, because the snare sounds sick.’ I think being a good producer is knowing when to leave a sound alone, not keep going and going. If you look that music that gets over-produced, prog rock or whatever, it’s dry. It’s boring. A lot of house, a lot of drum & bass: it’s the same thing. Drum & bass: amazingly produced. Great mixdowns using fantastic pre-amps. But where’s the soul? Where’s the groove?

M: That’s what I’m fundamentally dealing with.

B: I think this is what’s good about a lot of tracks you both have made, is that people can engage with them emotionally, not just because they’re well made. But Loefah, I always got the impression that the fact that struggling with your own music had pushed you to higher levels, from the times of “Jungle Infiltrator” to “Horror Show” to “Mud” and beyond…

L: I think it did. But then it got to the point that is like when you mix paint too much and it all turns brown. I had to step back and say, “alright, do I need to know any more about a snare?”

People often talk to me about “the Loefah sound” but I’ve been trying to get my head around what that actually is. Because it’s not always clear, when it’s your own thing.

B: I always find with producers that they find they’re making what seems to them like very different tracks, but that’s because they’re comparing one of their tracks with another and looking at the differences. Whereas to other listeners, who might compare (say) a rock track with several of yours, they see the similarities in your tracks.

L: That’s why it’s about stepping back and looking at your own stuff like that. I’ve been listening to a lot of other DJs’ dubstep steps, more so than I would have. Really in depth. You look at what DJs play what tunes and what tunes they play at a time in a set, and why. You get an idea of what they see music and your music within their own context. It’s all guess work but it does help me.

B: How do you feel the DMZ parties are going? They seem consistently busy…

L: I suppose that’s what they are: consistent, so far.

B: A lot of people would have said “OK we’ve got a really popular night, let’s make it monthly or weekly.” Why haven’t you?

M: Because this is how it feels right.

L: if you do something too much, it gets boring.

M: The workload is a factor and time is something that in this day and age a lot of people seem to be chasing.

L: On a completely selfish level, if we were to go monthly, I’d have no time in the studio. I’m struggling to get in there as it is.

M: I like it how it is, it’s just right.

L: There’s other dubstep nights all over the place, there’s no need for us to monopolise.

B: To me I like it because it’s a focal point for new music, a high point. People make an effort to write and present new music.

L: [South London dubplate cutting house] Transition was open today [Thursday], even though it’s closed, specially to let people cut for DMZ on Saturday. Clue Kid and Cotti were there with 100 tracks to cut.

M: It’s the same reason now as it was then. We love hearing weighty tracks on a weighty system and just sharing that with people. With it being New Year I had a kind of reflective moment and I honestly can’t believe things are moving how they’ve moved. You don’t plan for anything like this. DMZ’s a nice atmosphere. It’s fun to be doing these parties.

B: What I enjoy is the balance between all the different types of people. I see people in there from all races and classes, all parts of town, people I haven’t seen in raves in ages.

M: So do I. That’s the thing I love, same when you go away to DJ, you just meet different people. There’s so many people in the world and we’re all so different but at the same time, we’re the same.

L: The maddest thing ever was New York. When I played there I really thought it would be a hard set. Because a lot of sets abroad, even now, you can play to a room of people standing still… but they’re loving it. In Portugal they wouldn’t call for the reload but when we reloaded it, they went nuts.

M: In Portugal they delayed the start, so we went on at about 12. All of a sudden we realised it was ram in there, at least a thousand people. We played our music and yeah, people aren’t necessarily skanking out: but they don’t walk away either.

L: I was expecting this stand still crowd in New York. I got the shock of my life. The room was packed and you’d have the tune in the mix for ten seconds and they’d react: they knew the tune. You know Joe Nice’s “5” thing? They all had pieces of paper with “5” on them. “Qawwali” was the biggest tune out there. I didn’t play it, but all the other DJs did, and it got three reloads. Sick. I’ve never seen a reaction to it like that.

B: “Qawwali” has a life of its own. People in different scenes love it. People that don’t like dubstep like “Qawwali”.

L: This is why I mention New York. They get it and they love it – but on their own terms. The tracks that are big out there are the tracks that they decide are big, not the tracks that come over from London. “This fits our vibe.” And I like that.

M: That’s what it’s about. Let them think for themselves. We’re not trying to force feed or lay false impression down. We do our thing and let people take it how they take it.

L: New York was amazing. So inspiring to have that reaction. It’s legendary… New York man! I still haven’t come down off my cloud. No jokes, it was amazing.

B: I still am delighted that after all these years of struggle this music has generated enough momentum to break out of its borders.

L: When we were in New York, Pokes and I were staying with Dave Q, the Dubwar promoter, who lives on this apartment building in North Brooklyn. It’s got a flat roof with a roof garden for all of them. We went up there to smoke a cigarette because we couldn’t get any weed and have a beer. All we could see was this Manhattan skyline. You could see the Brooklyn bridge and it was this skyline that you’ve seen in so many movies, depicted in drawings and comic books, t-shirts, everywhere. And there it was in front of you. We kind of looked at each other and were like… I’ve been knocking about with Pokes, doing not a lot, smoking weed and having a giggle, for years. We exchanged glances and it was like “how are we here? How did this happen? Our music has got us to this place that we’ve dreamed of.” It was a mad experience.

B: It’s right though, because you guys have worked for it.

M: People say stuff about your music but you can’t really see it that way but the things that it gives back… are just deep.

L: It proper humbles you.

M: It’s too much to put into words really.

B: It must be mad to be accepted in New York, a city that has had such an influence on the music we’ve all listened to.

L: Me and Pokes, when we were 19, we worked in this bar. We used to sit in my room, before or after work, and sit listening to hip hop, jungle too, but a lot of hip hop and just smoke weed and dream about going to New York one day. “One day we’ll go, we’ll have it up in New York, we’ll paint a train.” Then suddenly we were there and it was just incredible.

B: Didn’t King Tubby’s son just turn up at your New York gig Mala, because he liked your music?

M: Yeah. But that’s the thing that shocks me, it’s the people you bump into, talking to, that you can relate to.

L: Apparently Hank Shocklee came down to our gig in New York. He rang Dave Q for guestlist - and Dave Q doesn’t know Hank Shocklee. But Hank Shocklee knows dubstep. He’s in it. The Bomb Squad, man! Rah.

B: So can you explain a bit about how you managed to get to where you are now?

M: I don’t think I had just an initial hunger for anything, I just like building beats.

L: We’ve always done music together, that’s been our link. We used to make jungle mixtapes and never get nowhere.

M: We were never trying to get anywhere, we were just doing our thing.

B: But you always seem to be reaching out to achieve things.

M: Well if that’s what’s going on, it’s not something I consciously do.

L: No but you’re good at them things. When opportunities arrive, Mala will clock it.

B: Like for example at some point you must have first wanted to take music seriously. So how did you go about making the first step?

M: What I did was: bought a good pair of monitors. When I decided I wanted to make a beat, of a certain standard, then I got some monitors so I could tell exactly what is going on with the frequencies. I kinda new what I was after, because that was just natural. You find your program which works best for you, which at the time for me was Reason. And just went deep in it, played it like it was Streetfighter. That’s how I saw it, that making music was like a computer game. And you’ve got all these things that you’ll be twisting up. You start with silence and at the end of the time that you’re looking to go deep in it, you end up with five minutes of some’tin that just come from no where.

B: How do you fight off distractions – playing computer games, going out – to write music?

L: I don’t. when I’m writing a beat I’ve got bare other things going on. Playing computer, on the internet. If I just have me and the computer, I can’t get nothing done. Mala’s different though. If you get him on any computer game… there’s nuff times we’d be playing computer games at home, lean, we’d both be playing. Then I’d get too lean and just watch and Mala would be like “I’ll have another game.” I’d fall asleep, I’d wake up and it would be 6 in the morning and Mala would still be there: focused.

M: I can push through sleep mate.

B: Being able to live off lack of sleep has got to be a key asset to be a producer.

M: It’s a key asset to dying young as well I swear.

L: I’ve definitely found that the best time for me to write music is from about 3am to 6am. My proper going in gets done then.

M: Do you know when I mix down? For the final mixdown I will go asleep, and go into in first thing in the morning when my ears are fresh at just a moderate level. Then you can hear that everything should be where it should be.

L: My mixdowns always happen last thing. I need a deadline like going to Transition. That’s what makes me finish a track.

M: A kick up the arse. Haha…

B: To me dubstep is right to be listened to at night. It’s not daytime music. It’s also great to drive to.

L: Our agent Rebecca told us she was on the phone to grime’s JME. They were taking about how you’d describe grime music. He was saying “grime’s like going down the park, having a sandwich and seeing your mates play football.” And she said “I kinda see it like driving around in a car, late night in London.” And JME was like: “nar nar, that’s dubstep.”

That isn’t dubstep for me so much these days but the old days for us, the Hatcha years, the Youngsta years, Rinse, that was car music. Mala’s car. Coki’s car. Do you remember them early, early days, when we used to just block up in your car?

M: Yeah, many a time we’d listen to Rinse sets. 2003.

L: Park on the road, build a spliff, listen to Rinse. There’s only certain spots we could get it around south London.

B: How did the initial link with Hatcha come about?

M: I’ve known Hatcha for years man. I remember hearing Hatcha play, when Forward>> did a thing at Fabric in 2002.

B: The Tru Playaz night?

M: Yeah. I went with Coki. I remember Hatcha was playing there and I’d heard Hatcha play a few sets at garage raves and he was always deep because he’d play different record from what mainstream garage heads were playing. He’d always have a sound. I knew him from then. I don’t even know why… we were just writing these beats but it was only when we went and checked Hatcha in 2003 that he said come down Forward>>. Some of the beats we were making weren’t too far away from the beats we heard. So I played some beats to Hatcha and he was like “I could play this man.” It was a track that me and Coki had done in February 2003. He played it once and that was that. After that he played “Pathwayz”, “Mawo Dub” and “Indian Dub” and that was that. Hatcha heard some’tin, I’m not sure what he heard. But he introduced some’tin to a few heads.

L: Youngsta too, but the initial thing was Hatcha.

M: Like everything in life though, I’m the type of person that things in life you have to work for, one way or another. I aint really a person to ride on a next man’s back. So I wasn’t going to give someone music and do nothing else. That’s not my nature. My nature’s is to do more shit. I guess that’s how things started moving. We were getting beats played but not enough were coming out, so we decided to start a label to put our beats out.

L: Dubstep is what taught me to do think like that. If you want something in life, you have to go and get it. You can’t just wait for it or expect it to happen.

B: To me, it’s finding the strength to get up and go do it, that is the hard bit.

L: Mala was making his tunes for Hatcha, and he knew Hatcha. We used to link up on a production level, we’d link as friends and by the end of the night we’d get on a beat.

M: We’d always be talking about beats.

L: Playing each other the beats we’ve just written. I remember Mala was doing what he called “broken dub house” and it was live, man. I liked it. In my head I was going to bring back 1994 jungle. I was going to write this cross between ‘94 jungle and Metalheadz b-sides. Then I went to Forward>> with Mala when “Mawo Dub” got played and I had such a person connection with rave scene when I was younger, it used to be very important to me on a level that was probably a bit too serious, and I felt something in Forward>> that night that I hadn’t felt in years. It just felt like the Blue Note again.

B: Lots of people who helped start Forward>>, had wanted that Metalheadz/Blue Note vibe again.

L: But with Forward>> it wasn’t the music so much. I remember what blew me away the first few Forwards>> were [Wiley’s] Devil mixes. I think Youngsta was playing and I was just blown away. Then I was listening more to Mala’s stuff and it was then that it became known as, in my head anyway, “138 shit.” I was writing at 145-155bpm. That was then when it became music to be played at Forward>> but I still didn’t know it was called “dubstep.”

B: To me it seems like to a lot of people dubstep has filled a hole where jungle used to be. People have come over from drum & bass saying “this is what I’ve been waiting for.”

M: That was me as well. Loving jungle and then loosing interest… you just needed something else.

L: Something happened to drum & bass: it was Bad Company, though it wasn’t their fault. They come along with a new style that was fresh, and everyone jumped on their style. That was the start of formula drum & bass. The trend was: ‘everyone writes in this style.’

B: Everyone was waiting for that jungle replacement, which is why the DMZ night is so key…

L: The thing I love more than anything about DMZ is when you walk up the stairs you walk through into the main arena, that is what it was like at a rave. You got hit by this wall of bass and loads of sweaty people who didn’t actually give a fuck about the fact that you’ve walked in the door. They’re not looking at you. You find your spot, you get your drink, big bass, crashing beats and that’s the dance.

B: 2006 was a mad year for dubstep, unlike any other. What do you guys hope for, for the next few years?

L: I still don’t think about the future.

M: Nah, not like that. I just want to finish some beats. You know when you’ll get a drink that you love? And you’ll just rinse that drink out for weeks. Every day you’ll go and buy it. Eventually you’ll get sick of it and I love music so much I don’t want to get sick of writing it.

L: At the same time I feel with writing music I’m just scratching the surface.

M: Blatantly.

L: It’s a rabbit hole.

B: Kode said something that’s haunted me for ages, that’s music’s like a drug, and like all drugs eventually its effects ware off. I don’t want to believe it.

L: I don’t believe it. I think if music’s a drug it’s an opiate. Heroin addicts say that once you’ve taken it once, the devil’s on your back for the rest of your life. That’s music isn’t it? Once you’ve got it, it’s there, in your ear, talking to you, telling you what to do.

B: It definitely feels like an addiction to me. But I’d rather be addicted to music than anything else.

L: It’s not an addiction, it’s just part of life.

M: Standard. It’s not even something I can think about: not having music.

L: It’s breakfast. It’s sitting up in bed, a cup of tea. It’s the standard things in the day. It’s always there. It’s birdsong.

B: Birdsong is a better way of putting it than an opiate, for me.

L: Can you imagine no music? I can’t. If I was in the desert I’d be beating on the sand. Or humming. Singing at the top of my voice because no one else is about.

M: It’s part of life, it always is, from when you’re in the womb, hearing certain frequencies and shit.

L: Kode9 told me that when you get that big bass, no gnarl to it, it makes you feel cool, feel nice, because it reminds you of the womb and your mum’s heartbeat.

M: This is why I think a lot of people like house, that four beat, is like a heartbeat. That shit is infectious mate.

L: 140bpm is supposed to be a good speed to write at because it’s double resting heartbeat. Benga told me that.

M: Benga’s deep.

L: But it doesn’t apply to me because I’m kind of writing at 70 bpm. I am! My hats are at 140 bpm though…

B: What are your thoughts on a Digital Mystikz album, Mala?

M: The way I try and work is if something happens, it happens. And now, it’s not happening. I’m not trying to put that thought into my head, try and get something done by a certain time. Because I just can’t work like that. I’m not writing nothing off but I don’t think it’s important for me to do.

L: It would be rude not to though. Nah it would! [Joking] Actually there is a Mala album coming. It’s coming out on Loefah Bootlegs Volume 1 ahahah…

B: I think you’re right not to force it Mala, but I do think an album would reach people that don’t normally buy 12”s.

M: …

L: But then those people might not reach Mala, and they reach him now when he plays.

M: It’s not something I’m thinking about it. And I don’t think about it because then it becomes tricky. Haha simple.

B: How does DMZ the label work?

L: [Smiling] It comes down to paper, scissor, stone between the three of us usually.

M: It is what it is really.

L: We have a meeting and sort it out.

M: The whole dubplate thing means you can see tunes doing certain things and then you can tell from that. And that’s the interesting thing about it because although the people don’t dictate, it’s ultimately what the people talk about that builds the music up. But we’re not trying to confine ourselves to any one sound.

L: I think you know when a certain track’s right for the label, because I’ve said ‘no’ to tracks of mine going on DMZ, when I don’t feel like they’re good enough. But there’s no definite sound to the label. I just want the beats to be my favourite, the ones I like myself.

M: Everything should be quality control.

B: It’s a shame Coki wasn’t about…

L: … he’s here man [smiles].

B: That’s what it’s like in clubs with him! You won’t see him but he will be there somewhere - no one will have noticed him. But everyone will notice his track smashing the club to bits. And what about Pokes, you seem to have known him for a long time?

M: I’ve known Pokes years.

B: He seems like the fourth member of DMZ…

L: It ain’t even four members, it’s one member. We form like Voltron, like Wu Tang. We go away and I’ll play a Loefah gig and Mala will play a Mystikz gig and it’s alright. But when we come together and do our thing, it’s bad. Captain Planet, man: our powers combine.

B: Pokes seems to be a master of jokes. His banter on the Dubstep forum is second to none.

M: I’ve known him years, yeah, and he is one of the funniest people I know, without a doubt. He has me in stitches. If he were here it would be a different interview, he brings in that type of energy.

L: Every time I see him, he makes me laugh. You know “funny guys,” sometimes it’s like “give it a rest mate.” But Pokes doesn’t even try.

M: And that’s what he does in the dance.

L: I’d describe his humour as sadistic. Please quote me on that, because he’ll like that. But no, he’s really quick witted, you can’t leave yourself open.

B: He’s key to the DMZ night because he conveys that everyone – DJs and ravers – are all in it together and it’s a positive vibe.

L: Exactly he’s the communication. Everyone talks about bloody lyrics, right, but he’s actually having a conversation with people. Not just “listen to me.”

M: Through Pokes, there’s people that name dances, from his sayings. I saw something talking about “doing a Churchill” and that’s what Pokes talked about in DMZ Leeds, because everyone’s nodding their heads like the Churchill Insurance dog. “When this one comes in, all you lot will be doing the Churchill…”

B: My favourite is “redeye jedi.”

L: Yeah that’s an old one, that’s a jungle lyric.

B: It’s one thing to work with an MC you like, but it’s deeper to work with someone you’ve known for years.

M: This is the whole DMZ thing. It’s natural. Mans is just rolling like when we were at college and shit.

L: When we first got into dubstep, Pokes wasn’t in it.

M: The first time he came in, was when we did [Rephlex’s] Grime party at The End.

L: And we had to hassle him! “Come on bruv, just host it for us, please. Don’t chat, just intro it.” And he was like “It’s strange but I just don’t think you should chat to this music.” We really had to twist his arm.

B: It could have been so different.

L: I think Pokes is a big, big part of DMZ. Because it needs a vocal aspect. But I think it’s not that lyrically driven. If you want lyrically driven, go to a grime rave. We have our thing which isn’t lyrically driven. It’s not better or worse, it’s just not that.

M: Strickly good vibes. You’re coming into our house man.

B: People probably don’t realise, but wasn’t your first ever DJ set was at The End Mala?

M: It was.

B: That’s a pretty amazing place to have your first DJ set.

M: When they asked me, I looked at it like an opportunity. I was like: I’ve always loved DJing but I’ve never really wanted to be a DJ, but the reason why is because I’m totally deaf in my left ear. So I’ve always thought that if I’ve got to DJ in a big place I’m not going to be able to do it, even if I could mix in a bedroom. But I had decks when I was younger, I’ve been buying records for years but I wasn’t looking to DJ. So when Rephlex asked, I thought even if it only happens once, it’s an experience, so I’ll do it. Later I thought to myself, ‘shit what am I going to play?’ And then I thought, I might as well cut loads of dubs, because I had music so I might as well cut it. And that for me was when the step was made where it’s like not just like a couple of my beats in people’s sets but now you’re gonna hear my sound. This is my sound. We both played that night and so this was the first night that the DMZ sound got showcased. I remember it not being that busy compared to the first party, which I’m actually quite glad about, because I was shitting myself.

B: Fair enough, it’s The End!!!!

M: I’ve seen big DJs in there, so to play there was just… rah. It’s one of those things where you know you’re alive because you’ve stepped into something that you’re fearing. But you go and do it anyway. Plus the fact that people might not dance to my sound was quite daunting but after playing a few times and people don’t always dance, you realise that perhaps people don’t always dance to the music that I’m making but people aren’t leaving. But it started changing the perspective on what my music might be for. I don’t think I necessarily make beats for the dancefloor. I make beats for a dance, a big system.

B: I think it’s the next challenge for dubstep, now it’s popular, that producers can write beats that don’t have to be the biggest beat every time or the most rewound tune. Like the risks taken for Devil mixes, you don’t have to play them all the set, but just some of the set.

L: You are right though. When we played Leeds, the room was packed but it was like being at Slammin’ Vinyl. Birds in bikini’s a guy on stage with white gloves and glowsticks.

B: Gasmask?

L: It was different, it was “a rave.”

B: Did bits of the roof fall off onto the decks due to your bass this time?

L: No they had a canopy. So yeah, something dawned on me that I didn’t want this, I’m not trying to create rave again, me personally with my sound or where I want to take my sound.

B: This is why I think you guys get it right by using good soundsystems because it means tracks don’t have to be the fastest or the hardest, because you can feel them properly. I mean, look how well your “Cray’s Cray” remix has done Mala? And that’s not the fastest or the hardest.

L: That’s the baddest dubstep tune written. It’s sick mate.

M: I worked hard on that. Because it was a remix, the way I approached it was different, because you’re writing for somebody. I remember it being a really different process, but I enjoyed it.

B: It’s nice to hear vocal tunes in dubstep.

L: Nah. Not all vocals but certain vocal tunes. But that track does it… that track’s the one.

M: The vocal, for me, created in inspiration to piece everything around it, even though the vocal isn’t used throughout the track. All I used from the original was the vocal and the trumpet. Everything else I played, like the melodica, the keys.

L: It’s not just a scene tune, it’s a really, really good piece of music.

B: It’s one of those important tunes, because it appeals to people beyond the core dubsteppers.

M: I don’t like one type of person. The whole “dubstep” thing, I don’t think in that box.

L: Dubstep is a box now. It didn’t used to be a box, but it is now.

M: But that’s just natural because we put everything in boxes, man. But I just keep trying to fight that.

B: And as long as people keep doing that there’ll still be enough different spaces to grow into. It definitely needs to be pushed though.

L: I think it’s going to break. I think there’ll probably be a split somewhere along the line.

M: I don’t really see it as splits because even though you say there’s scene or whatever, everyone’s still doing their own thing.

L: Yeah but I can still see there being a definite shift in the music. But literally only in my crystal ball, it’s not like it’s definitely going to happen…

M: It’s natural.

L: I could see it splitting into two different things.

M: Just do your thing and enjoy your shit. Serious. Don’t worry about the rest of the world.

Grime special

This month's column is a grime special featuring Ny, Trim, Skepta and more. It's... a lot ;)

Uh oh, Woebot's trying a ting

“Bun down funky house! Bun down funky house! Make some music from your heart …”

Grime’s MC Purple

First rule of urban music: don’t call out people’s names. I guess Woebot didn’t get the email because, in a random outburst, it looks like he’s decided to try it. OK, OK fine, let’s bring it: Dubstep v commercial, sorry, funky house. And if it turns up for the ruck, we’re having grime on our side too thanks, because it’s not like he’s repped for grime in the last two years neither.

Of his article, calling out my name is the funniest. I’ve only written about funky house once, in Pitchfork last August, so I’m assuming that’s where Woebot thinks I “made great play of it being geographically rootless.” Now sure, I’ve written regularly about dubstep and its sonic relation to, and adsorption of, local geographical influences, but I’d really like Matt to point out where I call house “despicable” for being global?

My main paragraph against commercial house in my Pitchfork piece last August was this:

“[Funky house is the] soundtrack to hundreds of sterile trendy wine bars, ‘avin it in Ibiza, eight years of “Stardust”-clones, commercial compilations production lines like Defected, Ministry of Sound cynically buying up the Salsoul back catalogue so they can factory-farm radio-friendly chart house “hits” with slappers in bikini’s in the videos. We’re taking an endless stream of one-hit wonder acts (two DJ/producer nerds, one bolt-on token busty diva for the camera) who can have the biggest “choon” at the Miami music conference and licence it to umpteen “Now That’s What I Call Limp Coffee Table House Vol 217” but can’t get an album in the top 40 and get dropped after the second single. It’s all the bland DJ culture the grime MCs worked so hard to bypass…”

Now don’t get me wrong, feed me a few beers and I’ll skank around to Daft Punk ft Romanthony and I do love a bit of dirty Theo Parrish, but feed me enough seamlessly mixed “funky” in some plastic West End bar with the soundsystem EQed on the tinnitus setting and I’ll start to choke. It’s not just musically either, the whole industry machine of mainstream dance music, with PRs and marketing managers sending out hundreds of meaningless promos, made me choke so much I headed off into urban London (circa 1999/2000) to investigate UK garage. With force fed PR fodder, it basically boils down to the fact that if I’d wanted to eat foie gras, I’d have signed up for some gavage. Instead I fled. Funny thing is I had some food with Woebot (plus Stelfox, Marcus@Warp and a few other Dissensians) in Dalston recently. We had some Turkish mixed grill including, oddly, quail and he was saying the same thing about choking on PR fodder – as you’d expect from a blogger. And you know what? He didn’t mention funky house once…

Martin Clark for instance has made great play of it being geographically rootless, and this has been widely picked up by just about every other commentator. But hang on a minute, we're supposed to applaud Dubstep when it hails from Canada or New Zealand or somewhere else notionally "Global", but that very same quality in Funky House makes it despicable? Come on!

Woebot’s clumsy point about global music hides a distinction though. Dubstep has experienced massive expansion in the last two years, a delocalisation from being a tiny, local niche community to a global underground movement, a pattern which mirrors house’s growth from Chicago in the late 1980s. The distinction is that commercial house is now a truly global organisation, farmed out by PRs, marketers and radio pluggers worldwide so that when someone does a remix of Pink Floyd with a disco beat, it’s a simultaneous hit in 25 “territories” and gets played at 25 identical clubs. It’s corporate globalisation masquerading as youth culture.

Instead of following house’s pattern, my hopes for dubstep - a grass roots, collaborative, DIY movement - are that it’s less “global” more “glocal”, and if people follow the example (and not just the production styles) of the scene’s current top boys then this is entirely possible, with local scenes taking on some general dubstep ideas (bass, tempo, edge, but not necessarily all three…), mutating them with regional influences and finding their own sound. So when Woebot calls dubstep “notionally” global, I disagree. In interview with Loefah this January he talked about how he enjoyed seeing New York DJs drop Pinch’s “Qawaali”, an anthem to their crowds. He enjoyed it because it was dubstep on NYC’s terms – “Qawaali” while appreciated, was never an “anthem” on dancefloors in the UK. This was local pressure.

WHOSE HOUSE?

Returning to Woebot’s piece, there’s definitely a kind of musical category error as to what he means about “funky house,” or at least a large degree of imprecision as to culturally who it refers to. Even Simon Reynolds agrees:

“trouble with invoking "funky house", Matt, is that people think you're referring to this kind of thing (Louie Latino on bongos!) ie. a sort of default-option vaguely classy soundtrack to a dressy crowd into getting expensively drunk and chatting up the opposite sex.”

House, as Woebot points out, is very fragmented. Instead though, he tries to lump all the strands together:

“Funky House is interesting in this context because it's quite self-consciously an umbrella term to draw together a mongrel coalition of Electro-Techno-Disco-House whose sole shared agenda which is to drive the dance-floor.”

Is it though? In the mid 90s, funky house meant house with a filtered disco influence, think Cajmere, Daft Punk and Pete Heller. This isn’t a new musical sound, it’s the best part of 15 years old. Now there’s the techno-house-electro axis that’s the bastion of the mainstream Dance Music Inc DJs like Pete Tong n co, and the more electro-y you go, the further you head into Shoreditch. And there’s all the minimal/micro stuff, and more interesting people like Theo Parrish but the reality is they are vastly outnumbered.

“Funky ‘ouse”, as a new urban, post-grime phenomena, has some broken beat but no electro nor techno in its recent DNA, as far as I can hear. It seems to be the odd situation where house’s audience has migrated from “dance” to “urban” but without the music mutating, a point that Dave Stelfox calls a “reclamation” on Dissensus. Personally I’m more interested when the reclaimed music gets mutated, rather than the existing commercial house simply being played in places like Nappa or Sheffield’s Niche club, but that remains to be seen and isn’t what Woebot is referencing. Nonetheless the fact that DJs like Roll Deep’s Target and the 1Xtra playlist team will even touch it does suggest some kind of sea change in urban music culture, as I suggested last August. Here are the house tunes Target’s been play most of recently, while talking about Sheffield’s bassline/Niche scene a lot:

Enur / Natasha – Calabria
Sounds raw and urban, but given I heard it while on a French Alps ski lift recently, hardly Niche...

Hollis P Monroe – Lonely
Wasn’t this released in 1997?

TNT – Funk Patrol
Is this produced by Target’s old jungle partner, Trend?

Groove Armarda / Lady Stu$h / Red Rat – Get Down
Groove “corporate festival in Capham-r-us” Armarda?!

Fish Go Deep Feat Tracey K – The Cure & The Cause
Anthem from Irish deep house producers on Defected aka House's Microsoft…

I don’t see many of them on Woebot’s list. So which funky house is he listening to? But then… I’m not sure which dubstep he’s listening to either.

YOU DON’T KNOW DUB

“I couldn't argue an aesthetic case for 90% of Funky House, but even that faintly crap 90% … is about, ooh, lets say 1000 times more interesting than most Dubstep just by merit of having a pulse, by aiming to be entertaining… you can't imagine people losing control or getting sweaty”

I don’t know if Woebot’s made it down to Forward>> or DMZ recently… or ever… but I can’t see how he’s arguing from a position of informed accuracy here. The more he talks about dubstep, the less he seems to know or actually have witness himself, rather than having read about it online and reacted angrily. If he had actually witnessed a Skream, N Type or Hatcha set recently, he might change his mind on this point. Sure during the 2005 halfstep era, when Youngsta was experimenting with frighteningly sub freezing rhythmic temperatures, he could have been forgiven for saying, like everyone else did, that it left him cold. But now when raves like DMZ happen, it goes off! It’s chaos, girls screaming, rudeboys shocking, hands in the air, sweat dripping down the walls: the lot. For example, here's a video of N Type at that Dubstep After Hours squat party on Friday. If Woebot can find the cocktail stick in it, I’ll poke it in my eyeball and then swallow it sideways.

Returning to the issue of abandon in dubstep, the irony is to me the pendulum has swung so far from the halfstep era it concerns me for the opposite reasons, namely that DJs might get too used to it “going off” and might no longer find the balls to take the breathtaking risk taking that has given us Kode9’s “Sign of the Dub” or Shackleton’s “The Stopper refix”.

It’s also ironic that Woebot creates such a divide between house and dubstep at a time when they’ve never been closer, with Mala’s pursuit of the crazy kickdrum and euphoric “broken dub house” anthems like “Lean Forward,” “Blue Notes,” “Anti War Dub,” “Forgive” and “Changes”. But then Woebot was the one who’d famously dismissed the whole of dubstep before he’d informed his decision with any of the ten or so awesome DMZ releases, so that’s not surprising. £77 quid for “Horror Show” on eBay… ouch! So Woebot, wanna buy my entire Ghost collection? At these prices, only £2310 for the lot…

Dubstep’s also never been closer to dubby Main Street style house either, with Pinch, Peverelist, 2562 and Martyn working on dubstep/Basic Channel mutations. Lets not forget Villalobos’ mixes of Shackleton.

“And there's none of that twatting around with the lower frequencies either,”

OK so Woebot can’t handle his bass, fair enough, each to their own, I admit it can all be a bit much and, when the bass is pressing on your vocal chords, a bit scary. Dubstep’s bass has a tempered, edgy, masculine physicality to it, it’s tangible like the concrete walls in the urban margins that spawned it, but if that’s all a bit too much for some people, a cup of cha, a sit down and a nice slice of funky it is then. More tea vicar?

“Funky House at its best makes a complete mockery of the portentous riddimic theorising of Dubstep or Micro-House by actually out-stepping it in practice without resorting to drawing the listener into a state of emotional torpor.”

Um. Right. Torpor eh?

Dear Mr Woebot,

Please meet me at 3am next DMZ (Mala v Loefah set). Please bring your “torpor” quote written on edible paper, you might feel a bit peckish,

Love
Blackdown ;)