THERE'S STILL TIME FOR EVERYONE (including hackney residents who missed the first deadline) TO SEND A LETTER TO THE FRIENDS OF PP COMMITTEE:
PO Box 302 Rosden House 372 Old Street LondonEC1V 9LT
Friendsofplasticpeople@googlemail.com
These letters will be considered by Hackney licensing at a later date. The more of these there are, the more it will show how much we love the venue and how many people across the globe are against its closure. Same goes for petition signatures:
Sign the petition here. ~8,000 people from the Facebook Group haven't yet!
"8bit chips sing like cyborg buskers in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district..."
My Pitchfork column this month is dedicated to Ikonika's absorbing debut album, "Contact, Love, Want, Have." The piece is my thoughts on the album: below is the full interview...
Ikonika interview
Blackdown: Hyperdub has become a wonderfully powerful force in certain sectors of the music industry, what does it mean to you to be part of such a creative and influential squad?
Ikonika: I thought it was a little daunting at first, because I was a big fan of Burial and Kode9. I understood what Hyperdub meant to so many people and felt that I couldn’t really justify being on a label like that, thinking that this label was too big for someone like me, someone who just accidentally landed on planet Dubstep. I still think I’m a risk, I have no rules and that makes it very hard to label me, but then I just think I wouldn’t be signed to Hyperdub if that wasn't the case.
B: Writing an album is often a very challenging process, how did you set out to tackle writing it and how did you find the journey?
I: I just had to do it. I’ve learned so much about my music this year that if I hadn’t done this album I just wouldn’t have done anything. I feel invincible and confident. I feel like I could make another album right now! I want to keep moving, do my thing and progress to the next level.
B: You have some great titles for your work, from the album title “Contact, Love, Want, Have” to “They Are All Losing the War?” Can you explain what inspired them? Who for example, does “The Idiot” refer to and who is “Sahara Michael?”
I: Some are great and some just don’t make sense…I like balancing dumb with clever. The album title was a bit random, its merely 4 word magnets stuck together.
I just thought it was a beautiful collection of words. I like the idea of them talking and getting to know each other in the packet and becoming more and more attached. It’s definitely how I feel about making music right now.
‘Idiot’ could refer to the book, but it doesn’t and I haven’t read it…it was a working title that seemed to work with the wiggle and stomp of the tune, so I just left it. ‘Sahara Michael’ is my Assyrian alias when I’m out with my Assyrian friend. We basically go out and lie to complete strangers. We just do it for a giggle, bit horrible but we don’t care. ‘They Are All Losing The War’ is a song about everyone who is stuck in the mud back there somewhere and can’t get out…I’ve just realised that’s probably not the best analysis of song titles, ever.
B: One thing that’s clear from the album is that you chose to avoid vocalists, what was your thinking on a fully instrumental album?
I: Well I don’t have any means to a vocal booth, so that’s one reason. But yeah, I just intended it to be an instrumental album because that’s normal to me. I’m the singer, I sing in synths…music is really the only way that truly expresses who I really am, no matter how clichéd that sounds this expression is really important to me. I just want to dance and feel something.
B: One musical theme that’s run through your productions for quite some time is the use of dissonance, offkey or sour melodies. How do you go about writing these kinds of melodies and what draws you to them?
I: I don’t really know how to play keys so I just smack them until something nice comes out. But I want my melodies to speak. They’re simple, polite and to the point…I guess they're from my attraction to Pop and R&B hooks. I love things that are catchy and memorable, they do turn out a little sour and deranged but that’s what I love about messing around with synths…To me, that’s the whole point, making these machines express their emotions, just like WALL-E.
B: How did you come to choose the name “Ikonika?” It could be taken as quite a statement…
I: I think ‘Ikonika’ is just someone who doesn’t care about following trends, someone who is here to destroy certain elements of the dancefloor and explore new routes, new ways of dancing and new ways of feeling something. Maybe I’m here just to confuse everyone.
B: In URB last year you outlined a very diverse series of influences, but sonically your music seems focused. Do you ever have urges to make music sonically similar to Madonna and Dillinger Escape Plan?
I: I don’t think I have urges that direct. To me all my influences have this certain vibe about them, the context. That’s what attracts me to make the music I do. I know exactly what I want to achieve. I’m all about contrast, but it has to be structured a particular way. The inlay of the Hyperdub 5 album says ‘camouflage of a sad song’ when defining what the label is. That really speaks to me.
B: What’s been inspiring you musically recently and what releases are you looking forward to this year?
I: At the moment I’m very excited by people like The-Dream, Salem, Cubic Zirconia and Nicki Minaj. Also producers and DJs like R1 Ryders, Bok Bok, Jam City, Optimum and Kingdom.
B: Daedelus recently said he’s into your music but doesn’t feel like its “embodying a female perspective” musically. Do you feel your music does or should have to embody a female perspective and more generally, how do you find being a female producer in the male-dominated music industry?
I: My music could only embody my perspective. If that means my gender plays a big part of that, then OK. But truthfully I never really know how to answer questions relating to gender. I find it very hard because a lot of females big me up for getting a little attention in the industry. I’m just glad people feel my music and respect the idea that I won’t make an issue about gender, or even exploit gender to succeed. I read another lazy blog post that called me the M.I.A of Dubstep…that’s another issue entirely, but one that bothers me a lot. the thing is people won’t really know what they’re saying or how things will be perceived because they simple don’t know.
Official Statement from the Management of Plastic People
"Hello everyone and thank you very much for your support. We know that Plastic People is loved by all of you, but we could never have predicted the reactions from so many people in such a short time. It has been overwhelming. On behalf of everyone here at Plastic People, special thanks to Benny Blanco for starting the ‘Keep Plastic People Alive’ Campaign and to all of you who are showing your appreciation for what the club has done over the last 16 years
Charlotte and I are in no doubt how serious this situation is and as a result had a meeting with the solicitor yesterday. This does not mean that all hope is lost and that Plastic People has come to its end. However, it does mean that we must do all we can to co-operate with the Police and Hackney Council in order to ensure that we can keep the best dance music venue in London open for all to enjoy.
Here is a breakdown of the whole process:
• The police have made an application to Hackney Council for a review the premises licence at Plastic People on the grounds that the way the management have been operating the club has breached the existing terms of its licence and failed to prevent crime and disorder and public nuisance.
• The notice outside the club’s premises will be there till the 11th March, which is the closing date for representations to be made by ‘interested parties’ (unfortunately this does not include you guys, but there may be an opportunity for you to make a contribution, see below) for or against the closure or any other outcome of the review.
• After the 11th, the licensing department at Hackney Council will, within 10 days, write to all parties concerned to invite them to a sub-committee hearing on a given date at a given address where they would make their case. That hearing should take place by the 31st of March.
• It would then be up to the Committee to decide on the eventual outcome which could be one or more of these:
(a) To revoke the license altogether; (b) To suspend the license for a period not exceeding three months; (c) To modify the conditions of the license;
Once a decision has been made, we would be notified and in the worst case scenario, we would have the option of appealing, but our current aim is to work with the Police and the Licensing Authority to find a solution that is satisfactory to all. Having never had problems with our licence over 16 years, whether in Oxford Street or Shoreditch, we are optimistic that this will be possible. Whilst the management concentrate on working With the Police and Hackney Council to address their concerns, much still needs to be done. Unfortunately, we can’t make the full version of the Police application openly available at this stage. A collection of people involved in the club are setting up a Committee called Friends of Plastic People. They will gather people’s experiences of working with and attending Plastic People over the years. They will meet this week and no doubt they will let you know how you can help.
I would urge everyone to hold back on making representations to the Police or the Council in the meantime, but by all means carry on spreading the word.
Once again, my most heartfelt gratitude to all of you!"
Bernard KOUDJO Plastic People LTD Curtain Road Shoreditch, EC2A 3QE
Truthfully, I'd be totally devastated if Plastic People closed down, there's nothing like it in London. It is totally fundamental to London-based bass music: from dubstep to early grime, breakbeat garage to UK funky and broken beat, it has incubated so many amazing sounds that have subsequently gone on to conquer the globe.
Hatcha's sets there changed dubstep forever. Kode9 cut his DJ-teeth there. Burial's "Archangel" was first played there: say no more. I've lost count of the number of my hero's who have played there - I once saw Mala hand over the decks to Wiley and Roll Deep. I've lost count of the number of people who I've seen play there and become a hero of mine and subsequently so many other people around the world.
DJing there was one of the most amazing moments of my life. Privately, I've feared this day for many years: I profoundly hope its not about to come. So we need to fight for this special place.
Please join the Facebook group here. Remember joining the Facebook group isn't the solution just a means to get organised. When the committee called Friends of Plastic People is formed we must support their needs.
If a few more of you lot add me, I'll break 1,000 followers, which would be fun.
Damn I just broke 1000, congrats to Kiev dubstepper Glacial for being the 1000th. Hope you enjoy the Skream 12" fella.
And if 15,301 of you lot add me, I'll break even with Skepta, which would be mental.
Until then I'll just continue to conversate with @Shadrack_Mandem. It's made my day. Laughing is good for you you know, even if Shadrack & the boys make me laugh so hard and so randomly I must look a little weird. I think my funnybone might need re-calibrating.
I was standing outside Plastic People after the Hyperdub 5 CD listening party last year when someone came up to me and introduced himself. His name was Gerv and what he said made me laugh: turns out he knows the Keysound photographer's sister, who used to be my old flatmate and he's in a band called LV, did I know them? Know them, we'd been playing their dubs on Rinse! We began chatting and after a few Budvars, I confessed my love for a lost dub, "Early Mob" which will - to cut a long story short - be coming out as part of a LV EP on Keysound in April.
While sorting out the EP, he IMed me this infectious South African house track. It set off my "wtf" alarm...
Then he mentioned that not only was he heading to South Africa for Christmas, but he'd clocked some mad music being made, often being circulated by taxi drivers affiliated to local soundsystems. I was fascinated, so when he got back I sent him some questions and sent the boys round to give all of LV Chinese burns until they made a mix to share. Here's what happened...
Blackdown:What brought you to South Africa for this trip?
Gerv LV:I was born in Cape Town and came to London when I was about 6 so I’m kindof English in South Africa and South African in England. I’ve got a lot of extended family over there so the first reason for this trip was to connect with them.
B:Can you outline loosely what you were up to and where you went?
G:I decided to extend my trip and use it as an opportunity to explore a bit. I got put in touch with a couple of people who put me in touch with a couple of people and I wanted to soak up as much as possible so I just went wherever the music took me. I was based in Cape Town for just over a month but I also got to visit Johannesburg, Stellenbosch, Grabouw, bits of the Eastern Cape. Some random collaborations came together while I was out there which was really exciting, it was great bringing it back to LDN and playing it to my LV guys.
B:We talked before about you having heard of a culture of taxi drivers affilliated with soundsystems, did you encounter any of that while you were there?
G:The taxis are pretty fascinating to me. The way they seem to operate outside the law, the way they zoom past you on the hard shoulder at a million miles an hour. Each taxi is a soundsystem. Normally you hear them before you see them. Always with the DOOF DOOF DOOF DOOF. Some have brightly-coloured designs and names like ‘Thunderclap’ or ‘Masterblaster’. I heard that every year there is a taxi soundclash convention somewhere up in the eastern Cape where they all get together for raves and drag races on the beach roads. Music is clearly vital to the taxi culture. You often hear people referring to “taxi music”. To be honest, it amazes me that noone has found a way of using the taxis as a way of getting music into people’s ears in a more organized kindof way. I suppose this is just a sign of how embryonic the local music industry is out there, it seems like those channels are all still being formed.
South Africa is a big place so people have to travel huge distances all the time. Last time I was in South Africa years ago I took a bus from Durban to Cape Town and the driver only had 3 CDs. By the time we reached Cape Town 14 hours later I knew every tune backwards! In fact, one of the tracks I remember from that busride was that Mzo Bullet track which has pricked a few ears over here.
I did hear of a couple of people that have benefited from having their music played by the taxis. An early mixtape by DJ Cleo got picked up by one of the Cape Town taxi firms and that really helped him. He’d come down from Gauteng (an area in the North of South Africa) to play parties in Cape Town and people were already familiar with his stuff. I also heard that DJ Mujava used to drive a taxi in Pretoria and he would play his own music in his taxi, selling cds for a couple of bucks out the back. Pretty soon word got out that his taxi was playing good tunes so other taxi drivers and people with bars or shebeens would ask him for cds.
B:What new-to-you musical sounds and styles did you discover while you were out there?
G:So. Much. Music. Everywhere I went. Inevitably lots of the music you hear is that suffocating piped-in mall music you get anywhere in the world but most of the radio stations have SA quotas so you do get to hear the odd ‘local’ thing.
When I was in Joburg I got taken to a great late night place and the dj was sat behind the bar playing all this wicked stuff. I got chatting to him and he was telling me about all this kwaito/house hybrid music coming out of Durban. Zulupower! He played a tune by some people called Big Nuz that I had to try and find (You can hear it in the mix). Most of the music that really excited me over there was this sped-up kwaito stuff. Really imaginative party beats with loads of inappropriate noises and bits of vocal and synth chatter
The first totally-new-to-me thing I came across was this dance called ‘Pantsula’. There is a whole music that’s grown around it. I’m not really sure how it differs from Kwaito but people seem to talk about it as a separate thing. Lots of the South African rappers make pantsula versions of their tunes. Mostly it sounds quite sluggish to me but I heard a few things I liked.
The other cool thing I heard was people mixing Jamaican sounds with the local sounds in whatever way they can. There’s always been quite a vibrant reggae scene in South Africa, my uncle played the bass in a group called ‘Sons of Selassie’ that were quite popular anti-establishment party-starters from the Observatory area of Cape Town. I met a Xhosa reggae singer called Teba Shumba who remembers performing with him back in the day. Michael Jones RIP.
B:Any particular tracks or artists really grab your attention?
G:First thing was Big Nuz. I love the way the 3 of them call and respond and bounce off each other, sometimes overlapping. My mate Spoek told me that their bars are killa but I haven’t got a clue what they’re on about most of the time, though occasionally you get an English phrase like “til the break of daaawn”. And the beats are wicked, lots of odd tuned percussion and percussive synth lines. It’s just straight coolness. Soundtrack to many a hot car journey.
My cousin put me onto a guy called Mzekeke that made me laugh a lot. He calls his music Kasie rap (toilet rap) – it’s very dirgy trancey afrolectro with lots of offensive shouting and weird characters and skits. He’s a huge star in the ghetto and does mobile phone promotions. But he always wears a mask so there’s all this speculation about who he is and what he has done and why he has to protect his true identity.
A few of the best things I picked up out there are totally unknown to me, they’re just called ‘track 4’ or ‘track 6’ or ‘track 13’. I was in a cab on Main Road stuck in really bad rush hour traffic and the driver had one of those car stereos that plays off a USB stick. He was playing a wicked tune and we got talking. Turns out he was a law student from Zimbabwe who was living in exile. He urged me to rip his entire USB drive onto my laptop as long as I have him a few things in return. I never got to thank him properly, there was some unbelievable stuff on there.
B:What were your DJ sets like? I hear you had one eventful one...
G:There was one gig under a railway in the centre of Joburg, the club was literally covered in a thick layer of red dust due to the roadworks happening outside. The whole place had a reddish glow, which was cool, but it got ridiculously hot. From 8pm they were playing that megadistorto aggy halfstep and I got the feeling it was quite a drum and bass crowd. So I went for it with the harder stuff I had with me, they weren’t ready for Stageshow Version). Towards the end I played Sweet Mother by Skepta, a tune I love and which I had been looking forward to playing, and some people at the front were shouting pretty obscene racial insults at me… I remember one voice cutting through the noise saying "Why you playing this African shit?” I so wanted to tell them this tune was straight outta North London!
I also played at a huge outdoor trance festival over New Year which was a madness. They had 3 powercuts during the entire 3 day festival and all 3 were during the first hour of my 2 hour set. I played on the African Dope stage on New Year’s Day, went on just as the sun was going down. ‘Fostercare’ sounded different on that system, heartbreaking. Not sure people were ready for that one either.
My favourite gig was in Cape Town at a place called Co.Lab studios. The music and vibe was amazing all night. Spoek Mathambo came down and touched mic during my set, the highlight was him spitting fire over a Zomby tune called Balloon People into the Doc Daneeka edit of Pathwayz by Digital Mystikz. That was a beautiful moment. I even got to play some Pink Dollaaaaz which made me wish my LV crew were out there with me. Maybe next time…
B:How about a quick mix of those MP3s you gathered? Go on!!!!!!
G:This is a selection of favorites from the trip, plus a couple of things I got sent around the time. Will, Si and I put it together immediately after i got back. It’s got a rub of Dream Cargo in there that’s actually closer to the original tempo of the demo that Kode 9 heard. Seemed a nice fit. The mix starts with an outtake of Smiso saying ‘OK ZHARP’ which became like a catchphrase for my time out there and it ends on a personal note, our dub version of a new collab track. The track was started in 35 degree heat in Fletcher African Dope’s beachside studio in Muizenberg, Cape Town…and finished in a cold room in South London.
Okmalumkoolkat - OK Zharp intro
? - Ketokole
Big Nuz - Le Ngoma
DJ Killer & Nyekx aka Blackboyz - Killer in the Jungle
French Fries feat Bambounou - Coconut
LV - Dream Cargo slomo rub
Tshwara feat DJ Menace - ?
? - Bring Me Love
DJ Clock - Track 13
? - The Offering
Dikota- Track 6
DJ Cndo - Terminator
Big Nuz with Tira, Bonz Twitty - Superman
? - Nkosana
? - ?
? - Arise and Shine
Scratcha DVA - Dump
Spin - Track 3
? - ?
Zomby – Balloon People
DJ Fork and Knife vs Cabbage - Track 4
Mujava feat Tamara and K - Alostro
Brothers of Peace feat Zulu & Costa - Bop Killers
? - Wild Percussions
LV & Fletcher - Michael Jones (LV dub)
LV release the 5 track "38" EP ft Josh Idehen on Keysound in April, more about it, in due course...
1. Double Helix (LHF) – 96 Flavas (No More Games) 2. Ramadanman – Mir 3. Martin Kemp – After The Night 4. The Detatchments – Circles [Martyn's Round & Round Mix] 5. Jazzanova – I Can See [Doc Daneeka Dub-Bump Mix] 6. Kode 9 – 2 Far Gone 7. Martyn – Mega Drive Generation 8. Bassjackers & Apster – Klambu 9. Deadboy – U Cheated 10. Zomby – Rumours and Revolutions 11. Efdemin – Acid Bells [Martyn's Bittersweet Mix] 12. Geeneus & Ms Dynamite – Get Low 13. Smoove Kriminal – Represent 14. Sticky – Jack It Up feat. Marvin Brown 15. R1 Ryders – Rubberband VIP 16. SouLTonic Sound System – The Flying Saucer 17. Bok Bok – Citizens Dub feat. Bubbz 18. Hem feat. Terrible Shock – On a Mission [Shortstuff Remix] 19. A4C – Untitled Mambo [Boogaloo Crew Remix] 20. Joy Orbison – Hyph Mngo 21. Breakage feat. Newham Generals & David Rodigan – Hard 22. Desto – Disappearing, Reappearing ink 23. Joker – Digidesign 24. 2000F & J Kamata – You Don’t Know What Love Is 25. Starkey – Rain City 26. Headhunter – Prototype [Modeselektor's Broken Handbrake Remix] 27. Crystal Fighters – I Love London [Brackles Remix]
Oneman: Probably about two and a half months ago. Rat had mentioned it to me and I’d started thinking about it but nothing was really set in stone until about October. I didn’t start working on it until Rat properly said. And from the time I started to when I recorded it, it was just under a month’s work. They’re all tunes I like at the moment.
B: So how did you go about picking the selection because you could have gone in several different directions?
O: Yeah so the way I wanted to do the mix… because I thought about it a lot: do I want to put old garage stuff on there? Do I want it to be like my old React FM sets or more like my new Rinse FM sets? But I settled on the idea that I wanted it to be a snapshot of exactly what I like, right now, and that is not so much of the new dubstep stuff and not so much of the new grime stuff, but more of the funky and the wot-do-u-call-it dark house stuff. That’s what I’m into at the moment: producers like Martin Kemp, Bok Bok and Jamie George. People like that are making really good music and it’s back to 130-135bpm again. It’s kinda gone round in a circle.
B: It has a bit hasn’t it!
O: All the values I enjoyed in early garage, especially the bpm, the shuffle, the beat base – it’s all coming back again with this new stuff. The whole 'new Wot Do U Call It dark house, Martin Kemp, Doc Daneeka thing” is that I think it fills a gap in where house is meeting dubstep at the moment and I think its really important and relevant to both scenes, because its like what I hear in those records is what definitely what I heard in dubstep in 2004/05 - just a sense of space and atmosphere, not so much about the melody but just bass beats and weird odd sounds.
B: So why did you choose not to play older garage or grime, as you often have before?
O: Because that’s what I’m known for. I’m known as the dubstep DJ who started playing garage. That was three years ago but I’ve moved on a bit from there. I was thinking: do I want another mix out that has just dubstep and garage tracks on there? I didn’t - and I realise it’s more relevant to incorporate those older garage tracks with the newer funky sound. I tried to do that but there was something in me that really didn’t want to go back too far. I did think about it and a lot of times I don’t actually think about it I just do it, I just play ‘em. This time I did want to think about this mix properly. I remember I was talking to Distance at Radio 1’s Generation Bass and he said the best thing with mixes was to plan them out a bit because you never want to look back and think ‘oh I missed out this…’ So I wanted to make sure I planned this one really, really well.
B: So there’s stuff on this mix that sounds like UK funky and other new stuff that is very close to traditional house, what is it about this space you like?
O: To me it’s like a broken version of funky, like what all the dub mixes were to garage and what the dub house mixes were to house, back in the ‘80s in New York. To me it’s just the beats and the atmosphere that have been newly created. It sounds like funky it’s just a bit different. I think it’s the beats and the atmosphere that are different because you wouldn’t see a girl with a smile on her face dancing to it, like she’d dance to a Crazi Cousins track. It’s the darker end of the scale, the dub end really.
B: It’s nice because to me it feels like two groups in London having some kind of dialog: the original funky ravers, those who started out being into Fingerprint etc – and we can feel what they’re doing – but then there’s our immediate social group who make beats that fit into the tempo but with slightly different flavour.
O: Yeah. Did you hear Scratcha on the radio the other day? I think he’d played a Bok Bok riddim and said ‘oh this is that weird sound, you can find guys like Oneman and Bok Bok in Shoreditch in skinny jeans…’ Hahaha…
B: But you know he’s obsessed with what he calls “strange” or “weird” people? He’s got these irrefutable funky, pirate and grime credentials but he wants to be “weird.”
O: Yeah I know and that’s why he’s obviously playing the track because he was like “yeah I’ve got another one coming up, it’s all good.” That’s why he wears them glasses too.
B: I think Scratcha’s unique.
O: Yeah he’s brilliant and a really nice guy.
B: He sees that there’s things beyond the ‘ends’ in which he grew up in and wants to move towards them, whereas some of his mates would be like ‘nah.’ Yet through Rinse it’s all become one thing.
[ I’d like to add some thoughts in here at this point, about the blurring of the harcore continuum axis’ this year. While there’s been much debate last year about whether something was or wasn’t part of the nuum or whether you should even be doing that, but I think a lot of observers still use fairly agreed indicators to tell the difference in a nuum context between, say, JME and Haduken. But this year all this stuff like a) funky-not-funky Jam City/Mosca b) Terror Danjah on Mu/Hyperdub c) Roska and Untold collaborations d) Scratcha making an indie/grime mixtape (“No Right Turn”) has really muddied the water in an irrefutable way. The degree of collaboration and dialog is so entrenched that in many cases, i.e. some of the most interesting ones, the boundaries are in some cases jumbled.
But in other cases, it’s less that two groups have met and blurred the lines, more that some of the axis’ have been completely reversed by 180 degrees. I’m thinking particularly of Geeneus and Wonder, both of whom have impeccable grime credentials (Pay As U Go/Rinse co founder and ex-Roll Deep member respectively) who now play the housiest of house. The housier the better, almost tribal house. Wonder plays late night 3 hour minimal sets at bars in Brick Lane and Gee’s sound is ultra percussive and very deliberately removed from grime. I guess I’d ask where this leaves the axis', when culturally they’re as they were but musically they’ve been flipped 180 degrees. There’s also the Azzido Da Bass of UK funky, Bassjackers & Apster “Klambu”, which is a European trance anthem, recontextualised as UK funky banger. Speaking of which...]
B: Can you tell me about Bassjackers and Deadboy?
O: Deadboy is a guy from New Cross. I really like his tunes because they sound organic, they don’t really sound that well mixed down but they don’t necessarily sound wrong. They don’t sound anything like anyone else’s music, especially “U Cheated” and “Heartbreaker” and that new one “If You Want Me,” which sounds like Kode9 doing garage. That Bassjackers track I just found it on a blog and it’s like a commercial house track really… I couldn’t tell you too much about the producers or who they are. Funnily, that track, I played the mix to Loefah on Friday and it was one of the only tracks he went “what the fuck is this? This is amazing.” To come from Loefah, that’s pretty cool.
B: Especially it’s in a house direction that he’s not usually interested in. Because the idea of heading to 130bpm has been around for about a year to 18 months and I remember talking to him about it in that really long interview. I mentioned we’d been working at 138 for years but we we’re slowing down to 130, there’s a gravitation towards funky and while he was interested in trying his 808 thing at 130 Loe was at pains to point out it had nothing to do with funky.
O: Haha, that sounds like him, definitely…
B: So, I like the fact that you broke the mix in the middle with Martyn’s beatless mix of Efdemin…
O: Yeah that was the point at which it was: should I or should I not do this? Because there’s also another mix of that track by Martyn, called the “Dark Mix,” more like an acid house track. But I went with my gut and thought fuck it and went with the beatless thing in the middle. Because it kinda goes from the pacey, dark house stuff into that and then straight into the proper funky.
B: One of the things you’ve always been excellent at is creating a sense of groove but a side effect is to move people in dubstep away from the halfstep idea where you break everything down and build it back up again. But here you did break it down, right in the middle of your mix. So I wouldn’t have expected it from you but I really liked how you did it. The Martyn remix reminds me of an old Aphex Twin track “On.” So, how did you manage to get the Ms Dynamite special you mix out of it with?
B: I didn’t even ask for it! I got an email from Rat saying “here’s a ‘Get Low’ dub from Geeneus,” and I was like [makes sound of filling his pants]. And I was like “[voice of someone trying to play it cool] cheers thanks!” Cos I’ve heard the tune before but I don’t know the tune from the beat I know it from the lyrics and the verse. So when I heard it [from his email] I thought ‘oh this is a good beat.’ I didn’t even know it was called ‘Get Low.’ I heard the intro going “Oneman DJ/Get down low…” and I thought it was a grime MC or something. Then it dropped in with the lyrics and it was like “fucking no way!” I didn’t even know the tune that well and now I had a special of it. It’s great. It’s obviously Geeneus knowing I was doing the CD and helping out with a dub, which I’m really grateful for.
B: It’s pretty nuts, most people would have to get on bended knee for a Ms Dynamite special.
O: So yeah I played it and loads of other funky tunes after the beatless track to bring it down and catapult it back up.
B: The end of the mix I like, you definitely play some tracks that have been some staples of yours, Joker, 2000F, Desto… what was the plan around clustering those ones at the end?
O: I just wanted to showcase some of my favourite 140bpm tunes because the mix is pretty much 130-135bpm, and you can’t play those tunes at that speed, you’ve got to play them at 140 for them to be heard properly. So I thought I’d mix Joy Orbison into Breakage ft Newham Generals “Hard”. I thought I’d mix Joy Orbison in and I’d use the intro and cut it half way through so again you’ve got this beatless part of the mix which allowed me to speed it up basically. Because I’m using Serato with the master tempo on it, you can’t tell it’s being sped up until the beat comes back in and buy that time you’ve gone 20 seconds into the tune… so it’s pretty unnoticeable. Then I locked that there at 140 and mixed the others in because that’s what speed they are.
B: So I’ve seen you use vinyl, CDJs and you’re using Serato: how do you find mixing across these different formats?
O: I’m really, really, really still into vinyl. Purely because I know all my tunes because of what a label looks like, what’s written on it, what font they’ve used, what colour it is, how many scratches are on it, how frayed the cover is. They all come into me knowing my tunes: otherwise it’s a big black disk, I’m not going to have a fucking clue what’s on it. With this Serato thing you’ve got a screen full of words, data and numbers and it’s really confusing. So for me I’m finding DJing out in clubs with Serato a bit of a nightmare…. Not a nightmare but it’s giving me a bit of trouble because I don’t know where everything is. It is just a bunch of words and you’ve got to go through it all. You go from the decks to the computer and back to the decks again. I mean I will get used to it, I’m not going to give up on it but I do prefer using vinyl purely for accessibility.
B: Does Serato allow you to play more upfront selection?
O: Yeah, that’s kinda why I got it because there’s so much music I’m getting sent right now that I like and I don’t want to carry CDs around. I’d much rather use 1210s because they’ve got a bigger plate, bigger pitch shifter – bigger, better, nicer to use. I hate CDJs they’re really small. I always end up knocking something and it goes wrong. That’s why I’m quite happy with Serato as it’s in the middle of CDs and decks.
B: I don’t know about you but I find they make me mix differently. It’s much easier to find the start of a track on a CDJ than vinyl but harder to keep it in if it goes out. How do you find it?
O: I find I mix a lot quicker and a lot better on CDJs. I just glance at the bpm counter, get the track around that tempo and then go from there.
B: They’ll get you in the ballpark. I’ve had Kode say ‘don’t ever trust them’ but they’re usually pretty spot on.
O: It’s digital: of course they are! But I like Serato, it has a really nice interface and the looping things you can do on the CDJ you can do here too. Cue points you can trigger off your keypad. I think Serato is a near to the future of DJing as we’ve got so far, with a lot of the soundsystem companies tailoring their systems especially for digital. In ten years vinyl is going to sound shit, basically. You’ll have people playing vinyl in clubs and people will be like ‘what the fuck is this?’ Everyone will be digital because all the systems will be tailored for MP3s.
B: My concern with CDs and other digital stuff is the top end. In a club it does sound really harsh at the top.
O: Yeah it’s really crashy… it doesn’t sound clean.
B: Maybe it’s because we’re all used to bassy records.
O: I think it probably is… I think we all probably need to get a pair of earplugs.
B: I do wear them and they do roll the top off, but still, CDs aren’t the same. Sometimes they’re a necessity, especially to play upfront on radio, but in clubs it’s different. So tell me about that Modeselector remix, because it’s really techno and quite different to the tracks on the mix.
O: Yeah that was another last minute tune from the Tempa mailing list. I really like the melody when it switches: it’s really old hardcore sounding. The melody is like hardcore but with techno sounds and a garage beat. I think Modeselector done really well with that tune and it’s great to mix with because there’s hardly any tunes with that sound in the intro, it’s like something Burial would use in his “Distant Lights” tune. It’s that kind of noise I really love.
B: You started the whole mix with a Double Helix (LHF) track that’s kinda junglist and quite a poignant sample in it, what was the thinking on that?
O: Yeah the sample in “96 Flava” “I don’t find there’s enough classics out there” just before the drop is definitely an opening statement I’m happy making with the mix as I do feel that way. The lack of 'classics' over the past five years has kind of lead me to go back around to garage and bring some of those tracks back to life.
B: And then you ended with Brackles’ I Love London remix…
O: Yeah I love that tune, it’s really special. The reason why I finished with it is because it’s one of my tunes of the year and its got that sample in it (“I love London…”) which I thought is so relevant to the Rinse mix.
B: What is it about London that makes music like this?
O: I dunno really I guess it’s being around it all the time and all the different cultures. When I went to primary school I was one of four white kids in my class out of thirty. Most of them were black kids, some of them were Asian, a few eastern Europeans but not so many back then. So language evolves, their parents listen to different things, you get older, you go out… it literally is just living here and being around it all.
B: Well, I think pointing to multiculturalism is a pretty good start to answering the question…
O: Yeah, I think it is, as much is it’s really cliché to point out all the cultures but in my case it’s true. I don’t think I’d be a DJ if I hadn’t lived in south London. I don’t think I’d be doing this at all. I wouldn’t got a pair of decks because my mate didn’t have a pair.
B: Who were the first big DJs that inspired you?
O: The first DJ who inspired me and pretty much everyone I know who DJs garage was EZ. The Pure Garage compilations were our first look into garage. I was in year eight when Pure Garage 1 came out but I completely missed it. But when I was in year 9 Pure Garage 2 come out, I remember it was a red CD and it had “Flowers,” “Buddha Finger” … it had literally every big garage tune all on that CD… “Sometimes it Snows in April”. I listened to that CD about 300 times, just listening to EZ’s mixing. I could reel off all those mixes now.
B: Looking back as a seasoned industry professional, do you not think that maybe some of that was done on Pro Tools, even though EZ is certifiably a badboy DJ?
O: What his Pure Garage mixes? I’ve never even thought about that… it’s never even crossed my mind.
B: Haha, sorry to mention it. And about Father Christmas yeah…
O: Haha!
B: I don’t know about Pure Garage but I’ve seen it in other DJ mixes, I used to work with someone who built Paul Oakenfold’s mixed radio show for him, I watched him do it in a Pro Tools-like program.
O: I know EZ is a fan of the Pioneer mixer and I know on his later mixes he’s used a lot of that. And the Best of Pure Garage, the one with Bass, Beats, and Breaks on it, one of his CDs there’s actually a few mini clangs on there. I was doing my mix and was like ‘oh my god, EZ has clanged on a CD: I am fine.’ Everyone of us is OK! I even heard him clang on Kiss, and I was happy. Because you know if EZ clanged then you’re fine, you’re alright.
B: To be fair, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you clang!
O: Oh I have, believe me. I definitely have, I definitely have had my fair share.
B: Sorry I’m not having it but anyway… so for people who are perhaps starting out as DJs, what are your tips for beatmixing?
O: Literally practice mixing. I would say kick all bad habits, like slowing the plate down with your finger.
B: So how would you recommend slowing it down?
O: Just by the pitch. Ride the pitch, just keep your eye on it. And keep your ear open and you’ll hear it. As you move the pitch up and down, you’ll hear it. And if it’s a bit too fast and you’re on +2 then pitch it down to the light for a second and then back to just below +2. Ride the pitch. When you touch the plate – which I’ve been doing for years and have been getting myself out of recently – you hear the [makes the weird noise of record changing speed]. But if you ride the pitch you take all of that out. you’re just going faster or slower really, without any force on the plate.
B: So you said that it’s bad touching the deck for slowing it down, does that apply to speeding it up?
O: I don’t think it’s that bad for speeding it up. You know when people pinch the middle and speed it up like that or lightly brush your finger around the label just to speed it up, but I wouldn’t push the record as it does the same sort of thing [makes the weird noise of record changing speed].
B: Yeah, Deep Thought calls that “wanging the mix” as it makes a “waaANG” noise when you do it.
O: Hahah, yeah that’s right. You’ve got a wanger… “Oi, we’ve got a wanger…!”
[ It strikes me here that what Oneman is describing is correcting the pitch once already in the mix, i.e. you’ve taken the crossfader over to introduce the second record, before you’re sure the two tracks are at the same speed and in phase. Many DJs ensure the two tracks are already safely mixed long before they do this, but it takes time. The ‘wanging’ noise is irrelevant if only you hear it.
The ability and balls to be able to correct your mixes once they’re already public explains how Oneman can mix two tunes so quickly – he knows he can correct the mix as it happens, which for many people is a gamble (if the records go out, one of them is faster but you don’t know which) but a calculated one if you’re that capable and confident of correcting any error seamlessly. I think this is very much part of what makes Oneman such an amazing DJ: he can mix “faster” than most other people, more accurately and for longer.
Dusk and I have sometimes remarked at gigs that we wish he’d sometimes play more of the tune he’d just brought in and is now mixing out of, just because we like his selection, but frankly if you, me or anyone else could mix to these kind of levels, we probably would. I mean: you would, wouldn’t you? - Blackdown]
O: So I try and stay on the pitch now and it is a lot easier, I’ve seen Hatcha do it ridiculously. He’ll just go from +8 to -8 in a second and it will be locked.
B: Hatcha is a bit of a good DJ…
O: Yeah, just a bit haha…
B: You’re amazing and keeping stuff locked forever but what I like about Hatcha’s style is he’s amazing at using the two records to make different rhythmic patterns.
O: Yeah I know what you mean, he done that with “Red” and Ms Dynamite’s “Ramp” – both Menta tunes, recently when I played with him on Kiss. It was ‘wow’ … and the way he mixed in “Red” as well, I’ve not hear anyone mix it in like that.
B: Well, “Red” is an original Hatcha tune. Velvet Room headz called the version that came out “Red 2” because Hatcha had the original version of “Red” on dubplate that didn’t do much…
O: I think that was the one he played.
B: It’s got none of the phased breakdown it’s just a really linear DJ tool.
O: Yeah I think that’s the one he played, I’ve never heard it before. But yeah, Hatcha’s a dubplate don, really.
B: Yup, he’s a total hero of mine: it’s good to have them.
O: Yeah definitely.
B: So you were on React FM for ages and I know it was, ahem, under negotiations with Soulja for a bit about coming on Rinse.
O: So Sarah wanted me to come on Rinse from early, I’d been on React for about five months and that’s because I’d played at DMZ and at FWD, got an agent so she was interested. And I said I’d do it if I could keep my React show, but she said I had to do Rinse exclusive. At the time Heny G was at React and we are really good mates and he’d built something there that I thought would be really good so I wanted to stick it out for a bit but then some new people got drafted in and Heny left and it just went dead. The FM wasn’t on for four months, the stream hardly ever worked due to problems with their internet, it was a bit of a shambles really…
B: And you got locked in the studio a few times!
O: I got locked in the studio twice! I’d forgotten about that.
B: Asbo was quite concerned about how you were getting home!
O: Hahah. Good times…! That was really hard to get out of that studio because it had those gates at the front… it was under some arches of the tube line in Hammersmith. They had these big iron gates at the front which had serrated tops which you couldn’t climb over. They weren’t like spikes: they were worse than that, they were twisted bits of metal…
B: And you’ve got a record bag…
O: I’ve got a record bag, the gate is 9 feet tall and I’m about 5 and a half, so that was a bit of a nightmare, but I think we got out of there in the end, cut free. But back to Rinse, I decided to do it because it’s just so much more professional. I did a cover for them when they were over in the Bromley-by-Bow studio and I really enjoyed it. So Rat and Sarah offered me a weekly or bi-weekly show. I’ve had it for about a year now and have been enjoying it. I feel like they do a lot more to help their DJs, which in turn you get more exposure from. I definitely think my money is going a lot further than it was at React, especially with the new studio, how it looks in there. Ah mate it’s just so nice: have you seen the new signs as well? I looks like a proper station now. It’s a really nice place and I’m happy on there. Management are wicked, Rat’s really cool.
B: The audience is pretty cool because you’re half London, half global.
O: Yeah, it’s half FM listeners in their car or something, and at my time 11-1am, you get a lot of people locking in from the States.
B: Did you find that the DMZ gig was a turning point for you as a DJ, or where there other gigs that turned more heads?
O: I think that was the one really, because I think a lot of people were surprised about how much garage I played. I know my agent, Belinda, she first saw me there and one of the main reasons she said she wanted to work with me is that she was there all night and when I came on not only did everyone start dancing but all the girls came to the front and started dancing because they love garage. It was definitely a turning point for me because people realised who I was and what I was doing. It was the last set of the night and I was just so chuffed to see so many people stay there. People were getting a bit tired after Plastician, because it wasn’t Plastician’s best set I remember, but anyway. I was just so chuffed to see everyone who was there at 5am still there at 6am. Pretty much everyone stayed for the whole set.
B: I’ve got this theory, let me run it past you. I think a lot of people came into dubstep around the DMZ 06 era, many of them from drum & bass who were looking for something dark but not as hectic as d&b in 2006. I think a lot of people who came through had this thing about garage being shit. My theory is that you were one of the key people that turned that perception around.
O: Yeah a few people have said that to me, they’ve said the whole resurgence of garage is purely down to me and I do think I did have a hand in it.
B: I think you definitely spearheaded it. So my point is around the perceptions of people who would have come to DMZ and whether they still think garage is a dirty word or not…
O: Yeah I think what they think of garage being is the Sweet Female Attitude or Artful Dodger type sound, which is kind of 2001, champagne and charly… which it wasn’t really. I think the garage I play is more club music like the dubstep I play is club music, the El-B’s or Wookie’s, that sort of stuff. I can’t see any difference between that and early dubstep or any underground stuff really: dark beats and dark bass. But I love girly garage tunes too…
B: And you’re not afraid to play them either!
O: Yeah, I don’t give a fuck, music is music. It’s one song, it only lasts three minutes!
B: Yeah but certain DJs are afraid to show a feminine side in their DJing.
O: Oh, well I love it. You can dance to them type of tunes, properly. I can’t dance to “Spongebob” the same way I dance to “What you do” by Colours.
B: I won’t dance to “Spongebob”… I will leave the venue!
O: So yeah the older, girlier garage tracks I’m not afraid to play at all.
B: To me the joy is zig zagging between the bassier stuff and the vocals. Straight vocals can get a bit much but if you get the sweet and the sour in there together it’s perfect.
O: I totally agree, I try and do that as much as I can. These days, especially in clubs, I seem to start out with r& remixes. 702 the Resevoir Dogs mix, Amira “My Desire,” Basement Jaxx “Red Alert remix”, “The Boy is Mine” – them garage remixes from around ‘98-99, I’m playing loads of them out now for the first 10-15 mins of my set, all the classic vocal tracks that are really fuckin girly. They always get a party started: they always do. If I start with “Boy Is Mine” garage remix, when the bassline comes in, everyone knows it, straight away.
B: X-Men aka Wookie remix!
O: Big tune! The way the bass works they play one note and then the same note 1 octave above after it, so the bass is ascending...
B: This ties back into my theory about how you converted people from thinking that garage was terrible, because there was definitely a point when I realized that you were playing those records to people for the first time. Digging into those classic record was like having an arsenal of dubs.
O: I guess it was, especially for that crowd as well. Cos like you say, to that crowd, that is a new tune.
B: The mix mostly avoids 140 bpm until the end, what is your take on how dubstep is going at the moment?
O: You can say ‘this is dubstep’ or ‘that is dubstep:’ it’s subjective and everyone has an idea of what dubstep is, but what I think dubstep is and what is was when I started listening to it in about 2004-05, what dubstep is known as now it’s completely changed. If a CD came out now called “Now that’s what I call dubstep 2009” I’d not expect to like one tune on there. I’d expect it to be all big crashy snares, halfstep beats and kinda chainsaw wobbles that have no kinda depth or listen-abilty really, it just makes you wanna go nuts. It makes kids want to lose their shit: and which is what kids want to do and when I was 15 or 16 I bet…I bet if I was 15 in 2009 and I heard all that stuff I bet I’d love it. I’d probably think it was great but I’ve been through my 15 year old phase.
B: But at 15 you were listening to Pure Garage 2!
O: I dunno, everyone was listening to garage back then, everyone was happier back then. You could go to school, you could chill in the playground with a girl and listen to Upfront FM tapes from yesterday.
B: Or… what was that one that Youngsta used to be on, Freak FM?
O: I never used to get Freak, it was an east London or Essex station. I could only get Upfront or Delight FM. Delight FM was my station, two or three kids in my school went on it.
B: Hatcha was one of them wasn’t he?
O: Hatcha was on Upfront, N Type was on Delight. My first girlfriend ever, in secondary school, her big brother was Neutrino’s best mate. So I used to go around her house and Neutrno would be sitting there with her brother, Patrick, listening to garage munching pills doing hundred mile an hour head nods. So we used to go down to Delight and have a look around the studios, but not really when anyone big was on like So Solid, but it was always good to go down there. But Upfront and Delight were really the only two stations I could really get down here, where I live. My mate used to get really really good reception of Delight in Clapham. But whereas Upfront is in my area, I could get that really crisp, so we’d basically just swap tapes all the time.
B: I worry my perception of London pirates is now distorted by how good Rinse is. There used to be a broad collection of good ones, like Déjà Vu, Freak, Heat, Axe, Raw Mission…plus Delight, Upfront and Rinse. Are there any other pirates you still listen to?
O: Yeah the whole funky thing has pumped so much life into the pirates. I’m always checking for pirates in my car because it’s the only time I get to listen to the radio. If I’m at home I’ll listen to a mix that’s on my computer or go on beats or something. But when I’m in my car I make a point of not putting on any CDs, especially when I’m in London, because I like to see what’s out there and I’ve noticed you’ve got Ice Cold FM, which is doing really well again now and there’s Live FM UK which is 101.5FM, which is probably my favorite station at the moment, they’ve got some of the best funky DJs on there playing some ridiculous music, playing so much of the newer darker stuff. I sure there’s a few more. So it’s Rinse, Ice Cold and Live FM I’m checking for at the moment.
B: What about Ustream and your “Yard Sessions”, because your use of that is like a long tail pirate station. How did that come about?
O: That was just a random idea. Elijah from Butterz invited me to a chat website called Tiny Chat and it was him, Joker, JD Dready and DJ Yasmin and some other producers all in some webcam chat room thing. We were all talking about gigs and catching jokes and being a bit stupid and I got a bit bored to be honest so I was mucking about with the settings on the side and the camera and audio settings and my external soundcard showed up on the thing, so I realized I could use my soundcard instead of my mic, and play tunes. So I was playing people tunes and it was radio quality. So I left that chat room and made my own one up and did a little test run in there but the thing is from that, people can join your chat room and they can plug their webcam or mic in and talk over what you’re doing which is a bit long. So I tried to find one website that could just have one person broadcasting. And I remember seeing Snoop on Twitter saying “come on my UStream channel, I’m just smoking” because he does a “Wake and Bake” show where he wakes up and smokes weed. So I was watching the Snoop “Wake and Bake” show and thought: fuck that’s such a good idea! So I set up a UStream account and plugged my soundcard in, had a test run and yeah that was it. The rest is history.
B: Could you ever imagine a scenario in the future where you didn’t go on a radio station and just used UStream to broadcast?
O: Yeah definitely, I don’t see why not. Especially wit the whole Facebook, Twitter, up to the minute information.
B: Because if blogs are basically one person broadcasting their viewpoint rather than a whole magazine’s worth of writers, UStream is like a video version of pirate radio but just your one vision.
O: And it’s at home with your set up, that you’re used to, so that’s always going to be good. And you’ve got every record you own near you as well, it’s not like you have to bring a select bag: there’s so many pro’s to it.
B: That can have it’s pitfalls though when one record is playing, you want to mix in another but you can’t locate it in the collection! Finally, can you tell me about Asbo, as he’s such a charismatic host and a real part of your Rinse show?
O: Asbo is a great MC we've been mates for nearly 10 years, both from Streatham. I love the way he hosts a set. He likes to keep the listeners entertained with a few jokes and funny one-liners that will often rhyme as well as holding it down in a professional manner. He has a real natural approach to hosting that fits perfectly with what I do.
As I sit here listening to the Keysound Skream 12" TP - Jason Transition has smacked it out of the park - 2010 is moving along nicely. First big gig is myself, Dusk and LHF in Glasgow on the 26th of Feb. Check the Facebook Group here.
LHF got some good news today, all will be revealed in the coming months but it's so exciting to see things progressing. After our Glasgow set, watch out for a London-based Keysound night in March too. Oh and myself and Dusk had some stratospheric, game-changing news come in on Wednesday for us as producers, more news as and when we get our heads around it all.
Ever since El-B inspired me to learn to produce, I’ve been obsessed with garage drum programming. I soon found though that 2step and 4x4 garage drums are deceptively complex to produce. In essence 2step drums aren't really about the snares on the 2 and 4, they're about the hats on the offbeat 8th notes (2,4,6,8 and their interaction with the kicks on the 1, 5 and where ever else you put them).
With all the talk of Future Garage late last year, I wanted to pool and then share all the knowledge out there on garage hi hat programming, so posted a thread on the Future Garage forum. Here is a summary of the best tricks of this amazing dark art, posted by different producers. If you know of any more, leave a comment and share the knowledge!
Swing
This is the core trick of garage hi hat programming, one that separates garage from much of house, trance, electro and many genres that share its tempo. In essence shuffle or swing, is the placing of key hi hats so that some of them are off the grid positions so that they interact with those on the grid. This is done with a “shuffle” function in your sequencer, which moves them, or with specific groove templates you can apply.
An extreme amount of shuffle- or rather simulating an extreme amount of shuffle - manually - with where you place the beats can sound best. shuffle/swing is best when it's just a bit too much, or too little - just right sounds too correct.
You can swing by hand, you can do your drums as audio rather than midi. Turn the snap to grid off and zoom out so have less precision with where you drag and drop hats. You can also use old breaks, they have good natural swing.
If you use Ableton 7 the global swing amount can be automated on the master channel, affecting anything you have running as midi (ie sampler/simpler, synths etc). Using this you can set the swing amount to change subtly or drastically in a bar then copy and paste it across the length of your tune for a heavy non-standard swing. Also you can use the global swing amount to make the start and end of your tune a bit easier to mix if you get carried away with this trick.
MPC grooves for Logic are easy to find on the net. “I use them for everything,” says Grievous Angel.
Use an arpeggiator on hats to generate ideas quickly. Put four percussion sounds that are unique – i.e. open hat, closed hat, maraca and a rim shot, hold the notes down and set the arp to swing 16 or whatever you prefer. If you have a straight kick and snare going to you can hear the contrast easily. This might be Live specific, but if you swap the order of the sounds you'll get different effects. Also, leave a spot blank to skip a beat etc.
Another trick would be using the Track Delay to offset sounds by a few milliseconds, nice for giving a vocal or synth a charge ahead of the rest of the track etc. Make my kicks drops -3ms to avoid the bass a little more.
Complex swings
Try triplet hat shuffles. Or a good way to get a smooth groove is to create your own swing, by putting second and fourth 1/16 note hit late (or ahead of time) differently to each other. Meaning:
Normal swing: x x(late) x x(late) x x(late) x x(late) x x(late) x x(late) x x(late) x x(late)
Complex swing: x x(late1) x x(late2) x x(late1) x x(late2) x x(late1) x x(late2) x x(late1) x x(late2)
You could put the idea even further by making different delays to every twin hit.
"I only swing the percussion BETWEEN the kick, snare & main hats. It’s your choice how to swing them, via groove quantize, 16T or just by hand. I personally do it by hand to keep a natural/live feel to the drums."
-- El-B
Skip
Pitch your hats so that they have a flex to them. Where “swing” is generally referred to when talking about garage drums, technically swing means moving your hats forward or back in time, off the set grid times. But garage hats also use pitch, to make the sounds flick against each other.
An important part of the 'bump' in garage is the fact that the beats are higher pitched and the release on snares, Ghost snares and claps are punchier and tighter than other genres with increased compression. “If I make house my kick will probably sit around 100hz for the thump but if I make garage it will probably be at around 200hz. I dunno if this was purposeful with the original garage boys or a result of the 16+ cut dubplates of US garage”
-- Sentinels, Future Garage Forum
Gating
Gates are take the sound event in one sound module and use it as an event to apply an effect to another sound. Sending all the drums through a bus with a gate on gives that clipped sound. A little automation on the threshold can provide some interesting results too.
Here's how to make that hi hat mess ala Tuff Jam / Todd Edwards: Take a 909 Open Hat, duplicate it like 4 times, pitch it to several different varieties, shorten the longer ones so they are all the same length, preferably resample the pitched ones into an Akai sampler at low volume and gain up (for that CCRRHH bit crushed effect). Sample envelopes can play a large part in swing, messing around with sampler settings Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release [ADSR] times yields interesting results.
Source of hats
You can sample hats: 70's dub reggae's hats are the king of grit. Funk/soul are of course classic sample sources too. Then it's good to complement sampled hats with classic drum machine-hats, 808's for example, to get a bit sharpness/strongness into them. But then it's good to compress/distort them to not sound too separated. And to get that classic garage feel, it's good to gate them in little snippets, and flatten them with compressor/distortion. Cutting hi ends to some extend are a good idea, to make them sound not too harsh, and then mix them loud!
“So many things which can influence a groove. To start with inaccurate sample chopping - i.e. not getting the start point quite right on hi hats can introduce a swing all of its own, so it's not necessarily all about the groove and the grid."
"Having said that I have used many different grooves - 16T on Cubase is where the Garage started for me. Now, being a Logic User, I go for the swing %age - 66% being triplets (16t's)."
"I also use the MPC groove templates now - I'd recommend them highly. I always play in my drum patterns at about 80bpm and then quantize them. Velocities make a big difference. I quite often use a lo-fi plugin or bitcrusher to nasty things up a bit. Having said all that it's all still about listening and tweaking. Happy swinging...”
-- MJ Cole
Tempo
Another other factor is tempo. The faster you go the less room there is for hats to be swung i.e. moved between set grid positions. 140 bpm is quite hard to get swing at 134bpm is much easier. part of why Kowton's Stasis g mix sounds SO swung is because it's 127ish. i.e. there's crazy space between respective 16th notes.
Velocity
Velocity is a variable that determines how hard otherwise similar drums hit. Varying the weight of snare from the 2nd to the 4th often helps. Applying a similar method to the kick can work, too, with the heavier kick on the 1st beat of the bar (or on whatever part of the bar needs emphasis), and the lighter kick used in 'skippier' places (offbeats etc.).
“One thing I’ve noticed it that beats with a lot of bump have an inverse gravity where the bigger elements have more space around them than the lighter ones. Space is important as that is what creates the anticipation.”
-- Sully
Include straight elements
You have to have a couple of elements played straight otherwise your drum pattern won't make any sense and won't be funky. Rhythms can only be swung if you have something that isn't swung to compare it to.
At the edges of my mind I hear the sound of strange forces coalescing, mutterings of hoards of dubplates being assembled, psychotropic riddims ready to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public.
Hmm, must be an LHF set at B.O.M.B. then. See you on the other side.
I'm excited to say Skream has a 12" forthcoming on Keysound Recordings, two lost dubs. "Sweetz (2005 Flex)" hails from the "eyes down" 3rd Base era of DMZ, one of the most amazing set of club experiences of my life. "Angry World" dates from after it but harks back to the Horsepower sound of 2002. This blog post is devoted to Croydon's finest and the gang.
When I go about finding art for Keysound 12"s I ask the producer, "tell me about a place that means something to you and these tracks." Scratcha DVA chose the Limehouse studio complex where "Bullet A 'Go Fly" was recorded and Goodz told me where in Leighton he used to get his hair cut as a yout. Obviously Skream said "Big Apple records," the shop in Croydon where he, Benga, Artwork, Hatcha and Hijak used to hang out and Chef, N Type, Kode9, Mala, Loefah, Walsh, Coki and more (even me!) used to buy dark garage records.
Thing is Big Apple got sold to grime producer J Sweet, so photos of it now weren't an option. I began digging. I rang Hatcha who said the only photographer he could remember was Cleveland Aaron, Chantelle Fiddy and my ole comrade in arms from Deuce mag (RIP). I ring Cleve but turns out all his photos from that era got lost in a iMac crash (inc the eski-era Wiley n Wonder ones, *gulp!*). There must be copies, so I email my old editor who sends me on to his designer: no luck. She sends me on to their previous designer: no luck.
Then online I find the shot you see above, taken by Greg Tuck: it's of the old Big Apple door in the state it now is. But covered in stickers from the Apple era, it's like reading fossil layers in rock. Click on the image on Flickr for annotated notes of what the stickers are.
So that was the a-side sorted. What about the b-side art? Phone goes: it's Hatcha. "I think John might have some." Turns out John, former owner of Big Apple Records is back in the country. He mails me to say he'll dig around in storage.
Result: Hatch gets in touch to say John's found some old never-before seen-archive photos of the Big Apple days. Here they are...
Skream and Benga in Big Apple records Croydon, circa 2001. Shot by former shop owner John Kennedy
Artwork, Goodfella and Skream in Big Apple records Croydon, circa 2001. Also shot by former shop owner John Kennedy.
I asked Artwork who that guy in the middle of this photo was and got this reply... “That is Goodfella with one of the Apple stickers on his arm. 60% of people walking in the shop would get a friendly pat on the back. Only to find out when they got home they had been walking round Croydon with an Apple sticker on them all day!”
“This started an instant reaction when leaving the store called the “Apple Scratch” i.e. wildly feeling your own back for the stickers. No one was immune. But Hatcha would check himself every 30 seconds and could never be caught out. Hatcha personally wrote out his own stickers for his victims ranging from ‘divpot’ to ‘I rape kids.’”
-- Artwork
Needless to say I used one of these photos on the 12" art and the YouTube video, alongside some "enthusiastic" MCing from Oneman and Abso on Christmas eve on Rinse, one of my favourite sets from the pair (and that's saying something). This is what they sound like...
Finally I interviewed Skream, Benga and Magnetic Man for the NME just before Christmas. Times must have changed, as the first time I interviewed Skream it was with Benga in the cafe next to Apple in Croydon. The second time was in Loefah's house in '05. Now we were in posh west London and they're signed to a major. Times really have changed, but I'm happy for them. If anyone should take on the festivals and the big arena's, it should be these three. Fair play to them.
Benga, Skream and Artwork interview, December 2009, a pub, west London.
Martin: So who’s stupid idea was magnetic man then?
Benga: Mine!
Artwork: All of us were talking, for about six months. They were playing records out and we were making music and we thought about doing something that pushed it on a bit. And so that’s where it roughly started. Then the Arts Council said ‘yeah, we’re looking for something like this as well…’ So they gave us a load of money to make a live show. It was different because we could put all these tracks together and then change it all around… Change the tracks as you’re playing them.
B: There were times when we’d produce something and I’d think I could use that, it was such a heavy twistup.
M: Are any of the early sets recorded?
A: no, no-one recorded it, as it was just a bit hap-hazard.
Skream: There is actually a set recorded, from Matter.
M: Kode9 said to me that live sets with Ableton are really good for stumbling on ideas you later want to go build upon in your studio…
A: That’s right, it is. We do sometimes loop up on some bit or drop to some part and go…‘that sounds wicked.’
M: So who does what?
B: I’m not a bass player and he [pointing at Skream] is not a snare player.
A: It shifts around, it kinda split up, between drums on one, bass on another. Top line on another, but then it switches around. When the gigs are back to back you don’t have time to switch them around, but when you have more time you want to experiment more, so you think ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll filter that, or I’ll knock that right out.
S: We try not to do the same thing every show because by the end of it you’ve mastered your part.
M: Does it evolve as it goes along?
A: It does.
S: Each show is a rehearsal.
M: Does it feel different to DJing?
S: It’s more stressful, much more stressful, because any slight move could blow people’s ears out. We have played stuff that is far too high so you have to sort of limit it. We had a problem before…
A: We linked up a machine and every single sound in the sampler played at once. It sounded like the earth was caving in.
S: Me and him [waves at Benga], nearly had heart attacks.
A: We’ve also begun to use some hardware in the show, a Native Instruments drum machine. We use it live to fire off a lot of the samples.
M: I suppose that adds a bit of visual interaction, but mostly how do you make it visually interesting?
A: Elliot from Novak does our light show and he’s worked out a system where he can pick certain sounds out so if he hears the bassline he gets a feed from that and make some visuals so that it’s completely different every single set.
M: You didn’t fancy getting 15 dancing girls, costumes and…
S: Nah we keep that for the DJ sets, haha… nah.
M: I know it sounds stupid but you’ve got to ask yourself these things: what are you going to do visually when you go from the studio to a live performance?
S: We keep it simple and all about the visuals. It’s a main part of the show for me, the visuals.
A: Seeing a sound come up and then see Elliot have a shape for that sound, it’s usually pretty spot on. He’s got it really fucking good now and he’s working on something for the next tour that’s insane. I don’t know what he’s doing, this nine projector thing, one projector for each sound.
M: It’s good though, as it leave you guys to make the music, which is kinda what you guys do, instead of trying to impose the visual side of things on you… so where did you tour in the first six months or so of Magnetic Man? Because it started with the Arts Council shows but then ended up with some pretty big festivals…
B: Roskilde…
S: Glastonbury…
A: Bestival…
M: Damn, what was that like? ….err, all of them!?
S: Roskilde was amazing!
B: I think… I don’t want to be too much ‘this was the best, that was the best’ but I think Roskilde was the best.
S: It was the best. The place is run like clockwork, it’s one of the best festivals I’ve been to. Everything was perfect. The crowd was sick, just massive… and it’s not just even that: they listen.
B: You get such different listeners.
S: I hate it when we do the Magnetic Man thing at dubstep nights because the DJ before us… we’ve played after N-Type before and he’s a well energetic DJ, playing the big tunes one after another very quickly. Whereas with Magnetic Man the tune can be playing for up to three minutes…
B: …and change in style
S: … so the crowd could get bored. When you go to a festival they’re open, they listen to everything. Before you, you might have a band and after you, a DJ. It’s cool.
M: I think it’s great that you guys were the one to take it to that level, because there are a lot of guys who have come out of dubstep and got big who perhaps weren’t there at the original time, but no one can say anything to you three... does that mean a lot to you guys, that it’s you that have gone live at these massive festivals, not anyone else?
A: It’s good because we were there, at. The. Very. Start. It started from Big Apple records, and we were all there. And it’s just moved along and moved along until now, this is fantastic because it can take it to everyone now. It’s great to know it’s going to be fucking massive!
M: So this is the thing. I know we’re sitting here in West London with Sony records and I’ve heard the older Magnetic Man tunes but I don’t know what the next steps are… what is the plan to take it to that ridiculous level in 2010?
B: I think it’s more to do with our music now, coming out of dubstep. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still all about that, but this is another evolution. We’re on the stage where it doesn’t have to be exactly dubstep. I reckon we can get really creative. It’s going to come from the album.
S: With all three of us doing it it’s going to get ultra-no-holds barred.
B: Which is kinda the way dubstep was at a stage before. So we’ve just got back to that, but on a bigger scale. It’s going to be massive next year.
M: So do you envision it being a vocal thing or an instrumental thing?
A: We’ve got artists but at the moment it’s just about making the Magnetic Man sound. The stuff we’ve done before and where we’re going: it’s really exciting. We’re properly hyped about it. We’ve already got some collaborations lined up but obviously that’s “to be revealed,” so it’s more about the Magnetic sound.
M: I’m interested to see the transformation, when it’s no holds barred: all tempos, all styles.
S: It’s going to be a mashup. It almost sounds corny…
B: … but it’s not, I’ll tell you why: because people kinda expect from the things we’ve written before. Like he [Skream] wrote the La Roux record or “Burning Up” and things like that are fully over there [the overground] but he hasn’t fully gone. But we can do that with Magnetic Man, we don’t have to be scared that people expect this from us, or expect that.
A: The festivals now, the people who are listening to Magnetic Man, before it was like “I like drum & bass,” “I like dubstep…” now you get people who go to festivals who will go and find their dubstep artist, their drum & bass but then they’ll go and listen to a band.
M: Festivals are really open like that.
A: They are.
S: The clubs are going like that now as well. I love playing on a mixed lineup. It’s great because you can play… say, a house record but end up going into a mad breaks ravey thing.
A: I think that’s the exciting thing about Magnetic Man, it’s that we’re just making music that we like. It’s just music. That. We. like. If it sounds great, it doesn’t have to be pigeon holed.
Copyright Shaun Bloodworth/Ammunition and, taken at FWD>> + Rinse. FWD>>+Rinse return to Matter on the 29th of Jan. Boy Better Know, Geeneus, EZ and Kode9 y'know!
M: I appreciate you want to keep the vocalists under wraps until they’ve happened, but do you envision a Magnetic Man show that’s you expanded with some other musicians or are you going to keep it just you three in the live show?
A: For the moment, we want to keep it minimal.
S: It keeps it our thing. There’s so many people just going from dance to live…
A: … and you listen to the record and … imagine you went to see a live band and they replaced the live drummer with a drum machine and the bass player with a 303, you’d be like ‘what the fuck is this?’
M: I always think of Destiny’s Child live, where you get some fat drummer with a mullet on the ‘80s toms at the back, and I’m like ‘no no, I want Rodney Jerkins or Timbaland’s drums…’
B: That’s where every single electronic artist goes wrong. They try and get a drummer in: why? It sounded good with that crazy snare you had.
A: I can not see the point of that. It’s ridiculous: you like that music because of that sound.
S: Some live drum & bass sounds alright with live drums, probably because it’s all breaks.
M: And there’s only certain drummers that can do it…
B: For me I still listen to it and think: it’s not the same. It doesn’t have that Amen sound with that recycled feel to it, where it’s sampled, and sampled and sounds bad.
M: One of the things you guys remind me of is Roni Size: Reprazent who took a bunch of sick underground producers and made a live show and one of the things they did was to incorporate some of their solo classics into the show. Could you ever see this from you guys, doing say “Red” or “Burning Up?”
A: It can be open but at the moment we have so much good stuff…
S: We did that at the start but that was mainly because of lack of time to get Magnetic Man stuff done, so I was sort of remixing my own beats. But we probably play a lot of that stuff better in a DJ set. So now it’s the challenge of the three of us coming together. Now we can bring in riffs and completely mash it.
A: It’s going to remain fluid, which is good. It’s not going to be a standard set.
S: This stuff isn’t going to be heard in any DJ set: it’s Magnetic Man music.
M: Oh no, Hatcha won’t be happy!
A: He’s going to be pissed.
M: …and that is a formidable force!
S: But it needs to be done, especially for the first year until the single or album is released, so it’s all about having people there to see it, when it’s fully formed.
B: I want it to be a shock to people.
S: They can’t go get the record again tomorrow.
A: I think that’s the main thing about it, that it is an event. The thing about Magnetic Man is it is the show, and the lights and how everything’s going to work together.
M: And that is how things are going these days, with records not selling a lot, the focus is on live now…
A: We’re not really bothered about the money…
M: Yeah course, but with live shows there’s such scale now.
A: Just seeing what we’ve done so far off our own backs, and you know how good that show was… so going to the next step now and getting a major label behind you it’s just like…
S: The scale of the show is quite crazy. It’s going to be interesting to see because obviously we’re going to get bigger stages now. It’s gonna be hard but exciting.
A: It’s nice because before we’d say ‘do you think we can do this?’ and they’d be like ‘err, no way…’ . Now we ask and they say ‘yes.’
B: Dreams are made possible.
S: The days of festival staff being rude are over, that’s a great thing. The about of times I’d ask ‘sorry, do you have a spare lead?’ and they’d say ‘no!’ You get some real rude festivals staff and now they can’t do that, and it’s great.
M: Do you have set dates for next year?
A: Ahh… yeah a few festivals but…
S… we can’t say them until the lineups are released.
M: So, doesn’t this mean you’re going to spend a lot of time on tour together?
A: Yes.
M: Is that not going to be chaos?
A: We’ve done three tours together now.
M: I’m trying to work out who’s going to be most trouble out of you three….
S: Everyone has their own night.
B: That’s how it’s been!
S: There’ll be one night where I’ll feel rough and Benga will take charge. Then I’ll be better again another night…
B: You always get dragged in anyway. It might be his night.
S: Someone will try and say ‘I’m going to have an early night, go home after the show…’
M: What is it about the Big Apple camp, because I know Hatcha’s the king of the windups…
A: That shop was one long windup. You learnt from the best.
S: There’s actually no windups on tour, because it gets to volatile situations where everyone’s feeling rough. Windups could lead to a full blown row.
[randomly, at this point, the posh West London pub we’ve been taken to around the corner from Sony in High Street Kensington blacks out, so it’s candle lit interview from here on in…]
Benga: Blackout! Blackout with Blackdown!
S: They keep saying the whole road blacks out, let’s get to the kitchen!
M: So, do you actually have to limit the windups on tour?
S: What it is that, generally seven or eight days in, nobody’s in the best of moods, though Arthur is generally alright, but me and Benga, we end up bickering with each other.
B: We do wind each other up to a point but we no each other’s limits. On the eighth day, everyone been out having it, because that’s what you do on tour, you play, go out, get smashed, wake up and then get driven somewhere else. You don’t have to try and get yourself anywhere else and it makes it even worse. You think to yourself, I could actually die tonight…
A: No, you do pretend to be dead. That’s Benga’s biggest trick: pretend to be dead to cleaners in hotels.
M: How funny is it?
A: It’s fucking funny - but they don’t think it is.
S: He laid on the floor between the door and the corridor…
[Maniacal cackling from Benga in the background…]
S:… the cleaner found him, tried to jog him, then burst into tears and then tried to call an ambulance. He jumped up laughing and ran off.
M: Croydon stitch up!
B: At the time, I was in tears.
M: How long did you have to lie there before someone found you?
S: About half an hour.
A: More like ‘how long did he have to hold his breath for?’
M: Right! That’s a complicated wind-up.
B: She shook me and went ‘I think he’s dead!’ She called someone else and I was like ‘ohshit’ [does face like he’s going to asphyxiate] and had to ride it out for a little while.
M: [To Artwork and Benga] So what’s Skream’s greatest windup?
S: Ah… you can’t talk about it on tape.
M: Whaaaat??!
S: I don’t do windups…
A: He’s classic rock n roll: things go out the windows… but only in my room!
M: Your things?
A: Yeah!
S: Nah nah, the homeless story, that’s been my best windup.
A: He constantly tells people that they [Benga & Skream] were homeless and that he found them on the street.
S: I told it to this girl once in Brighton and I had to hold my face for 15 minutes… I almost thought I was going to cry. I told her that me and Benga were originally homeless and that Arthur was like our Fagin and found us. To this day that girl still believes us. Afterwards I’d have to put this sad face back on every time she appeared and she’d be like ‘ahhh…’. I felt like I was going to explode with laughter.
M: Like you want do die inside… Thinking about it you know, I’m not sure how I could maintain that level of windup for that long.
B: Now, this guy [Arthur] did this king one to Chef, we gotta expose him…
[Much shouting and laughing…]
Both A + S: Nah, nah, nah!!!
A: Leave it, leave it!
M: Hmm, did Chef not take it well?
S: Thing is, he got sucked in so far…
PPA: Now leave it there!!! It’s going. In. the. paper? [points to the dictaphone on the table…]… fucksake! So… yeah… move on!
M: Ahem, OK. So what is the longest period you’ve got to be on tour together for? Because I’m concerned about the level of wind-uppery…
S: There’s only so many dates you can do in the UK so…
A: This is different things now, you’ll have to ask Sony. And we can handle it.
M: Yeah?
A: Yeah.
S: DJing is practice for this sort of thing. The thing is we’ll never fight, none of us will ever fight each other which is good.
B: There’s always someone in the middle, the sane one. C’mon, let’s have a group hug!
M: I’m not sure how you do it, I’m not sure I could spend…
B: Why don’t you come along? Because then if we want to kill someone…
M: Dunno how you do it. Traveling, planes…
S: We haven’t done too many planes together, we’ve only done one. Denmark.
A: No, we’ve done loads. We done Ireland the other day… loads.
B: Ha, you’ve forgotten!
S: Yeah, err, Holland, Ireland, Sweden... Norway…
A: Yeah? It’s all coming back now. But I think it’s just the fact that we’ve known each other for that long now…
S: Skream, it’s been a long time now
A: Ten years, maybe a little bit more.
M: Arthur, do you remember the early days, when you were teaching them…?
A: You can’t teach them nothing! Nah, I remember them getting their first Playstation.
S: I used Fruity Loops before I knew Benny, but I knew Arthur before I used Fruity.
A: But as you know, as you’ve looked into it, just how many people in this scene came out of Big Apple. It’s freaky. It’s odd.
M: But “odd” makes it sound like it was a fluke. It wasn’t a fluke that so many guys in dubstep came out of the Big Apple shop, it was design: you were all on it.
B: It’s funny, because when you say things like that, doesn’t it make you think we was meant to do this? And so next year [2010]…
S: Completely! So many people come up to me and say they used to see me in the shop, and I would never have known. Like for example Breakage. He’s from Mitcham, ten minutes down the road.
B: So if you want to get all spiritual, spiritually we’re going to smash it next year [2010]. It just makes sense… spiritually.
A: It is weird though. Dubstep’s just thing that every step of the way it has gone onto another level, for the last ten years. And now it’s got to the point where yeah, we have signed a major record deal and it had to happen because it was going that way.
M: I don’t find it weird the fact that people from Big Apple records got big, because you were all on it, what I do find weird is there was a long time when it was this tiny community making really good music and then suddenly it went mental. I’m still shocked by that… like today and I get out of the tube in High Street Kensington for a dubstep interview. It was impossible before… it didn’t seem possible when buying Ghost 001 or Big Apple Records 001.
A: It is weird but to us it just seems like progression. It’s like when we signed the deal, someone came up to me and said, this is fucking mental, this is amazing, you’ve signed a major record deal now and we were like ‘oh yeah…’ It just seams normal to us because that’s where it’s got to go.
B: What I find amazing about your deal, in 2009, is that these days majors seem to sign ‘artists’ not producers, and then they plug the producers in. But you guys are the producers. The time in the mid ‘90s when drum & bass producers were getting big deals: that time seemed to go for a while, and in many cases still is: they want X-Factor puppets or female solo singers…
A: Yeah but this is Columbia Records and the team at Columbia are just unreal.
S: The great thing is we’ve got full control. They just said, we’ve seen what you’ve done, we’ll just help you to go smash it. To be able to do what you want to do and have the support of those people is unreal.
M: Otherwise you wouldn’t have signed the deal?
A: No way. Why would ya? But it’s amazing that they’re looking to us and saying, where is it going to go…
M: So how is the album looking?
A: We’ve been working already so we’ve got a lot of it done. In January we’re starting to properly get on it, 24-7. And then smash it.
M: So how does it affect your solo album Skream?
S: It’s coming out next year but it’s a solo thing, and this is Magnetic Man. It’s no longer three people: it’s a whole.
B: That’s the whole thing: instead of being Skream, Artwork and Benga, we’re a band now. We’re just Magnetic Man. When you see Alex Turner go off and do his side project and then come back to Artic Monkeys, they didn’t become “Alex Turner and Artic Monkeys”, they were just Artic Monkeys.
S: This is just a side project that has become a bit more major.
A: I think it’s just because we can see where this can go as a band, it’s so exciting.
M: It certainly opens doors into whole worlds you cant get to as a DJ, who don’t play on the biggest stages at Glastonbury or Roskilde.
S: The DJ’s an inbetweener.
M: So the live thing opens doors like nothing else, so it means you can keep going upwards. So how do you feel when you walk out on stage and see that many people?
S: It’s alright because you’ve got your friends behind you.
[Laugher from everyone at the Roquefort Factor from Skream…]
B: Ohmydayz…
S: Me I’ve never really been one to get scared of big crowds.
A: Where was the one where they were waiting for an hour before?
S: Pukkelpop.
A: We just did Pukkelpop. They have a band on and then they have an hour between where they clean the stage and y’know, mess around. And for every hour there was no one in the tent. But for us for the whole hour before, it was packed, waiting. And this was weird because we’re trying to set up and it’s packed full of people. 5,000 people waiting in there and then 2,000 outside stormed security and got in.
S: It was MENTAL. It was borderline rioting.
M: Did you play the ambient ones to slow it down a bit?
B: Nah we WENT IN, haha!
S: All three of us did a triple crowd surf and me and Arthur nearly killed Benga.
B: Hehe it’s actually quite true: they crowd surfed on top of me. But then I had a crazy one this weekend, I jumped from this stage that was like… how high was it?
S: It was quite a way, I wouldn’t risk it…
M: How do you know if the crowd will hold you up?
B: You don’t you just risk it.
S: You know… well you kinda know.
B: You hope they show some appreciation by catching you!
S: We’ve all hurt ourselves.
M: It only takes one bloke to move out of the way and then…
S: Nah nah, generally we do it at the point when they can’t move. When it’s sardines. So they either let you land on their heads or they put their hand up.
M: Now that makes more sense.
S: I’ve done it in a basement club but you don’t generally do it in half-filled clubs because you’re asking for trouble.
M: You’re asking for a broken skull!
S: The funniest one was when me and Beni asked the promoter ‘can we crowd surf here?’ and the promoter [does Scananavian accent] “yesh yesh, you can do this but the last DJ who done it is now paraplegic.” But what happened to the guy is he jumped diagonally and ended up in a ditch.
M: He wants to aim at the crowd, that’s where he’s going wrong there…
B: I’ve done some high ones.
M: So how do you get back from the crowd?
A: I’ve seen him disappear. Go right to the back… and then he didn’t come back. He had to walk round!
M: You must be doing something right if you’re crowd surfing.
B: Yeah we’re rock stars…
S: I’m pretty sure no one did it before us in dubstep… all three of us: we got Arthur to do it.
A: Yeah: fuck me I don’t think I’d do it again.
S: Once half the rider has gone, mid-set, anything can happen. That is one good thing about being in a group, you get your full rider now. You get all the extras like sandwiches and dips.
A: Dips are important to Skream.
S: Carrot sticks! We’re not actually demanding. There’s a standard rider and it’s our tour manager who gets everything he wants. The killer is a postcard, he wants one from every city we’re in. And he gets it. If he doesn’t he says ‘where are the postcards?’ Even in the UK.
M: Does he send them to his gran?
A: Yeah!
S: I’m telling you, if we’re in Leicester, he’ll want a postcard from Leicester!
A: We always turn up and there’s a really nice bottle of wine, even though we drink vodka, which strangely disappears at the end of the night.
B: We drink straight vodka because we are – one more time again – rockstars. We drink straight vodka and we dress all in black, haha [They’re not, by the way – M].
S: It’s the mix of adrenaline and a glass of ice which makes vodka go down so easy… but anyway enough about Benga’s alcoholism.
M: OK so I think that’s all I need for the interview, unless there’s anything else I should know about?
S: From next year can everyone call me Olivia because, erm, I’m undergoing some major surgery and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t point or stare. Like no, seriously, don’t stare.
B: Well, that’s it… I didn’t know he was going to tell anyone that.
S: I could be the female vocalist…
B: Oh yeah that’s something people didn’t know, I’m the lead singer.
S: What Benny doesn’t know is that’s now cut from next year.
M: He should have read the small print.
S: We’ll just throw him out live on stage with the mic.
B: [starts to pretend to MC badly] You sayin? What you sayin? What’s everyone sayin? Sayin the same thing over and over again…
S: So, err, do we know how to get back from here?
A: Yeah, it’s doable… · LDN016 Skream "Sweetz (2005 Flex)"/"Angry World" [Keysound Recordings] is out on the 1st of March. "Sweetz" was first aired in our Keysound Radio mix of 2005. Several other dubs on that mix remain unreleased to this day.
