All the way from from Camberwell in South London a bit of a monster flight the other day, but I do believe you're doing okay now. Mr. Code 9. All's been well with you my friend. Everything is good. Everything is good. Apart from those 4 a.m. wake-ups though, a bit of a shaky one. Yeah, I'm not all together here. Part of me is nice. I think probably the best way, I mean, you know, one over the last kind of, I don't know, I guess the last 10, 15 years of this whole evolution of what's been known as the UK hardcore continuum. We've seen so many, you know, incredible forms of vibrant music burst forth and then split off into all these little different sub genres and everything.
And obviously with the whole evolution of, thank you very much, Marnie, of this whole thing that, you know, started emerging around about, you know, 96, 97, the whole garage thing. There's been so many variants and what have you. And the one that's been winning favor in recent years, not just in London, but all across the world now, is this thing known as dubstep. I'm sure a lot of people already in this room have heard many tracks of this genre. A lot of them are even making it. But for those that haven't, should we have a little bit of an example of this thing? Yep. This is a bit crackly. It's a dubplate of a remix I did of a reggae band called Massive. So it's a relatively good way to introduce the sound I think. How old is this tune?
We should really be asking you for the rewind on that one. It's some pretty heavy business. Once again, what was the name of the artist that originally did that track? I think they're called Massive. The track's called Find My Way. Right, so they're not in particular a group that you're closely tied with, your approach to do the remix? I think they were from Not sure where they're from actually I was approached by someone in Holland Oh, yeah, the first thing people must notice when talking to you my good man is as the accent you're not originally from London Yeah, we always home once upon a time. I grew up in Glasgow in in Scotland and I've lived in London Yeah, I basically got drawn to London because of pirate radio
people used to send me tapes old jungle tapes in particular when I got to London I start I used to DJ jungle when I got to London I started playing UK Garage and so I've always just followed that mutation of London based hardcore continuum music yeah I mean I was gonna say I mean you know it was mentioned before but this whole I mean you read it in a lot of blogs this whole notion of of the continuum the norm can you explain a little bit further this this this whole notion yeah I suppose it you know it's it's what happened when acid house in the UK collided with Afro-Caribbean Afro-Caribbean music culture in London in particular so it's dub reggae and
dancehall and when these collided you go in the early 90s hardcore and then most importantly for me jungle 93 94 drum and bass UK garage grime and currently grime and dubstep so it's really the hardcore continuum is a way of understanding that evolution of of music because they're all kind of similar in a way all different speeds but at the same time coming from a similar place and always using pirate radio as a as a media platform because you know these musics haven't really done it at least initially get a lot of mainstream media coverage so that you know what's interesting about them in a
way is that they be their musical genres but at the same time they come with their own media and like with grime just now they come with their own DVD and and mixtape culture as well. When you talk about this continuum of hardcore and what have you, I mean, obviously at any kind of dancehall-based gig, you've got a vibe, but there's always been a certain electric vibe with obviously what's happening with hardcore and then with jungle and everything. I mean, are you finding that same kind of electric vibe that, say, was happening at nights, say, the AWOL kind of thing in the mid-'90s at jungle gigs? You're finding them at dubstep nights now? I suppose more so now. The music, Dubstep started as a kind of little sub-genre of UK Garage,
the more instrumental side and the more reggae-influenced side of UK Garage. I've been playing that abroad for about six years, and I played to lots of tiny, tiny crowds in my time. It's only in the last year or two that it's really started picking up, and the dance was a fool and the vibe is much better and it's spreading. We'll go a bit further into that in a second but just to kind of give people an idea about where you've kind of come from and your upbringing. Tell us about Glasgow. First of all, just as a city, man, what's Glasgow all about? It's pretty industrial. Kind of friendly place. Musically, was it a very inspiring place?
Not particularly, not for me. It rained a lot. That can be quite inspiring, I suppose. But I didn't really... I don't have a lot of Scottish musical influences. No. When you talk about being fed pirate radio tapes for you, what were the shows, and in particular, who were the DJs that when the tape turned up in the mail, I used to get loads of tapes of Rude FM from East London. I can't remember specific DJs but when I was living outside London in about 1995 I used to come down religiously every Sunday to go to metalheads.
And that's, I suppose, that period, 94 to 97, when there was everything from Ragga Jungle right through to the Metalheads type stuff and it all existed. Didn't necessarily get played in the same clubs, but you could buy it all and you could mix it all. And that was kind of exciting for me because it was the first time I'd experienced that kind of music which integrate potentially integrated every single kind of music I'd ever heard on one kind of speed or one kind of set of rhythms I mean you when you kind of go back to the the kind of the first traces of all this thing known as dubstep a lot of people reference LB and it kind of seems that a lot of guys
like LB and Steve Gurley were very much they were checking out heads and kind of that digital photo kind of moody via play would you say it played quite a bit of influence you know a large part of influencing those guys I think because Steve Gurley used to be in foul play so there was direct jungle linkages and I think definitely the early dubstep stuff was was coming out of really that I suppose the metalheads related side of drum and bass and a lot of people in dubstep now you know everyone went through that jungle thing at various stages you know a lot of people in the scene were maybe between 10 and 15 but one way or another you know whether they were listening to tapes at school or
whatever one way or another that's in their blood or it's in their genes I mean it's interesting to know I mean in the middle of the 90s especially in the UK I think the whole jungle explosion took so many people growing up it just was all-consuming and you know for a lot of people they they got to a point where it was just like they kind of got fed up with this whole genre at what point in time were you just like I mean obviously so so deep into this music and then you just like now this is what's happened here yeah I mean with jungle jungle drama base I was so immersed in it as a listener and music like any drug stops working at a certain point and for me it stopped working when I started realizing that without thinking about it I was buying the same record and it was
taking my money for no reason so I suppose I completely lost control by that point so I must have been about 97 98 and then I started hearing some of the early two-step stuff the stuff of the big bass lines and kind of reggae Break more like that the rip groove kind of yeah, I wasn't really into the speed garage thing. I've never been a huge fan of for Music so when when the speed garage thing started to break up rhythmically break up and become a little bit more Intricate and jungle influence to not just in the bass lines, but in the rhythms so it's kind of early them to stuff Have you I mean if you got anything on your computer here, maybe this this might be a
Bit of a cry but if you got any jungle stuff on you on your computer Any jungles my biggest influence and I haven't got any with me. Yeah, have you got any early two-step stuff there? I'm putting you in the spotlight here. I could play an early horsepower So this would been about two thousand Here's an LP thing should be about two thousand So is it should it be noted that dubstep DJs they don't kind of have that fever and thing that jungle DJs had of all your tunes must be only a week old at the latest oh we've got that yeah it's a very quite intense doublet culture again so it's it's inherited that I think
there's a tune called Buck and Barry so again that is horsepower productions that's LB sorry sorry so Buck and Barry's name the track yeah I mean obviously you know you'd spend a bit of time commuting from Glasgow to London to go to parties and what have you but when you first moved there and we're living there what was London like for you pretty pretty easy to all of a sudden get involved into music or um it's It's pretty intense. My first involvement in music in London was I set up a website called Hyperdub which later became my record label. And Hyperdub was a kind of web magazine where I quickly became a journalist and interviewed
everyone, all the producers that I was interested in from the last five, six years. So people like Lemon D and Dillinger, American hip hop producers like LP, German dub, electronic dub producers like Jan Jelinek and then all the early dubstep producers. LB, Horsepower, but also people in UK Garage at the time, Miss Dynamite. And we kind of followed that through right up to Dizzy Rascal, Wiley and later, you know, 2003 or 2004. And then when we started the label in 2004, I didn't have any time so I kind of trashed
the website. Was the website quite a bit of a focal point for people that are interested in this kind of new stem of bass culture, if you will? Yeah, because I think it was kind of unique in the way it brought all those kind of bass musics together and it was also the really the main place to find out about that side of UK garage in not just in that kind of press release style of interview but in kind of quite in-depth interviews so it provided a bit of background that didn't exist in other media platforms at that point and also to certain degree did it help you with them I know not I wouldn't say gaining acceptance but all of a sudden it's just like I don't know you meeting all these
guys and hang out with them and they realize right this guy's on the level so it wasn't such a close-knit thing anymore yeah I mean it was tiny at that point so it wasn't exactly difficult to kind of meet the people that are involved in it because there's only a handful of producers and DJs playing that sound specifically and then pretty quickly I started doing pirate radio on RINCE FM in East London and when I started I did I was doing the show after after Roll Deep on a Tuesday night and it was kind of weird because they don't usually have Scottish people on East London pirate radio so I didn't talk for the first few months I just used to bring lots of jingles but yeah
that's how it kind of happened. I mean you know was there a bit of a focal point as well for um for the music there was a record store called Big Apple in Croydon tell us about this place. Yeah Croydon was I suppose the the home of dubstep. Croydon is like a for people that don't know it's just it's a like a small city right at the south of London and it's kind of grim. I've heard people describe it as the Detroit of England. I'm not sure that's accurate, mainly because I haven't been to Detroit, but it's kind of grim and I suppose you can hear that a little bit in
how dark some of the music is. But there was a record shop in Croydon called Big Apple staffed by one of the early dubstep DJs called DJ Hatcher. And that shop worked as a kind of hub for the music. Horsepower were from Croydon as well. Benga and Scream who are big producers in dubstep just now but at the time were like 14 15 16 and and I suppose latterly probably the the core of the dubstep scene now revolves around a night called the MZ and these producers called digital mystics lofa and scream and there again from that that kind of area
of South London that's quite near or just north of Croydon I mean at what point did kind of, you know, with Grime and Dubstep, they start notably branching off? And when did this kind of word, Dubstep, first kind of start making an appearance? Well, they both came from UK Garage. Grime really came out of the MCE side of UK Garage, So Solid crew, Pairs You Go crew. And Dubstep came from Steve Gurley, LBE, Zad Bias, that kind of baseline side of Garage. and they kind of went off in their own directions in a way but they were all I suppose they were all featured on Rintz one way or another so Rintz kind of held them together as as latter forms of UK Garage
which eventually became their own thing so they're kind of two separate scenes now but there's a number of people who occupy some kind of space in the middle, such as Plastic Man, Plastician, who comes more from the grime side of things, but kind of dabbles in dubstep, and I'm kind of the opposite way around, I come more from dubstep, but dabble in a bit of grime now and then. I mean, is it very much, it seems like a bit of a regional thing as well, like, you know, the grime... It's just south and east London, so I tend to think people from London can be very infatuated by their local area. And as an alien to London, as an outsider, I kind of have a slightly different perspective.
So I'm not too fussed about playing stuff from East London and South London because it's like four miles away. It's not a big deal for me. You mentioned it before and it's been said many times over the years about the role of pirate radio when it plays. But just to give people an idea just how important has pirate radio been and you know getting getting dubstep out there and In particular while this this end of the the new one if you will I Mean the way Literally the way it has worked in the last year or so is that there's a number of DJs on rinse FM and Occasionally when things are working properly that pirate station is streamed online line if it's not people record it kind of people record your show immediately after it's gone out
live to the local area and there's a website called bare files.com which is this huge archive of of grime and dubstep radio shows and that kind of connection between the local pirate radio station and a web archive of all the mixes has kind of been quite an amazing fuel injection to how the music has spread. How about internationally as well? I mean, a lot of people via that website in particular. Yeah, definitely. Right, I mean, you know, well, you talked about it before with the DMZ thing, and, I mean, every scene historically has an epicentre, be it like paradise garage be it blue note be it co-op for you know what's
happened with the broken beat thing but there was a night called Ford and that played a very vital role in the in the rise of dubstep yeah that was the original dark garage night in a way from about 2001 every it was every two weeks on a Thursday started on a Sunday night the velvet rooms and trying crossroad then I moved to plastic people in Shoreditch in East London which is really tiny little club has got an amazing sound system and I think the thing about dubstep is they've kind of been spoiled with sound systems we've got them just most plastic plastic people wear forward is now every Friday night and DMZ the sound systems which is at mass in Brixton sound systems are just like as you'd want them to be for bass music in other words it's not just they're not
just clear sound systems you they're very physical experiences you just everything is vibrating things are sliding across surfaces the whole place is vibrating and that's the upset doesn't really work unless everything is shaking and what's the vibe like in these kind of you know at the digital mystics night and this is it I get from what I'm told it's like you pretty much got no lighting in there it's just dark and it's just yeah we're not really into lighting we're into dark rooms and everything vibrating it's very stripped minimal and simple like that it's about the sound and whereas you know where's the grime thing has to a certain degree be very much about the MC's like you mentioned before dubstep is not so much I mean ah do you find MC's at these
nights at Ford or yeah I mean forward has always had a bit of a mixture of grime and dubstep sometimes if you're lucky you'll hear a grime MC on dubstep and vice versa but the MC's in in dubstep tend to be hosts more just kind of just keeping you company in the music with the music alongside the music at the same time the stuff I do is a bit strange for dubstep because I work with a vocalist called space ape how long you've been working with him for? Since 2003. The first release that we did, it's kind of weird. Should we have a listen to it? Yeah, it was a cover of Prince's Sign of the Times. And let me dig it out.
You've got a nice play on words with this one. Yeah, so the tune's called Sign of the up and it hasn't got any beats in it at all. I think I've got it. Actually it's on the laptop. This is kind of the degree zero of dubstep, in other words it's just bass and
effects and vocals. The vocal is more in a dub poetry style. This didn't really fit So how else did you meet Spacey? He was just an old friend of mine. So that was the first track we did together, so it was a quick thing, like half an hour. He'd never done any vocals before, so I was like, how do you get him to do vocals quickly, somewhere to start?
So it's like, what's your favourite track? Prince, Silent Time. Go and get the record. You got the record. Could where's the lyrics there's the lyrics read the lyrics? I just put down a quick bass thing with some effects boom pitch these voice down a bit And what was the initial reaction to the tune people will a bit Obviously the tempo the tempo was fine to play and see it's but people I mean it wasn't deliberately like this But people heard it as some kind of some kind of connection to Berlin dub people like Rhythm & Sound and also at that time 2003 in Grime
there was a thing called the Devil Mix people like Wiley were making these tracks that were just bass no beats in them at all the MCs would spit over so some people made connections to Berlin dub Some people thought it was some connection to these devil mixes and grinds. It's just random, really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And obviously someone else who came through a little bit later but ended up on your label, who's, there's an obvious, well, it seems like an obvious connection there, is Burial. Tell us a bit about Burial. Yeah, Burial was like a guy who kind of got in contact with me when I started the web magazine because he was really into that side of UK Garage. He's been sending me chins for about four or five years.
I put out a 12 inch of his last year. We just pressed up 500 and he sold quite quickly, so that was cool. Then he kept sending me stuff and his stuff kept getting better, so I was like, clearly the man should put out an album. and so we put out the album around about May and it's been quite I mean for that kind of music it's been quite staggering the feedback that we've had about it and how well it's sold and it's again it doesn't really fit in anywhere it's definitely a tangent from what dubstep is but it sounds kind of vaguely reminiscent of particularly Paul from Berlin but with a lot of UK Gary syncopations and also quite dark and melancholy.
One thing you kind of touched on before is with the whole thing with a lack of MCs so much and MCs being more hosts at dubstep nights I think one of the biggest problems that happened with drum and bass especially was with MC-led nights, music became more about rewinds, how many rewinds can you get, and all of a sudden producers were making tunes that all of a sudden revolved more about a heavy impact drop than just actually constructing a tune. Do you agree that it's something that possibly is happening with grime and there's a correlation between the MCs and that kind of style of production? Generally, I really like MCs. I like playing with MCs. a lot of people in dubstep are kind of instrumental music this is what it's
about I'm not really like that I mean everybody's got their own theory about if anything what went wrong with jungle and drum and bass and you know there's 50 different theories around my my thing is just it didn't do anything for me anymore. Certainly, my issue wasn't MCs. If anything, my issue was that it just went really – a certain side of it took over, the side that was very gnarly, noisy and aggressive and rhythmically really stupid, really simple and boring. When you consider where Jungle
came from is the most rhythmically exciting music I've ever heard in my life. And it could end up like that. It's just kind of, it's a weirdness. I mean, for so long, so many producers and people talked about the fact that maybe, and Fabio touched on it yesterday in his lecture, the fact when the music is 175 BPMs, there's not much space to breathe. And if the music was slowed down, and you had a little bit more space to breathe, then it could inject so much new life. Do you think kind of dubstep to a certain degree offers that as a bit the solution of that? I think it's definitely a counterbalance to where drum and bass went to get faster and faster going towards GABA and just by not only being
around 140 BPM but also being a lot of stuff now is half step so it actually feels even slower than that it definitely it's drawn a lot of people away from drum and bass and it definitely is a kind of counterbalance to the way drum and bass evolved. I remember interviewing Lemondee and Dillinger in about 2001 and they were moaning about how fast everything was getting and said they were going to do stuff at 150. But I think it's like the peer pressure of the dance floor what drugged up ravers crave demanding is so overwhelming a pressure for these guys who are earning a living from it that I haven't heard many people that have tried to Lord, don't really? Not really.
If anything, it's getting even faster. I mean, yeah, you know, another thing that's kind of interesting is there's always been this, you know, with kind of sub-genres kind of all of a sudden getting split off into micro-genres, and you kind of say this half-step thing there. Are you starting to see, even within dubstep, there's kind of new little, I don't know, side genres popping up? What exactly is half-step in? Do you have an example of that? I mean for me dubstep is lots of different rhythmic styles I think half step is one of the simplest style it's got leaves lots of space there's lots of space in the mix which for me is perfect for having MC's I mean it sounds a
little bit like instrumental grime the production values are slightly different the sub bass is much stronger but so it feels quite slow I'll play you a play your track I did with space ape that is it's kind of a half step thing and the thing with half step is the bass that drives the music along as opposed to the the drums because the drums are quite sparse. This is a track called Backward from earlier this year. It's actually kind of weird because it feels slow but actually people go off to it, big style, in a dance.
actually dancing on on the on the half the more no it's almost like they're imagining that it's fast music they're adding in the double time like the same thing with people who were doing with jungle to a certain the opposite of what they were doing with jungle like with jungle you had the slow dub reggae bass lines and your double time breaks and here that it's almost like the double time breaks have been subtracted and so it's actually quite sparse and almost sluggish but people because people dance double time to it or with people that are really locked into it anyway There's a lot of lazy skanking going on but people that are properly locked are dancing double time It's kind of weird to watch because it's quite slow music
I mean are there many other producers doing half-step at the moment? Yeah, they're probably the best half-step producer in a way. The prototypical half-step sound is a guy called Loafer. Just got huge brick walls of bass and very, very sparse, minimal rhythms. One thing I was going to ask as well is it kind of seemed when Grime kicked off, you had a lot of very young producers and what allowed for the kind of growth of the music, there was so much coming out, was the fact that all these young kids had easy access to very basic software like Fruity Loops and what have you. I mean for example what would you what would your production setup look like and there's still a lot of people producing on fruity
Yeah, I think a lot of the kids are still I mean scream who's gonna be here in a few weeks I think he still does most of his stuff on free and the stuff that he gets out of fruity is amazing I used to use three years ago, but I've been producing for ages, so I use I pretty much use anything but standardly reason and logic I don't think it really matters what software you use. I mean, Scream in particular is kind of the best example of why it doesn't really matter. If you can get what he gets out of fruity loops, then that's cool. And obviously with very bass heavy music, I mean, are a good set of monitors an essential part of your kit?
Yeah, that's kind of standard. The hardest thing with this music is referencing what it sounds like in the studio to what it sounds like on a huge sound system with all music really. It's very easy to overdo the bass in your studio. all get our double it's cut at the same place in South London and you know they describe the place called transition and they describe what they do sometimes is base management because often they're just having to mold the base like hold it back a little bit or bring it out or just control it a little bit so it works
it works on a big system effectively and they've been cutting dub and reggae for ages they did jungle now they do most of the dubstep stuff. It's kind of interesting to know I mean you know with what's happening now with the technology that's available and pretty much every single other genre of music everyone's gone the direction of your Serato and you know drum bass DJs were pretty much the last bastion to a certain degree of dubplate culture yet it seems that that whole culture is so alive and well in dubstep. It is I mean it's it's very strong in dubstep I'm certainly not anti I prefer the sound of vinyl, I like the sound of dub plates. I don't mind a bit of crackle in my music because dub plates only last for 30 or 40
plays so quite quickly you start getting crackle. I think it's a kind of useful way of building a sound if a handful of producers are all cutting dub plates in other words they're all getting mastered at an early the tracks are getting mastered at an early stage before they come out so that immediately creates a level playing field so when you hear the stuff out you can compare it to what other producers are doing because it's all gone through the same mastering process so it's been quite useful for people trying to build their sound up you know building from nothing really like inventing what is a new variant of this hardcore continuum that we talked about I mean you know for drum and bass there was Music House, where is the spot for dubstep?
Transition, it's in Forest Hill in South London. I mean what about the cost side of things? I mean obviously cutting plates is you know economically it can stack up on you. Yeah I mean everyone's in it for the love so you know it's £30 to cut a 10 inch dubplate, two tracks, £50 for a 12 inch. And yeah, there's some real maniacal dub plate cutters who just like spend so much money doing it, but nobody's particularly making a lot of money out of it, but everybody seems quite happy to put money into their sounds, so that's kind of the way things work. Say for example someone got booked to play at Ford and they turned up with their CD wallet, they'd probably...
People do play with CDs, but especially on a sound system like Plastic People, which is such a beautiful sound system. The sound is so clean and the room is cool. CDs just hurt your ears in there. It's very toppy and the sound is very sharp if you come with CDs. I don't think it has to be like that, but I think maybe that's one of the downsides people doing stuff on fruity and then going straight to cd without any mastering in between i mean are you also getting this element of kind of vip culture as well where you'll do special one-offs for maybe yourself or for close friends or djs or yeah to a certain extent i mean when you can cut that plate make a tune cut that play in one day then you know people do all kinds of little
little different versions for different occasions, but there's not a lot of money in the scene, so it's not it's not as if Everybody's doing specials that people are generally quite quite happy to just cut their tunes I'm going going back to your own you know your own productions I mean how how does the process work for you? I mean do you do you start with just some beats or you kind of work around a sample or? I wouldn't say there's a particular formula usually Usually I'll hear a piece of music and something will stay with me and I'll only notice it three weeks later that I'm humming this tune. And then often the way it works, because I've got a melodica and I'm a big Augustus Pablo
fan and I can't play any instruments, so a melodica is kind of cool for me because I I can work out tunes relatively quickly while being away near a computer. So I'll work out a tune and then take it to the computer and play it on a MIDI keyboard or whatever. So that's a kind of way I've made a few tunes like that. On average, how long have you been on a tune? The first tune I played was like a day. The very first tune I released that one without beats was a couple of hours. Some tunes take weeks. Again, there's no set rule.
In recent times you've been working hard finishing your album. Tell us a bit about the album. The album's called Memories of the Future and it should be out in a couple of weeks. It includes four or five of the early hyperduper releases and lots of new stuff. It's all myself with SpaceApe. It's kind of dark. I don't find it dark but people tell me it's dark. I find it quite uplifting. I think I'm a bit twisted like that. Have you got that video here? I've got... No, I don't. You don't have the video? No.
Okay. It's a video for one of the tracks that's on the album that a couple of art students made for us, which is on my MySpace, if anyone wants to watch it. But it kind of sums up... The video sums up quite well what we're getting at. Should we have a listen to something off the album? Yeah. This is the first track of the album. It's called Glass. So in terms of vocalists, is it just Space 8 that you're working with?
Or have you in the past or any plans to work with any other vocalists? I've released a track with a female Jamaican vocalist called Warrior Queen. And I'm doing a track for her album as well. She did a track with the Bug for... Yeah, the track that I released was Bug and Warrior Queen Shin. Tell us a bit about the label Hyperdub. It's been going for how long now? Three years. Three years. And I mean, when you first set it up, was it essentially... I mean, did you see it as a label for your own productions? Yeah, it was specifically for our productions, which I knew were slightly weird and not necessarily going to fit in on other labels. so we didn't really have a plan just to have an avenue for releasing our own stuff.
And then, as kind of naturally happens, you hear other people's stuff that is a bit weird as well, and that you think, ah, that we could take it in an interesting direction. So we released the Bug Warrior Queen thing, we released the burial stuff. But, you know, it's still there mainly for me to do what I want in terms of production and have an avenue to put it out without having to persuade someone to like it. I mean, you know, something else that's quite interesting we were talking about yesterday, I mean, talk to anyone that runs a label these days, and the news isn't that good, but funnily enough, I mean, your label is actually, your sales have gone up rather than going down in recent times. Yeah, I mean, it's not a big label at all, but, you know, it's going in the right direction,
and the vinyl sales are going up, which is kind of cool in this day and age. Vinyl sales are going up, the CD sales are great. I think, for some reason, I think vinyl is experiencing a little bit of a resurgence. A lot of people are suffering one way or another, but if you're a tiny label and you're just starting out and you're building it like that, then it's I think your your aspirations are a lot more realistic than and perhaps labels have been around for a long time who have experienced final in a different period of its lifespan and therefore kind of practically suicidal now because
Because of what's happened to vinyl sales because of digital stuff. I do think there's some kind of parallel maybe between you know the fact you're talking about how There's a lot of support for vinyl and dub plate culture within dubstep and young people going to gigs and actually seeing you guys playing off plates rather than Serato or CDs. They're kind of like, you know, you're keeping that whole vibe alive. Do you think that's true to a certain degree, maybe? Maybe. I mean, I think the way scenes grow, there's a lot of cloning that goes on. In other words, people come, hear the music for the first time, they see what the core of the scene are doing, and then they just copy it. They copy the sound, they copy the mannerisms, they copy the fact that they're using dub plates. That's how scenes grow, that's just the way music works, that's the way everything works
one way or another. The way something grows from being small to being big must involve an element of copying. So yeah, I think it does have an impact that we're all crazed dub plate fetishists. I mean you know are you starting to see you there are scenes that have emerged outside of London outside of the UK But how about production are you seeing much production coming outside of them from far corners of the globe? Yeah, there's I mean there's good little scenes in Berlin in New York and I played in Brazil and the next few months. I'm supposed to be in Russia and China Japan and so on In terms of production, for me, still the best stuff comes from South London,
but I've had amazing tracks from Holland recently. There's good stuff coming from Germany, from the US. There's some people in Brazil making stuff. Sometimes you'd like it to be less a copying thing and for people to bring some of their local flavor of their local music scenes to the music, but maybe that takes a bit of time. I mean, you're heading out, I do believe you're heading out to Russia pretty soon as well. I don't know what the local music scene would be in Russia. Yeah. Something else to note with you is, of course, not only a well-respected producer, but also a very well-respected writer. You've been writing a book for a little while now, halfway through it.
Tell us about this, ma'am. It sounds very interesting. The book is about, it's really about the uses and abuses of sound systems. So the book's called Sonic Warfare. And it ranges from everything from MC's clashing or sound system clashes. So using sound systems in this kind of competitive, conflictual situation or using your vocal cords. in that respect, right through to, for example, US military research into acoustic weaponry in Iraq just now. So really that full spectrum of people using and abusing sound systems,
people using sound to control or manipulate. So I write a fair bit of stuff about sonic branding. and these things called earworms. Earworms being basically catchy tunes that get stuck in your head and the more you try and get them out of your head, the more they stick. I think musicians know a lot about earworms. It's kind of weird because a lot of the military research is like science fiction basically. You can't quite believe that they're attempting to do what they're trying to do with sound. There's a commercially available device in the UK just now called the Mosquito.
I don't know if anyone's heard about it. But you can basically buy this device and shopkeepers are buying it, for example. and they just fit it outside their shop and it's basically targeted at 15 to 25 year olds. It's based on this principle, which is kind of a joke. It sounds like a joke. It sounds like science fiction. But it's based on this principle that as you get older, you lose the higher frequencies in your hearing. And so this device emits... I mean, they use these devices apparently to get rid of rats and mice. So they use these devices on groups of youth who are very sensitive to this frequency range between 15 and 20,000 hertz,
the upper end of the frequency, audible frequency spectrum. And it's supposed to be so annoying for them that they have to go away. They have to disperse. In a lot of these cases, it's about using sound, either very high volume sound or very high frequency sound or very low frequency sound. to make people feel uneasy and usually to disperse crowds. So I don't really know if... It doesn't sound that realistic to me but I've got a little test to try out. Like basically on one of the websites about this device the mosquito it's got all these test tones from like just over 20,000 hertz right down to 10,000.
for you to kind of gauge your own hearing and see my hearing is a bit fucked so I don't have a lot of high frequency. I can't hear a lot of high frequencies but I'll play some of these tones and see what people can hear because the science behind it says that as you get older you lose the higher frequencies. Therefore these devices don't affect middle-aged people. They affect kids and the images, the press release images that are on this website for this, commercial device or all of like kids with hooded tops on smoking cigarettes um so this so i'll just play some of these frequencies and see what people can hear this is i don't expect many people to hear this unless
there's some closet dogs in here but this is 20 22 000 hertz Rough? No? Anyone hear that? This is 19. You're all too old. 18? You heard that. You heard that? I couldn't hear that. 16?
I could hear that one. So it goes on like that. But that's the principle in which this device is supposed to work. And as I said, it's kind of science fictional and it makes you wonder, kind of makes you think. You lose contact with the line between science fiction and reality when these devices are being marketed. How long have you been researching the book for? Oh, quite a long time. I mean, it's just something I've been squeezing into a kind of busy schedule for the last few years. But hopefully I'll get it finished in the next few months. You know being a producer and going through the The the whole process of trying to get a record released is one thing, but I'm trying to get a book published as another
Before to that part of it Yeah, I mean I set up a record label to cut out the middleman bit of the music industry But I'm not gonna set up my own publishing company Another couple of things that I'm you know terms of her that you've coined or used about is this whole thing of ecology of fear Do you explain and also base materialism which it was sounds pretty interesting do you would you want to explain that a little bit? Be very simply the base materialism thing is Because book is quite theoretical and base material is kind of like okay. There's 2,000 years of Western philosophy and Whenever it engages with music one way or another it's kind of classical music or art music
So base materialism is like dropping a base bomb on top of Western philosophy and seeing what happens So that's what that is What was the other thing ecology affair? Yeah, so that ecology of here is basically the background to what the book is about which is particularly post 9-11 when fear is such a a dominant mechanism of how politics is working globally. It's just looking into an aspect of that via the way that we've used sound over the last 50 years to produce fear. So obviously horror films are a classic example of these kind of shrill sounds, but also something
It comes from from dub and reggae culture the relationship between dread and base culture So that's kind of what these things are about does anyone have any questions a moment? Sorry for God Yeah, just to back the story up on your sonic wear for a bit there and what you can do to animals with it There was a massive rat problem in the original Cannes studio, which was the one where they recorded Tego Mago, Vitamin C, and all that kind of stuff. In the early 70s, in Holger Chukai, they went to get rid of the mice and rats and turned on one of the oscillators
on a really high frequency. Two days later, all the animals were gone. and the whole problem was about four or five days later the group went through this massive outrage and had one of the biggest arguments and the group almost had to split up until someone came to the conclusion that The machine was still going and once they switched it off it became a happy working place again Yeah, I mean it's the kind of thing that you get a lot of conspiracy theories about But if you search on the net for stuff about acoustic weaponry, you'll hear all these stories about these science labs in the 60s and 70s where suddenly everybody started feeling ill or nauseous in the lab.
And nobody could work out why. And then they realized that one of the ventilator fans was emitting these infrasonic frequencies, really low frequencies. it was basically connecting, because the body is, different parts of the body have different resonant frequencies your eyeballs will vibrate at a certain frequency it would seem like you're having hallucinations but it's basically your eyeballs are vibrating so you get tracers on your vision, like 18 hertz something like that so there's loads of stories of just people getting having these unexplainable nausea feelings. But the thing is, when you look at the stuff online,
there's a lot of conspiracy theory that surrounds it. So it's quite difficult to separate the reality from the bullshit. Obviously, I think anyone that's kind of interested in bassy music has heard stuff about brown notes. There are certain low frequencies that are allegedly supposed to make you run to the toilet. What was it? It's called Find My Way. It's a remix I did of this ska reggae band called Massive.
For example, in France, in Paris, quite no one knows about dubstep, but we are so close from London. How do you explain the fact that, for example, this scene, like UK Garage or Grime, like don't touch a country or a town like Paris, for example? I don't know. I mean, I played in Paris a few times and there were some people there. I think, you know, you tell me, I think French are quite protectionist over there, what comes in culturally to their country. Because I can only really compare it to places like Germany
that are usually quite open to music that comes from London. Yeah, for example, drum and bass, so UK hip-hop, like Roots Maneuver, or the Ninja Tune, or the Big Data, or the Warp. I think it's still, even though the music's about six years old, it's still, in some strange way, quite young. It's six years old, but actually it's like a year and a half old, because it's gone through a number of changes recently that made it maybe more accessible or more visible. I Don't I can't explain the Paris thing when I played there a couple of times and it's been okay Christian
To two favorite reggae play both of them I'll play both of them this one is from the mid 70s. It is a it's called King tubby meets rockers up time It's the dub of his King to be Augustus Pablo and Jake. It's a double of a Jacob Miller tune Augustus Pablo and the melodica I can't get enough of that and the other my other favorite kind of reggae related tune Comes from the 80s, and it's actually one of the first digital dancehall tracks under me slain thing And this I think this tune has got a big influence on dubstep just now
Aside from the reggae side of things what else you listen to a lot of I was gonna ask I mean, how about the whole Adrian Sherwood and on you sound because I mean if you listen to You know like you like digital mystics and stuff. There's a seems to be a definite kind of influence there. Yep I like Kevin Sherwood stuff I don't know a lot of it and it's not I mean I like African head charge as well but it's not a big I wouldn't say it's a big influence on what we're doing I can hear retrospectively the the connections but I mean the stuff that apart from jungle the stuff that I'm influenced by is from everywhere really no you know I'm not a dub reggae purist at all so So I kind of draw from everywhere and
My stuff ends up in all different Directions and before we go should we have one more of your tunes? We've got something some new something new and fresh Yep, are you also finding with with the scene? I mean, you know one of the biggest problems with them with jungle with sub plate culture was tunes getting held up on dub For far far far far too long is it a similar thing happening with dubstep or there's a bit of a quick turnaround It's getting faster, but I think I Mean to be quite honest with you we're not in any rush You know I mean this was the rush I mean it's getting faster, but Everyone's pretty long so
You know I think a lot of people a lot of people who have come out of nowhere like oh that's getting some press we better start a dubstep label and do this and do that but you know I've been interested in this me this music and its various shapes and forms for ages and it will go on and become something else more interesting after dubstep so I'm in no rush so you want one of mine or some other really well I tell you what how about how about something of the burial album I'd rather play some Wu-Tang yeah how much time have I got Wu-Tang anyone
what was the Wu-Tang track you wanted to play anyway I really like the film ghost And I really like RZA and this is a quick track Well, I was gonna say I mean if you if you look at your releases once you've you put up on the plate of their Tenant any particular reason why you released you raise the bulk of your material on ten inch What do you mean the bulky with the bulk of it like I'd release my own stuff on ten inch I don't really know why. I like 10 inches. I mean I've cut mostly 10 inch dub plates so it's just a habit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think the sound is as good on 10 inch but whatever.
So this track is called? This track is called Nine Samurai which is, came out earlier this year. It's the track that this video that we were talking about was made for. It's got a big sample from the Japanese film, Seven Samurai, Kurosawa film, which is the classic example of one of these tunes that unconsciously just got into my head. Then I noticed I was humming it for the next month, and then I realized it. Then I had to go and sample it, and so on. a stone will be chewing at this teeth and a stone will be chewing at the churches.
A stone in the tree I just did a stone in the tree of many churches. Thank you very much for taking time to have a chat, man. You're going to be hanging around the academy for the next couple of days? Yeah, I'm doing a gig at Croft Institute tomorrow night.
and I'm around I'm working on the track with Tiago Anyone you're very friendly man, so if anyone has any questions or anything just come and say hi Yeah, once again, thank you very much, man