18
Mala
OF all the people in this book, Mala is one of the most visible, and one of the most elusive. Briefly known as MC Malibu in the UK garage years, he was born Mark Lawrence – and he made his name as Mala, as dubstep emerged from Croydon to the world. Digital Mystikz, the name that he and Dean Harris (aka Coki) chose for their joint musical venture, is one of the most appropriate in modern music, and also one of the bluntest. From the very outset, their sound was as pure and strange as anything in British electronic history, harking back to the bleep and bass of LFO and Nightmares On Wax, with as much techno oomph but more strung out still, and with even more space between the beats, to let the elemental bass tones expand. With Benga and Skream, their young labelmates on Big Apple Records, they created a musical language the world would try to speak, turning Croydon into Britain's Detroit.
Taking their cue from the FWD>> dances where DJ Hatcha broke their tunes, they put on their own rave, DMZ, and set up a label of the same name, together with fellow producer Peter Livingstone aka Loefah, and the heavily dreadlocked MC SGT [Sergeant] Pokes. Shying away from even using the word dubstep, DMZ nevertheless quickly became the locus for the sound's expansion nationally and internationally, building connections in Leeds, Bristol, Baltimore and beyond, with Pokes's Croydub sessions being the place that all the DJs would return to when the sound's international spread took them further out and about. And with very good reason: DMZ was one of the greatest raves ever, with a perfect tension between dubstep's inward turned “mediated on the bass weight” vibe and explosions of excitement when the most out-there new dubs were dropped (which was very, very often). It was welcoming and extremely diverse, and it brought together all the threads of UK bass culture.
And Mala wasn't shy of riding the dubstep wave to international success. He and Coki played the big raves, he took the big remixes – up to and including Grace Jones – and he connected with both disco legend François Kevorkian, and with Public Enemy producers Hank and Keith Shocklee. But at the same time, while friends were reaching for the lasers and the US arena gigs, he did as much as anyone to maintain his sound's connections to dark rooms in South London and home-built speaker stacks. He bound together dub, abstraction and directness in his production, as well as soul (his white label ‘Alicia’, which samples Alicia Keys, remains as sensual as soundsystem experience gets). Alongside Loefah's militant minimalism and Coki's deranged “scrambled egg bass”, he produced classic after era-defining classic. And he remained the mystic (or Mystik) throughout: “I do have a fascination with outer space,” he told me in 2010, “just the vast, indescribable beauty of it, the wonder of creation which kind of happens constantly; these things interest me and inspire me all the time.”
But this is no hippie. Still the savvy South Londoner, adept at branding and knowing his audience, he built a career and connections: as DMZ became sporadic, as dubstep rose and fell, his Deep Medi Muzik label surged on regardless, mentoring different waves of talent and testing the edges of the music he was part of. With Gilles Peterson's Brownswood label he's explored Latin America, making excellent, exploratory albums with local musicians first in Cuba then in Peru. But he's still at his finest in a dark room with a wall of speakers and a bag full of dubplates, delivering the visceral experience he and Coki discovered when they boiled their rave influences down to their purest essences back at the start of the 2000s. Abroad now, with a family, he still channels that soundsystem spirit effortlessly.
So you were brought up in Croydon?
Born and bred South London, lived in Croydon pretty much all my life. I was actually born in Beckenham but Beckenham to Croydon is 15 minutes in the car so.
And was it a musical household?
Not particularly. There was radio on and my mum and dad had a few records, from Trojan and Motown to mainstream pop or disco. A mixed background, pretty normal by London standards: my mother's white English and my dad's Jamaican. South London was always a melting pot of cultures even back then, and even with the problems we had in the 80s. Always different people from different cultures and parts of the world in my environment. Later in life you realise how much of a blessing that has been. Pirate radio was probably the main thing that switched me on to music and sound. I was listening to hardcore and jungle in 1992 when I got a hifi for Christmas that year, I was 12 years old. Tuned into the pirate radio station, attaching a metal coat hanger, untangle it, unwire it so to speak, and attach it to your FM aerial on your hifi, wrap that round the metal and hang it out the window to get your pirate signal. That's what I did as a 12 year old, and yeah that was a rich source of music.
My aunt lived in South London then and when I came into town I was really blown away that there were 100 pirate stations. You'd move the dial a tiny amount and you'd go across three stations, it gave the sense of this culture being so alive
It was fascinating because it was there – but not to the ordinary public. Then that feeling was amplified when you went to an underground rave. I wasn't raving in 1992, but by the age of 14-15, we was already experiencing the feeling you used to get going to a jungle club. You knew the music wasn't being heard or played anywhere else in the world. A really important part of my growing up was feeling like I had discovered something, from the mentality of the underground pirate radio station, the underground rave, and dubplate culture, not knowing what music was being played and or who was playing it even. That was a massive part of the mystery, which definitely had a huge impact on me.
Did you have obsessions before you discovered music that way?
I was obsessed with football, all the way until I was 17-18. I've always been a driven person, competitive in the sense that I've always wanted to be the very best at doing what I do. I played for a football professional team at school level for seven years. You train day in day out but only the top in the group will be on the starting 11, and you still might be a sub. That's offputting for a lot of people: we're told that giving everything is enough and you'll be rewarded, but life isn't fair like that. You've got to be prepared to give your all regardless of the outcome, that's when your heart and soul is tested. Or maybe you're doing it for other reasons – which is just as valid and commendable, I'm not saying there's a better or worse – but I knew from a young age I was willing to give everything that I had for the things that I loved. My music's been no different.
So when you started raving at 14-15, did you immediately get the urge to get stuck in as more than a passive participant? Were you with a crew? Did you want to be involved straight away?
Even before that, listening to pirate radio stations inspired me and friends at school, we already started writing lyrics because we didn't have the resources to buy turntables and go record-collecting. Only when you get your first job, around 13-14 doing a paper round, getting up before school, probably for £12 a week or whatever, no minimum wage then! Again, this is all about character-building and what you're doing to elevate and progress yourself in life. The money I earned on my paper round would be the money I would buy my records with. On our walk to school we had a shop called Upfront Records which used to sell hardcore and jungle and a bit of house and garage, this is 1994-95. We'd go past every day, you'd end up knowing the guys in the shop. One was a guy called DJ Face, who always treated us like any other adult that came into the shop.
Back when you were younger, some record shops would be quite daunting, because of this air of mystery, the pirates, the illegal raves and warehouse raves. We went to Wax City records and Big Apple records in Croydon, another shop called Swag specialised more in house and techno and garage. Wax City was hardcore and jungle, Big Apple jungle and house and garage as well. You go in, pick up your flyers, buy your rave tape packs and record tapes from the pirate stations at the weekend. Then you'd go and exchange them at school on a Monday morning. Some people would record stuff from Kool FM, some from Dream FM, some from Don FM, some from Energy FM.
We'd swap tapes for tapes, tapes for lunches, buy tapes off people. I remember the Desert Storm tape packs and the AWOL tape packs. I still have some at home, from 1994. They're a bit noisy now and maybe the recordings sound a bit low but they still hold the magic they did then. I wasn't in a gang or a crew, but there was definitely close friends: Pokes – Jody – and Coki, we've known each other since we were 10-11 years old, and we were very much into similar things. The story was Coki and Pokes and myself and later Loefah, who actually went to a different school from us.
I met Pete through mutual friends who I went to primary school with. He had a really sick record collection of hardcore and jungle, and I remember them saying, “You've got to meet our mate Hardcore Pete!” We'd go round his house and have a mix. We were like-minded in many ways so instantly there's a friendship that begins to grow, That was the case for a lot of people, the music brought many people together, and maybe not people you would have met in other circumstances.
By the time you started going out it was full-bore jungle
The years where no one's been able to recreate those type of sounds. That 1994-95 era was incredible.
It seemed like it would never end at the time, but then it was just gone, and onto drum’n’bass. It had an insane white heat of creativity and it brought people together – but it also had conflict in it. Were you aware of that, or did you have that youthful bravado, thinking you're bulletproof?
If you've lived a certain lifestyle from a very young age then you'll be aware. It wasn't obvious for me. At first it was just the music but then you start sensing, “Ah that character over there feels a certain way, what's going on over there? Oh right.” Or you go to another dance – and it's the same with the garage raves – and you smell something funny that's not weed or a cigarette. Do you get what I'm saying? I've always said that being in clubs was like my university, the pirate radio stations, the clubs and music. I went to college but I never went to university. I was already growing up in what I was going on to do, already living the life. As soon as you understand the world isn't as nice as adults make out it is, then these mishaps and the dark sides of people and of any kind of scene make themselves apparent. The music I grew up listening to has been no different.
The music encapsulated the tension, the adrenalin and the glory of the fact that all of those different people – even the sketchier people – could be held together in this one coherent thing
I think these things became more apparent when I started creating music myself, because then you start self-analysing what it is you're putting into your own music. I didn't hang around with older kids, I didn't have an older brother showing me things. I was discovering things for the first time – maybe I showed my brothers things when they were a bit younger. You're talking about a 14-year-old still trying to focus at school and do exams, and still into football, but just feels very passionate about this strange music. Which adults don't seem to understand but I feel so connected to.
When did you feel it was something you would do? You were MCing in the garage days
There was some under-18 jungle events, not dibby-dibby little things, proper jungle events where the line up would be solid: Kenny Ken with Mickey Finn and Brockie. From the age of 14-15, I managed to get myself on a few bills as an MC. I was very fortunate in the mid-90s, and I have the tapes to prove it, MCing with people like Kenny Ken, DJ Rap, Mickey Finn, Randall, Jumpin’ Jack Frost, Nicky Blackmarket, Grooverider. I've got flyers with my name on alongside these MCs, alongside people like Skibadee and Stevie Hyper D and the Ragga Twins, Moose, Navigator, GQ, you know.
The unique art of the jungle MC is overlooked in the history of British music, in terms of them cementing a British style and a rave style into the way people spoke and expressed themselves
For sure. You'd hear people talk certain quotes in school that were from certain MCs. They changed or inspired youth language, it's as simple as that.
And it was the rave rather than strictly an MC performance, the technique and the stamina and everything they honed and then taught people, obviously affected everything. Flowdan told me he would never have got the skills he did if it hadn't been for listening to 90-minute tapes and rapping along with every word
Of course. You didn't turn up for five minutes and go: the MC was there for the duration. And as a result, they learned to host as well and that was what I loved about good jungle MCs. Somebody like GQ epitomises that, he can spray bars over any type of beat when the beat drops, but he also has that hosting element where he can sit back off the beat and let the music do the talking, rather than being the driving force, which some MCs do and some genres do. Obviously in grime, often the DJ and the music caters for the MC – whereas jungle in a way did both. Some MCs let the music do the talking and they host, some did both, some were right up- front, lyrical from start to finish. That's what was always really diverse and exciting about a jungle rave. You got to see people's personalities – because when you've got a mic, you're not just going to say lyrics for two hours. You talk to your audience and this is when you see someone's personality. It's not so much a performance, you're getting the person you know. I always liked that about jungle music, it always felt quite personal in that respect.
And no one epitomises that like Pokes
In our genre of music, there's nobody else who does it like him. Very fortunate that he's part of DMZ. Fascinating that he didn't have to say much but when he said something, the way that he said it, how he said it, when he said it, it was always on point. He epitomises that ability to show your personality, and really host a dance. For the type of music that we were making back then, it really needed that. It didn't need the grime thing, it didn't need an MC jumping all over it.
So did there come a conflict between football and music? What made you divert into music?
I got recurring knee injuries. After the second injury, when I was about 16, I had to take several months out. Coming back I knew in my heart I wasn't up for it, so I kind of sadly put it aside. But I was already doing music, so it wasn't like music then took over. I just had more time to focus. At school everybody says by 16-17 you should know what you want to be. I didn't really, but I knew some of the things that I liked. Fortunately my parents were always supportive, as long as I wasn't bumming around doing nothing. I've always worked side-jobs. They didn't force me to go to university just for the sake of going, which I think was a blessing. Any youngster knowing that they've got support from their family to make their own choices is a big deal. It gave me a deeper sense of responsibility.
You were involved in a couple of records in the garage years. What was your experience of dipping a toe into the record industry?
By that time I was a bit older, we're talking 17-18, 19-20, so I was much more aware of certain things on the garage scene. Whether because I was young, or not very good, or people didn't rate me, I felt a lot of hostility from other people that were performing. The MCs, I mean. It felt like, “This is my time, give me the mic!” You had to be on your toes with that, and that was my first taste of mainstream major labels as well. Fortunately and unfortunately for me, the people involved – from my manager at the time to the A&R at EMI – didn't really care so much about the 19-20 year old whose hopes and dreams they were building up. They were just interested in what money they could make. You have all of the pampering and the grooming and the gas and smoke blown in front of you, they put a bit of money on the table, but ultimately if it doesn't achieve what they're expecting… I was expecting more of a human response after that, but it wasn't at all.
It was very cold and dismissive. I worked with a major label for about a year and a half, making a track, the track getting signed, touring the song – because even for a single you'd go out, go do a club tour for nine months up and down the country building the track – doing all of the interviews and rah rah rah. They raise your expectations, you're put on a pedestal you didn't ask to be put on. Then when the record didn't do as good after that 18 months, I think my manager spoke to me twice and the A&R woman spoke to me once, and that was it, done. So as a 20-year-old that was my first real experience of how brutal and unforgiving the music industry is. I went back into regular work after that, and any youngster putting their hopes and dreams into this situation would feel depression and humiliation. It wasn't like I was going around flossing rolexes and renting Porsches and Lamborghinis! But you tell your friends and your family that these things are going on, and in your mind you think, “Right, this is going to be a stepping stone to the next thing.” And it just wasn't that. On top of that, the people treating you devastatingly had been your so-called family for a year. It was a harsh lesson, but very important, one of the most important music industry lessons I was fortunate enough to have.
You've hit on two things that come back again and again. Obviously the short term-ism and the bullshit is endemic, but especially in garage that short-term thinking destroyed so much. Then there was the generation gap thing. Everyone in both grime and dubstep camps, from Jammer to Hatcha to Plastician, has said, “We were ejected from garage, we were not given the chance so we went and did our own thing.” Did you feel that drive among your age group and the people you knew in Croydon early on, a sense that something was kicking back against that?
Nah, because it wasn't against it. Not for me. It wasn't like, “My song didn't pop off in the charts as they said it would, so I'm going to get my own back.” In hindsight thank god it didn't go to top ten, I might have lived to regret it maybe. It's not for everybody. Some people are happy to sing and dance for other people. I guess in my heart of hearts it wasn't really for me, that's how I look at it. One minute everybody's reading about you in a magazine or looking at your video on MTV or hearing you on Capital Radio and the next you're in the call centre collecting money for some insurance company. Not that there's anything wrong with working in a call centre, there's nothing wrong with that at all. But the two places are very very different.
As a youngster navigating that mentally was really challenging, because I had no idea that Hatcha or Plastician felt a certain way. I've MCed for Hatcha many times when he was playing garage, we played many shows together. But he was always about something different as well. He always played b-sides. You wouldn't necessarily know all of Hatcha's tunes as a garage DJ, and he didn't really fit in the DJ Spoony mould of garage. I never knew this at the time and I don't know if it's true, but a story was going around that there was a garage committee trying to stop certain MC tracks being played.208 On the outside of these music scenes, people talk about community and unity and rah rah rah, but on the inside it's often very different. Often it can be full of conflict, and sometimes you need that conflict for people to break the mould and go off and inspire them to do something else.
When did you first become aware it wasn't just Hatcha playing instrumentals of existing garage tunes but that something else was brewing. Obviously FWD>> was already running by this point
Yeah, I went to a couple of FWD>>s. I went to a FWD>> at fabric one time. I think El-B was playing and Juiceman was MCing. It had more of that garage vibe. And Big Apple records was a local record shop to us, so I used to speak to Hatcha, it was through that: “Come down to FWD>>!” A good thing to come out of my major label record deal was buying myself a PC and some music software, so I'd started making my own music. I wasn't making garage tunes, though, I was trying to recreate 1994 jungle. But the more I made music, the more I seemed to be making this stripped- down minimal, the early sound of Digital Mystikz records. Feeling depressed and humiliated, I just locked myself in my studio and made music. I'd go to work during the day and make music all night. Go to bed at silly o’clock, wake up early and go to work, that was my cycle. I even got rid of my bed so I could put a music studio in my room. I bought a futon mattress which I kept on the landing, and used to bring it back in my bedroom to sleep. What are you prepared to do for your passion? It's devotion and dedication, and the telling of character.
So finding a sound, then we'd go to Big Apple and play tracks to Hatcha, and I think he said “Pass them to Tempa.” I remember playing stuff to Neil [Joliffe], who helped run Tempa back in the day with Sarah, and they weren't really feeling it. Then I got some dubs cut up for Hatcha – at Transition because everyone got their dubs cut at Transition – and it wasn't too far away from where I live. I sent music to a couple of people at the time, Kode9, Hatcha, and I think maybe Youngsta. I became very closed and guarded with everything going forward, I'd only give it to a few people.
At Transition I remember hearing a Scottish accent. I asked Jason “Is that Kode9?” And Jason was like, “Yeah.” I ran outside: “Hi Kode9! I'm Mala, Digital Mystikz, I sent you some music a little while ago.” He was one of the first people to go “Yeah man, your stuff is sick man, keep sending me music.” Only a couple of people enjoyed the music I was making, but enough to keep the fire in me burning. Hatcha's DJ set went overnight from having no Digital Mystikz tunes to having almost half his set being Digital Mystikz tunes. Me and Coki had been building tunes for about a year by that point, building and building and building. We gave Hatcha like 15 tunes and he started playing them – then the tracks were getting response straight away in the dance. Don't ask me how or why they got a response – or why I made the music the way I did. I've got no answers for that.
It was coming from an introspective place. You can hear you were depressed and spending a lot of time alone. Did it feel therapeutic? Were you feeling better as a result of getting it out there?
It wasn't really getting it out there. It was definitely about putting everything I was into creating music. Spent hours and days and months and years doing it. So yeah, a type of meditation, but I never thought for a minute that people would enjoy it as dance music. That thought was absurd back then. But it was Hatcha who said he could play this. I don't know how many years later we are now, but Hatcha still plays my music in his sets and I'm very grateful for that.
He's a linchpin. Is it fair to say he defined what dubstep is more than anyone else?
In those early days it was his taste. He wasn't trying to play garage or breakbeat, he wanted to play that stripped-down ongy-bongy because it was beats, bass and some sparse weird abstract pad or synth. It generally had percussion in there because back then we all did. It was very simple hi-hat, then we'd bring in the percussive element of the congas or the tabla or the djembe, whatever drums we were sampling back then. He encouraged people like Benga and Skream to make that music because back then he was only playing stuff from them and Benny Ill and Digital Mystikz and Loefah when he started. It was me and Coki dragged Loefah down to Big Apple records. Back then Pete was a real introvert and pretty shy as well. He didn't really like to make himself known in spaces so I literally had to drag him down to the record shop and play it to Hatcha because it's sick.
It's one of my fondest memories of music, actually. I know Pete's history pretty well, he's a very close friend for many years. And experiencing this moment with him was something that was really beautiful. ‘Indian Dub’ was a track he signed to Big Apple. I remember when he first made it, when it first got played by Hatcha down at FWD>>, the response. He got an instant rewind and I'll never forget the feeling I felt then. And the look on Pete's face, of sheer amazement and sheer joy, not a validation but “Rah!” Like what is it? A sense you're able to be yourself. That's what I always tried to encourage among the producers I work with and in the music I work with on my label, and the environment we used to create at DMZ.
Can you remember when you collectively first started feeling optimism or excitement about spaces like this? Skream's talked to me about going up to FWD>> in limousines together from Croydon, and going up to Leeds and all these collective experiences
Yeah, the DMZ road trips to Leeds. There was a real sense of unity and community. Is 2006 when I first did Leeds? We started DMZ in 2005.
The tipping-point year was 2006, and DMZ moving upstairs was symbolic. Did it feel it was building towards that?
Yeah, so we'd released a record with Big Apple records, then shortly after they closed down. We had already had the hunger then – myself, Pokes, Coki and Loefah – because we started a DMZ record label, put our money together and pressed our first record. That was really exciting for us. We didn't know what we were doing, there wasn't all these YouTube videos online on how to start a record label. Call pressing plants, call distributors, all the things. FWD>> was amazing but some of the music getting played wasn't really us. It was East London, and we wanted something in South London. We did a few test runs of dance events called Dub Session, at a bar Pokes and Loefah worked at called Black Sheep, in Croydon. And an opportunity came up to do a dance in Brixton, which felt perfect. And we wanted to hear more of this minimal deep heavy stuff rather than the bouncy, breakbeat-y stuff. Because FWD>> always played a very diverse range of what was going on at 140.
I guess we narrowed it down. There wasn't just one of us, Coki had his style, Loefah had his, I had mine – so with the record label we just wanted to move forward with that. It was a non-exclusive event, everyone was welcome. And things very quickly started moving and going back to my youth of feeling very driven and playing as a team. There was no plan, no weekly DMZ meeting. It was like, “Let's make music and put on a dance and then release this record because it's having a good response in the dance.” The dubplates became the A&R man, and the dances and the pirate radio stations, Rinse FM being crucial to spreading our music further afield at that time. The reactions were what inspired us to continue making music and to keep putting on dances. Quite quickly for me, it was no longer just about me. There was so many pieces involved here so you've got to play your part as best as possible. Then after the first birthday, 2006, things moved up a notch.
Already by 2006 there was inklings of things happening in Bristol and Amsterdam and places like that. Then Mary Anne Hobbs did Dubstep Warz and really it went global. Which almost exactly coincided with DMZ blowing up from the smaller venue to the much bigger one in Mass
Hats off to Mary Anne Hobbs, because to this day she was the only DJ who really I felt really wanted to represent the music to a mainstream audience, but also wanted to be authentic with it. Some of these DJs come around later on claiming they'd always been supportive, but you'd never ever see them at a DMZ dance. You'd see Mary Anne Hobbs at FWD>>, at DMZ, she'd get on the phone to you for an hour talking about the music, how you're making it, why, where you're coming from. She genuinely wanted to understand. I remember talking to her in great depth before the Dubstep Warz show, before even agreeing to do it. There was no way I was going be misrepresented again. So I was extremely cautious and thorough with my research and conversations I had, but Mary Anne Hobbs was as legit as they come. I presume that's why everyone agreed to do the show, because everybody felt the same sense of security and authenticity. It was like “Come on the show, we've got an hour, six of you come down and do what you do.” It was a massive platform, but at the same time it felt like, “Yeah, we should play our music on here.”
Back then with a 25-year-old mentality I was like, “Yeah this is the sickest music out there, no one else can hear this anywhere. This is unique to our part of the world right here, right now.” It felt like we were sharing something to a much bigger audience for the first time, and for me it felt like I was representing a whole group of people with a certain taste in music and mindset and maybe a greater outlook on life. There was a much bigger sense of responsibility than just being a DJ playing a few tunes. So then a month after Dubstep Warz, we had the DMZ first birthday. That's when I realised, “Rah, people are really paying attention to this.” Because DMZ was never just 50 people in the dance, like them stories of back in the day there were more producers than clubbers in the dance.
So when it come to us putting on an event, there was a healthy interest, a scene, a mixed culture and like “Rah, things are moving here.” And you can easily look at that and go, “Oh, that's the biggest one we've done yet, we can take it easy now, we could just keep doing the same things we're doing,” but my mindset was never like that: “What else can I do? How can I make a better tune than the ones I've just made?” It was constantly driving things forward. Everyone was inspiring and encouraging everyone else to raise their game. You'd hear a dubplate from Kode9 in the dance that would sound sick, you'd go home and be like “Raaaah, Kode9 played some serious dubs.” So then you were gonna go and make some tunes to come back to the next dance with even more firepower, because dubplates were rapid back then, people were making dubs all the time. When Coki played me a tune, I'd be like “Rah how'd he make that?” And it inspired you to go back to the studio and make more music. Same when I heard a new Loefah tune: “Damn, how did he get the frequencies, how did he get the bassline sounding so low and heavy, how has he got it sounding sparse but so full?” It was a really amazing time full of energy and full of good will.
And the transition was just preposterous. Within a year and a half there was playing to thousands at Sónar, Plastician getting Snoop Dogg involved, the Caspa and Rusko FabricLive album going ballistic. And it didn't stop for another four-five years of just constant growth. What was it like to be in the thick of that amount?
[Long pause] It's mixed, isn't it? Growth can be a blessing and a curse. I remember having to move from the small room in DMZ to the bigger room. We moved from 3rd Base which was like a 500 capacity venue to a 1,200 capacity venue in the same building. None of us wanted to go to the bigger space because we knew you lose that intimacy. You'd have to speak to Coki and Loefah and Pokes because I can't speak for them, but for me it was always, “How can I continue to grow in terms of my profile? How can I grow my audience. There's always new generations, how do you stay relevant and not sell out, so-called? How do you keep your integrity and your ethics, and still keep that intimacy when you're playing in front of 1,000 people or 2,000, 5,000 or 10,000 – or however many you want to go?”
For me that is where the challenge is. You'd have to speak to Caspa and Rusko and Benga and Skream, because they were really on a different kind of trajectory than I was then. The type of music they were making became much more accessible across the board, where the music I was making and playing was still very abstract. Also it come down to our personality and our age. Benga and Skream were ripe for doing all the things they done, they had the playful characters and natures, they were great at what they did, and full of energy. And Artwork with the Magnetic Man project. They were the right people to go to those stages and execute it the way that they did. It's just not me. I've always thought of myself as the underground guy who wants to play the obscure records and sign the unknown artist. I don't think I've changed much in that respect. It was a fascinating time.
But once again the major labels failed. Was it frustrating to see Magnetic Man and Skream get ahead because they had Rinse behind them – but when the majors signed Distance209 or True Tiger, they ended up in development hell, stifled by calendars and diaries and sales plans? When they should have been able to put things out at a pace and in a format that naturally suited that music
Thousands of people are enrolled in these companies, employees and employers, to support and network. Whereas little old me with my label of a few people, it doesn't need the same engine to drive it. It's much less stress and pressure, and I'm not interested in persuading a listener to like what I do. But major labels spend millions of pounds to get records played at certain times on certain radio stations and in certain shops. It's not a myth, it's true. People should be free and feel empowered to be themselves. That's what I've always tried to do with the people I work with. Not say “Right, I need you to write this beat because if you write a beat like that then everyone's hands are gonna go up in the air when the tune drops, and that means we're going to sell X amount of thousand.” It didn't really frustrate me because also everybody has their own journey. There's one person I think who came through at a later stage of the dubstep sound who's kept their integrity and their creativity and gone on to great things, and that's James Blake.
It's funny how you remember some people. I remember meeting James for the first time, handing me a CD outside DMZ. He's doing some amazing things but it comes to this: why do we do what we do? Is this why some people go on to achieve and some people don't? Do we get caught up in the fame and the money and the success and the nightlife and the parties, and if we do get caught up in those external things, do we then lose focus on who we are and what the music is and what the music means and our sense of responsibility in the art that we do? That's a question that I will always ask. Some people went so high and then it just kind of stopped. Why, when the world was at your feet? I don't know the answer. Of course at certain times when you're younger you think, “I'd love to play in front of 10,000 people.” And I've played to audiences that size but not on a regular basis. I know that's just not me. It doesn't make me happy.
As dubstep was accelerating away, Deep Medi was developing as a more diverse label, with soulful and melodic tunes as well as the deep minimal stuff. Was there a conscious decision to branch out with more varied Quest tracks and Mark Pritchard, those kind of things?
Nah, not really. Most people forget that Deep Medi is nearly as old as DMZ. It's only a year difference. So the first Deep Medi release was 2006 or 2007, I can't remember. It was going to be a space where I could put out the more experimental productions I was making at the time, but it never worked that way. With the amount of music I was getting sent through MySpace and that people were giving me music in the raves – and I was also doing youth work at the time – it ended up like a perfect opportunity to provide the platform for like-minded people. The music I was making was giving me a sense of wellbeing in my life, doing something you felt was right, adding value to your life by doing things you love, felt passionately about and giving your everything. I don't want to come across hippy or something like that, but one of my thoughts behind it was that if I could provide a platform that allowed other people to get on that vibe and do things that they love, then it could create a better space.
It changed from being just me – and it's really nice to have something that you can share, and work with like-minded people. You don't want to lose money – it's always a challenge to keep afloat and break even – but it's something I've loved doing. And I've put out more than 100 records now. The different ways of music have always inspired me to keep my ear to the ground, and the label's definitely helped me be at the forefront of moving forward. I thought my responsibility having a label isn't to bring out the next biggest producer or release the next biggest banger, it's to look at the people I'm working with, when I deeply feel their music, to find what it is within them they want to make. A lot of the time you get sent the music they think you want them to make, because it's the Deep Medi sound – but often and not it's the stuff they don't mention they're making that's more interesting.
The only way to encourage a longevity in the music industry is if you are yourself – or else you constantly have to reinvent yourself with what's now trendy. You see many pop artists doing that, constantly reinventing themselves, singing another song that sounds like someone else because it's popular. But in an independent lane of music, you've got to find out what it is you want to do, and go with that. There's plenty of 001s and 002s, but at Deep Medi we've done 104 singles, which is well over 208 single tracks. And 13 albums on top of that. In a really strange way, it wouldn't really bother me if I myself didn't release a record again, but releasing other people's music means a lot to me. I know how hard producers work on the music they make – I very much enjoy playing that in my shows, and spending time making a nice record that people can go out and buy. It's not an easy business and that's why not many record labels get numbers in the hundreds. It's really a labour of love, because the music industry is full of brutal, unforgiving and complicated people and we have to navigate through that.
Do you find having a label has broadened your own musical horizons, all these different people you've been working with?
No. If anything, it's made it harder to write music because you listen to these young guys coming through and you're like “Rah how did they make that?” You listen to Commodo's mix-downs and you're like “Wow!” We all have that self belief and confidence, but we also have that self doubt and uncertainty. Being an artist is always standing on the thin line between those things: as much as something can inspire, it can also make you look at yourself and go “Ah shit!” That's my reality and it always has been, as much as I can lock everything off and focus on what I'm doing. It's not like I'm going to listen to someone's tune and go “Ah, I want to make an exact copy of what they're doing,” it's like when I hear Commodo – or something as obscure but as on-point as the stuff Gantz has made – it's like “Wow, you've completely reinvented something!” But I think it's very important to find people who can inspire you to be yourself. When you do that, that's when you find something unique.
The person who's taken that role with you is Gilles Peterson and Brownswood. You'd collected club tracks together on the Return II Space thing but that was a “triple pack” of 12”s of your existing dubplate tracks, but you were not an album artist before Brownswood
It turned out Gilles had been coming to a few DMZ shows over the years. And anybody that knows Gilles knows that he just loves music, he is really childlike in that respect, very enthusiastic and very passionate. He genuinely loves it. I'd never made an album before, and it was a completely different mindset and approach to making music. I'd never really worked with musicians, and now I was working with elite musicians, the people that played for Buena Vista Social Club. I was severely out of my depth. I felt very very uncomfortable when I was in Cuba recording – but this is part of growth, right? We have to go to uncomfortable places to learn something, to feel inferior and humiliated in order to grow. And that's what going to Cuba did for me.
There was very much of a sense of “There's no way I'm going to be able to do this.” But coming back to devotion and dedication and wanting to better yourself, you prove to yourself you can do it. As a result, I toured with musicians for a year. I'd never played in a band before but I found myself with a small band. Gilles with his record label had a completely different audience to what I'd been developing for X amount of years, so a real new world opened up performing at the North Sea Jazz Festival, say. Jazz festivals in France where they'd never invite a so-called dubstep artist to perform. It showed me in a different light, maybe even in a truer light than just making 140. I remember as a 19-year-old being inspired by Nitin Sawhney and the album he made, Beyond Skin. He was very much UK, in London, and obviously he had Indian heritage from his parents, but his music sounded so worldly. I'm not talking about [air quotes] “world music” because I don't particularly like that term, but his music was worldly. It didn't sound like an underground movement from a certain part of the world. It sounded like it breathed life from all parts of the world.
Doing the Cuba album – and after that I went and recorded an album in Peru – allowed me to explore some of those things I always imagined I would do as an artist. I always wanted to travel and make music around the world, but I guess I'd forgotten that, after years of just being in my studio, playing dubplates and playing on soundsystems. You've got to be careful. If in my mind I'm just Mala the dubstep guy from DMZ, if I choose to accept that's who I am, that's all I'm ever going to be. As much as that's a blessing, it can also be a limitation: “Oh I'm Mala, the dubstep producer, I better make a beat at 140 when actually right now I'm feeling 112 or I'm feeling 170 and actually I don't even want to make anything with beats at all.”
It's strange. Underground music, especially London's underground music, is so hybrid and so fast-moving and fast-evolving that the idea of conservatism, and saying “Why aren't you doing the same thing any more?” seems laughable. But it's a really strong imperative for a lot of people
Yeah it is. A lot of the time it's steeped in fear, in fear of change. We all know that exists out there, and when things change some people choose not to make any changes within themselves, because they're scared of the outcome. Sometimes it's a good thing and sometimes it's to their detriment. But as an artist, I think my responsibility is first to myself, to explore the possibilities of who I am and how I can express myself through music. And I hope my audience respects that and comes along for the ride. If they don't, they don't, that's just the way life is. Had I not taken the opportunity Gilles presented to me, because I wanted to stay in South Norwood and keep making dubplates, I would never have had that experience in Cuba, I never would have gone to Peru and explored all of the things I did – I went to Peru with my family for one month and made an album.
Presumably it helps with people's perceptions if you have a bag of dubplates good enough to come back to London and tear down a dance at any time, though?
Well the thing is, just because I was touring the Cuba album, I didn't stop taking DJ shows. And my experiments in Cuba weren't so far from what people knew me for that they couldn't relate. If all of a sudden I said “Right, I'm not going to do this thing any more and I'm going to go and make a folk album or a country music album,” that probably would be a detrimental change. There's no point being radical just for being radical because you don't know what you're getting yourself into. Trying to understand what it is you're trying to express and portray allows you to navigate through this maze.
Now it's great because I feel like I have such a diverse range of music to draw from when I DJ. That's why I like doing long sets. Shaka and Aba Shanti play soundsystem all night because they're still playing music from the 70s, but it's their music. And the youngsters coming out to the dances now have only ever heard some of those tunes by myth and fairytale or on YouTube. So music is given longevity as a result of people staying true to their craft. Longevity in their careers comes from being true to the craft, and that gives the music that they play longevity, which allows them to play it to new generations. Shaka's literally majestical when he plays music. He's on a totally different frequency and you still hear tunes now that you've never heard before. How does he do it?
Outlook is really interesting nexus for how people are connecting into that history, because it's a party festival. It's not museum pieces, but part of a living tradition with the younger generation
I remember meeting David Rodigan for the first time and he said, “Ah my son man he loves your music, he comes to a lot of your raves and I've got to say big up because without what you guys are doing in the dubstep, it's brought me back round again.” I do a session in Bristol with Dubkasm and Musik Matter, called The Weekender, and on the Friday night all the guys from Medi come and play, and on the Saturday we invite people to come and do more of the roots thing. We try and do the new meeting with the old. At the first one we had Shaka, and that night was very very special because it summed up what you're talking about now. It was mad, it was six in the morning, Shaka was gonna play his last couple tunes, the lights were on and he said, “Giving thanks for the session, thanks for everybody to come out to the dance, this is my 44th year playing in Bristol.” And nobody in that dance that was 44 years old, you get what I'm saying? The closest might have been Congo Natty, then it was probably me and one of my business partners and Dubkasm, and everybody else was much younger.
And what was fascinating is that I played, then Congo Natty after me, and then Shaka played after that. It was that UK soundsystem lineage, that culture. Congo Natty used to go see Shaka when he was 15. I was 15 when I used to go see Congo Natty. Congo Natty's MC came out to my raves when they were 15, to see me play. It was a very very very special session, and this year will be the fourth year of the weekender. We do it every year. It's a beautiful festival, we bring a soundsystem in, we sell nice food. And Outlook Festival has been instrumental in that, in aligning all of the parts of UK soundsystem culture together. Because the term bass music didn't really exist before. I think in a way the dubstep movement and how big it got globally, that brought a lot of things back in, man.
What became really apparent was dubstep's hybrid nature. Skream called it British mongrel music. It came from a generation that had grown up on all the styles of dance music and soundsystem music and dub, so it was able to go back into those styles, whether it's you playing for François K210 or hip hop artists hearing it or techno DJs playing it
People forget we had Hank and Keith Shocklee play at DMZ. It happened, we got photos of it. The producers of Public Enemy! That's the amazing thing, it infiltrated so many different scenes, all people on the fringes, it pricked up all of their ears enough to get involved.
And even if it appeared to peak and burn in 2013, to people looking in from the mainstream, that infiltration – and the real-world and aesthetic connections that were built then – never went away
Nah and to be fair, it never crashed and burned where I was. There's always this “dubstep died” and post-dubstep and all that, but what happened was that all of the media jumped off of it and began to look in another direction. Which allowed people who were serious about it to continue cracking on with what they had always been doing. We'd done it without the support of media, so there was no problem doing it again. It just got rid of a lot of people who didn't really need to be around, to be fair.
A mighty wind blew away the chaff
You know, I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. Once the hype gone, the hype takes away a lot of people. To me I'm grateful for that, I don't need no hype around here.