Session Transcript:
Mala
Red Bull Music Academy, Barcelona 2008

The video stream for this lecture can be watched here.

As dubstep grows beyond London’s best kept secret, one name remains a constant – Digital Mystikz. Mala, Coki and Loefah founded one of its most influential labels and revered club nights, both under the DMZ banner. Mala talks about the scene’s emergence via a bunch of people pining for the jungle scene of 1994, and explains why he likes his clubs the way he likes his music, dark and powerful. The thing he dislikes most, though, is dubstep – not the sound, but the big bad media’s insistence on labelling what he does, all the better to limit it. Look and learn as he talks about dubstep, dubplates and doing it for the love.

RBMA: »Morning everyone, or afternoon, as it may well be. Please welcome to the couch our guest Mala (applause). How’re you doing?«

Mala: »Nice.«

RBMA: »How are you finding the Academy?«

Mala: »It’s an amazing experience because – I’m just going to go straight in there – because technology seems to be separating people from human connections. So whenever people from other parts of the world can get together to share ideas, communicate in a positive way, then it’s definitely a blessing. I feel really privileged to be here and be a part of what’s going on.«

RBMA: »I saw you upstairs late last night making beats.«

Mala: »This lot were so hungry I couldn’t get into the studio to do it myself. Every time I was walking around these guys were just working. Good energy last night.«

RBMA: »It’s a pleasure to have you here, thanks for joining us. For those who aren’t familiar with what you’ve done, please introduce yourself and fill them in.«

Mala: »I haven’t done much, but my real name is Mark, everyone calls me Mala, a nickname from when I was younger. I set up a record label with a couple of friends back in 2004 called DMZ with Coki and Loefah. From setting that up, we had nowhere to play the music, so we set up our night. Since then I’ve set up another label because I was getting sent so much music from around the world and I was in a position where I could get other people’s music listened to; so that’s why I started my Deep Medi label. Through producing I was asked to play music out - I never intended to become a DJ - and that’s where I’ve been for the last few years.«

RBMA: »And where are you from?«

Mala: »South London, a place called South Norwood.«

RBMA: »And how long have you been making music for?«

Mala: »I started making music about 1999/2000, mucking about with a mate who had Fruity Loops on his laptop. It was so messed up we couldn’t actually save anything on there, so we’d write music all night then record it onto tape and that would be the tune. Next day we’d do the same thing. It wasn’t until I got the programme Reason. When I got that it changed everything in my production, I found the translation of whatever was in my mind. I could quickly get it down and lay it out. As a producer, or anyone creative, sometimes you can be bogged down by the technical side of things, which can stop the flow of creation. For me, using Reason felt really natural. 2002 is when I decided to buy a good pair of studio monitors, because I was only using hi-fi ones before that. So that’s when I took it seriously.«

RBMA: »And when did you start doing it for a living?«

Mala: »I got made redundant. I was doing youth work for about four years. The problem with the government - a lot of governments - they set up these projects with false intentions, so they set up this workshop area where kids would come down and we’d teach them Logic and Reason. They fund it for a few years, then they take it away so you have to get funding for yourself. So that’s what happened, and I got made redundant last March and that’s when I decided to give this thing a go full time.«

RBMA: »So have you got anything current to give us an idea of where your head’s at right now?«

Mala: »Not current, but fairly recent (looks through records).«

(music: Mala – Pop Pop Epic / applause)

RBMA: »When was that made?«

Mala: »2005, but I only started playing it in the last eight months or so.«

RBMA: »Do you consider the music you make to be dubstep?«

Mala: »I don’t consider it anything a lot of the time. It’s not like I make something and then spend ages listening to it after it’s made. A lot of the time, when I’m writing stuff I have doubts about what I do, so I don’t call it dubstep anyway. But it’s called dubstep because of the needs of the media, and people generally, to put anything in a box with a label on a shelf.«

RBMA: »At the same time there does seem to be a scene of producers who have naturally gravitated towards each other. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being part of a movement as powerful as dubstep is at the moment?«

Mala: »The main advantage is bringing people together who are maybe like-minded in certain ways. Back in 2004 the handful of people who were doing things was very tight, so we used to see each other all the time. It was really positive, but there was also this sense of what dubstep was, when it was, what is it, or whatever. I think in people’s minds, maybe the listener and myself as a producer, you’re not confined to these limitations. But now dubstep seems to have become something, so if you can’t tick this box, that box and that box, then maybe it’s not dubstep. But I don’t know what it is anyway, so I just keep doing what I’m doing regardless.«

RBMA: »Well, it all seems to be around the 140 bpm mark.«

Mala: »Yeah, I think there’s always been a similar tempo, maybe it started a little bit slower, around 138. But 140 seems to be the set speed now. It makes it interesting working in one tempo, by manipulating space and sound and time you can make 140 sound sluggish, as Loefah does brilliantly, like on the half-step, or you can have something that’s more percussive. That makes something feel faster than 140.«

RBMA: »Have you got the Anti War Dub, talking of something percussive? Is it too early to play that one?«

Mala: »This is a funny one. I made it nine months after starting it. I started in 2004, I think I actually finished it that year; back then I was thinking of doing some album and this was going to be an interlude between tracks. It started with the bassline and Spen G’s voice: “We don’t want no war tonight.” Then about nine months later I turned it on to have a listen to it and the beat – ‘boom ska boom ska’ - just came to me.«

RBMA: »And this is on DMZ?«

Mala: »This is DMZ #7. We pressed a certain number, but I don’t ever want to repress it.«

(music: Digital Mystikz – Anti War Dub / applause)

RBMA: »Is that still a big tune for you everywhere?«

Mala: »It’s kind of crazy, the reaction I get when I play it sometimes. I’ve played it at a couple of recent shows but I hadn’t played it for a while before that. You’ve got to keep things moving, because sometimes I think I’m stuck playing the same set. I always find music has a life of its own once you put it in the public domain. But this track is a fusion of interesting and crazy memories.«

RBMA: »It’s been an interesting week. Obviously, we heard from Maurizio on Tuesday, we had the absolute dons, in terms of the lower end of frequencies, in yesterday; we’ve definitely been spoilt this week. Can you talk to me about the influence of dub on you, both as a human and as a musician?«

Mala: »My first experience of it was listening to jungle, which I think is the London dub - the techniques that a lot of the guys use with delays and reverb, and the space between the tracks. It wasn’t gnarly bass like a lot of it: there was space between the high frequencies and then there’s this gap between the sub-low frequencies. So I was growing up listening to jungle and hardcore between 1992-‘94, that was the year they made certain tunes that nobody’s gonna be able to recreate. Listening to those frequencies day in, day out, that was the music that changed my way of thinking about sound. Before that I was listening to people like Shabba Ranks, but when you listened to jungle, it was coming from a different place and it was totally related to the environment I was surrounded by. As a youngster that was a really good thing, so when I got to making music that’s just how I thought sound should be, I thought all things had this weighty low frequency. Listening to jungle, the sounds are so diverse, so you start listening to acid things or jazz, hip hop, whatever. I think a lot of my mind expansion came from listening to jungle.«

RBMA: »For me, I see a lot of similarities between the excitement and evolution of dubstep and what was happening in jungle. Are they both music that could only come from the town you live in?«

Mala: »I guess so, because that’s what happened. But I can listen to certain tunes by, say Coki, and totally understand where he’s coming from. London is what it is, it’s a melting pot for so many different things from around the world. Growing up, you were always around different cultures, which was a blessing because it allowed me to be open-minded about different peoples. Everything’s quite complicated, too, for some reason; the food’s not that good but it’s expensive and when you want something really good to eat, you have to pay a ridiculous amount for it. I didn’t come from a wealthy background or anything, my dad’s a painter/decorator and my mum’s a hairdresser, they worked hard to look after me and my brothers. So I always thought life, as much as it’s beautiful, it’s a real struggle a lot of the time. I think that’s why my sound is like it is – it’s a combination of that struggle and a freedom, a hope. Even though it’s quite dark, it’s not that evil or menacing dark, more just like life is dark in some places, not outwardly but inwardly.«

RBMA: »So when you began making music did you have loads of jungle to get out of your system?«

Mala: »Yeah, when we started writing on Fruity Loops, me and my friends Man Deep and Gary, who are sick jungle heads, we thought we could rejuvenate ’94 jungle. We’d chop up breaks and use them in Fruity Loops, but when I look at the music I was writing in the early stages, before anyone heard what I was doing, it was definitely in a similar vein – the frequencies, the mood, the melancholy vibe.«

RBMA: »Have you got anything from that ’94 era that blew your mind?«

Mala: »I’ve got a Tom And Jerry record.«

(music: Tom & Jerry – Say Goodbye / applause)

»These are the guys who do the 4 Hero stuff.«

RBMA: »That’s Dego and Mark.«

Mala: »On the Tom & Jerry label. I want to play you something else as well, which is Darren Jay and MC GQ at an old London dance called AWOL. This was in SW1, I think.«

RBMA: »Then it went to Ministry [Of Sound].«

Mala: »This was recorded live in the club, yeah?«

RBMA: »Yeah.«

(music: Darren Jay & MC GQ – Live At AWOL)

Mala: »’94 in London was all about jungle as far as I was concerned. All of the circle I grew up with, this is what we’d do and were told off at school for, because you’d have your Walkman in your blazer and your headphones going up your sleeve while you were supposed to be working. Then you’d get a clap on the back of your head with a book. Yeah, it was jungle, man.«

RBMA: »Jungle was very much about the dubplate and cutting tunes no one else had and getting DAT onto the plate. But your scene now is pretty much the only one I know which is so serious about cutting. When you can get CD-r’s and Serato and so on, why’s it so important?«

Mala: »It’s an important part of the process…«

RBMA: »Actually, does everyone know what an acetate is, a dubplate? It’s totally fine, I just need to know if people know what it is. Basically, about half the records down here are acetates, which are not vinyl.«

Mala: »It’s made from acetate. When we’ve finished making the music we take it to Transition, which is the mastering studio where a massive percentage of the people I know get their stuff cut and mastered. It gets put on a cutting lathe and I think the needle is made from diamond. While the CD or DAT is playing, it cuts the groove into acetate, which I’ll pass around, and from that I can play what I made in my studio on turntables, which is how I prefer to play music to myself and other people. I’ll pass both around so you can see the difference between the two.«

Participant: »How much does it cost to get a dubplate cut right now?«

Mala: »I think the price varies, and I’ve only ever used one place, so I’m probably not the best person to ask. But on a 10” dubplate, you’re probably looking at about £30 and for the 12” about £50.«

RBMA: »So when a blank CD costs about 5p and cutting two tunes onto a dubplate costs about £50, you’ve got to really want to do that. Is it something to do with the sound?«

Mala: »Cutting things onto dubplate always makes me have an objective mind about what I was doing, not having a fantasy that I’ve just made the best tune in the world, but really listening to what been done sonically. I had to be 100% comfortable, because even now it’s expensive to cut, so unless you’re a millionaire, you have to be certain.«

Participant: »How many times can you play it before it wears out?«

Mala: »There’s always this myth that you can only play it 10 times, but I’ve got tracks in here I’ve been playing on dubplate since 2005 and they still sound fine, maybe a bit crackly. What happens first is the higher frequencies start losing some of the clarity. I’ll pass this around, I’m sure you’ll all be careful (passes acetates around).«

RBMA: »Smells pretty good too.«

Mala: »Yeah, I used to love going into Transition on Friday night, smell the acetates. Do any of those smell? People are gonna think I’m a bit weird sniffing dubplates (laughter / sniffs the dubplate). Yeah, it’s got a smell. It’s nice, once you’ve cut one dubplate you’re set, you keep adding to your collection. I know it sounds expensive, but if you keep making that jump, cut yourself 10 tunes, or even 20 tunes on 10 dubs, the smell is gonna be nice. There’s nothing like the smell when you open your bag and you’ve got fresh dubs in there.«

RBMA: »Is it all about less is more, forcing yourself to make decisions about things you really want to hear in this age where you can have 20.000 songs at your fingertips or on Serato? Is it more about streamlining, taking it back to that, or is it a sound thing, about the way vinyl sounds? Or a cultural thing, taking it all the way back to the lineage?«

Mala: »I think it’s everything. I do prefer the sound of records or dubplates, obviously it’s debatable depending on opinion. But growing up with soundsystem culture, listening to Shaka play, Grooverider, Ray Keith, Kenny Ken, Mickey Finn, they were all playing dubplates. When it came to me to do my thing, I thought that’s how it should be done; there was nothing wrong with what they were doing back then. For me, it also goes back to the community thing. Me going to cut dubplates puts food on the plate for the mastering engineer and I’d rather everyone here have food to eat than me sit on my own and eat big myself. It’s important to keep those circles going, that’s how we all survive and co-exist in this world. If everyone’s their own individual island who doesn’t need anyone else, that causes problems. But coming back to the sound, I genuinely prefer it to the sound of the CD.«

RBMA: »One thing that’s noticeable about you is how extreme you are in controlling your music and where it ends up. For most of your music, until it makes it onto wax, the only place you can hear it is from you in a club. These days the thing is, ‘I’ve just made a tune. Maybe it hasn’t even be mixed, or it’s just been mixed, but I want to put it on the internet as soon as possible, I wanna get it out there to as many people as possible, get my name known to as many people as possible, to make as much noise to as many people as possible and maybe something will come of it’. Your approach is the exact opposite, you don’t give it to anyone or speak about it and the only way to hear it is to come to the dance.«

Mala: »It felt comfortable for me not to give out too much about my music. When we started making this music we didn’t expect anyone to like it, because that wasn’t the reason we were making it, we were doing it for personal reasons. When people started listening to it, it was great, we’d go down to FWD, the soundsystem there at Plastic People in London is phenomenal, so we’d go and hear our stuff in there. But I didn’t want to give someone a CD for them to listen to on their iPod or laptop speakers because a big part of what I do is the lower frequencies and that gels with a lot of the rest of the stuff going on. So it was really about people listening to the music the way I thought it should be heard, and also not being misrepresented, because everything has to be put in a box. But I didn’t want to be in a box, that’s why I set up our own record label and put on a dance, and why I used to run around all the record shops up and down the country distributing our records. At a time when no one had a name for it – people saying: “What is it? I don’t know where to put it.” People wanted to put it in with garage or house or drum ‘n’ bass. That’s not right for it, so it was really just about it being seen for what it is rather than being misinterpreted.«

RBMA: »Has that approach worked for you?«

Mala: »Everything in life has benefits and things that can stall your progression at the same time. But it works for me, that’s how I feel comfortable.«

RBMA: »But in terms of building up a scene and a club night and a label, that definitely is a strong approach to create an identity.«

Mala: »It was about people coming out to the dance, about people coming together to feel that energy that you can’t feel chatting to someone on AIM or Skype; when you’re having a real conversation with people, that’s what’s going on. For me to play the music I play, it was always about people coming to hear the music rather than it being recorded. We record the DMZ sets, I’ve got all the DMZ sets recorded since 2005.«

RBMA: »Let’s go back to FWD. Tell people what it is and what influence it had on you as a producer.«

Mala: »FWD was heavy. For anyone who used to go down to Plastic People…«

RBMA: »Was it at Velvet Rooms?«

Mala: »I never went to Velvet Rooms, I only went when it was at Plastic People and I think that was in February 2004. I think they did one thing at Fabric, but I think it was more dark garage then. I’ve known Hatcha for a long time…«

RBMA: »Who’s Hatcha?«

Mala: »Hatcha is a guy who in my opinion has been instrumental in the development of this dubstep scene. At a time when there was nothing really going on he was cutting dubplates by Benga and Skream when they were 15. He was the first person to play our stuff – mine, Coki’s, Loefah’s – and he used to work for a label called Big Apple, which was based inside Big Apple record shop, which has a whole history with the jungle scene and other music. Hatcha started playing the sound at FWD, and it was dubplates, dark room, big soundsystem. None of this fancy nonsense we see now where they spend a million pounds on making the place look nice, but when it comes to cutting the record on the turntable it’s almost embarrassing to ask people to pay to listen to it. Plastic People’s got it perfect in that spot. Myself, Benga, Kode 9, Skream, we’d all listen to what we were making, and on a system that big, in an enclosed space, you really are exposed to your productions. You’d go in there, listen to it, and you can tell instantly what’s wrong with it. So you’d take it back, tweak it, then wait another month for Hatcha to play it again. At that time there was a lot of breakbeat-y garage getting played. That wasn’t my thing and I guess that’s one of the reasons we started DMZ. We were making our music and wanted to hear it out on a big soundsystem, and luckily a venue came up close to where I live, we all live in South London, which was Third Bass. We got told about it on the Monday, we went to see it on the Wednesday – this was me and Loefah - on Friday we went back with Coki, listened to the soundsystem and we knew it was perfect. A small room, big soundsystem, no fancy lights or nothing. Friday night we went home after paying the deposit, designed the flyer, stuck it on the internet and three weeks later the first DMZ happened, which was March 2005.«

RBMA: »At this point we should introduce who Loefah and Coki are and how you came to work with them.«

Mala: »I’ve known Coki since I was about 11, and Pokes as well because we went to the same school and were always listening to music and playing football together. Loefah I met when I was about 15 or 16 through some other friends, but we just had this common thing, which was music, and through that you discover that you may be like-minded in other ways. To me, what we’ve done feels like an extension of our bedrooms, because we used to meet up and jam and make jungle tapes together.«

RBMA: »So DMZ was started by the three of you?«

Mala: »That’s right.«

RBMA: »And it was almost as much a reaction to hearing music you didn’t like, and wanting to put on a dance where you could hear only the music that was right for you?«

Mala: »Yeah, there was a time in London where you could go out every night and there was good stuff happening. Then I couldn’t go out because everything felt stale, so I suppose it was just a reaction to the circumstances of life.«

RBMA: »And this coincided with the first Digital Mystikz release.«

Mala: »The first release was in 2003 on Big Apple Records, after Hatcha started playing a track called Pathways that I made.«

RBMA: »Have you got something from that era?«

Mala: »Yeah, but it’s kind of terrible, though (laughs). I can play something early.«

RBMA: »So DMZ is a label and a club night and Digital Mystikz is you and Coki producing together?«

Mala: »Yeah, it’s kind of mad because only really in the early stages did we produce together. Then I guess the circumstances of your life change – people have families, work commitments. We’ve always had our own studios, but when we listened to our music together, we always thought our sound was Digital Mystikz, because it was digital but it had that mystical tone to it too. So Digital Mystikz. We were called something else before that - we called ourselves Mawo, because I’m Mala and Coki’s name, that no one calls him but us, is Wobbler, which goes back a long way to a story involving drinking a lot of Guinness. So Mala and Wobbler - Mawo. I looked on the internet to see if the name had been taken - this was before we signed to Big Apple - because we didn’t know what to put on the record, and I think it was some trance producer, so we thought, ‘No, forget that’. Then we were listening to Rinse FM - we used to sit at the end of the road smoking a spliff and listening to Hatcha on Rinse FM – and we were talking about what we were doing and decided we liked digital mystical stuff, so that’s how the name came about. I’ve got some early stuff… oh no, who’s got the dubs (delay while records are returned)? This was on the first DMZ release, so this was probably made in 2003 because the first record came out in 2004. And this is called Chainba Music.«

(music: DMZ – Chainba Music / applause)

»I’ll play you a couple of the things I have from that time that were done by Coki and Loefah, so you can see how we all fit together with our sound.«

RBMA: »While we’re waiting for that; tonight, Step It Dub. Mr Pritchard’s going to play, Cardopusher is going to play, Mushug is going to play and, of course, Mala’s going to play as well. That’s at the Macarena and it only holds about 80 people. We represent about half the club so get there early, it’s going to be very messy.«

Mala: »This is an early tune by Coki, from 2004. It came out on the second DMZ release and it’s called Jah Fire.«

(music: Coki (as Digital Mystikz) – Jah Fire / applause)

»That was by Coki, I’ll flip it over and play you a tune by Loefah, which in my opinion changed a lot of what was going on in dubstep. It was more percussive in 2003, but Loefah came in and took out everything but left in the basic elements. He layered them in such a way the sound became more physical. It was physical already but this changed a lot of things.«

(music: Loefah – Horror Show)

»That’s Loefah in 2004, making people faint by the speakers. I’ve seen it a couple of times up in Leeds, a couple of people passed out by the speaker.«

RBMA: »What was the dance you did in Leeds?«

Mala: »It was really lucky, in 2005 I went up to a club called SubDub, which has been running for 11 years in Leeds by a guy called Simon Scott and Iration Steppers. Iration Steppers have their own soundsystem, which Mark Iration has built, and which has been around for about 15 years. In my opinion it’s one of the best places to play in the world, because you never have to worry about the sound. It’s not a fancy place, it’s always dark, and the vibe is really good up there. I played there in 2005, not with any intention or expectation, just to see how things were going in the North of England, because no one had been up there yet.«

RBMA: »They play straight up steppers?«

Mala: »Yeah, it’s all roots and rockers and digidub.«

RBMA: »So how does the more conservative steppers dub crowd take to what you do? Or is it a natural progression?«

Mala: »It was quite interesting; at first they weren’t really too into it, but they were more into the ones that are more dub-orientated. With dubstep, some things are more electro or techno-based, but they were definitely into the ones with a more dubby feeling. But it’s been really nice, we’ve been putting on dances up there for over two years now and in that time Mark has constantly EQed the soundsystem to finally get it to sound perfect for when we play. It’s been a blessing to play in Leeds - if you go there, it changes you to hear music played on a system of that calibre.«

RBMA: »Talking of tweaking soundsystems and EQs and people passing out in front of the speakers, I’m sure people in this room will want me to talk about technical stuff. What do you use if you want to start getting somewhere close to making the bass you hear on those records?«

Mala: »I used to use Reason to make my basslines and I’d use a subtractor and I’d start off with a straight sinewave. I know some people had a squarewave or a second oscillator, but I had a straight sine, then with a bit of filtering and EQing and maybe a bit of reverb. Sometimes with basslines it’s a lot like driving a car and you’ve got that biting point, it’s finding that point there where the sound is ready to come up. That’s the spot I look for, depending on what bass note you’re going to play.«

RBMA: »I overheard Loefah talk to someone for about half an hour about where you low-cut. How crucial is that?«

Mala: »Depends on what frequencies are happening at the lower level.«

RBMA: »What does it mean exactly?«

Mala: »When you low-cut you’re cutting off all the lower frequencies, so although to your ear you may actually be hearing certain frequencies, there are others coming out of the speaker that you can’t hear but are still creating vibration. I guess if some of these loose frequencies are still in there, it can make the bassline sound flabby, not much tightness or control. It’s all about controlling the scope within the dynamic of frequencies. When you go into it, it’s ridiculous - we heard the stuff that Russ was doing the other day… the levels, man. You can go in as deep as you want to go, if you want to take the time.«

RBMA: »Do you feel you’ve never heard your record until you hear it on a proper set? Is it hard to get a full range frequency spectrum when you’re making stuff in your studio?«

Mala: »No, I don’t think so. I bought some nice monitors back in 2002 and I upgraded them about a year ago, so I’ve got a really nice sound in my studio to reference the music.«

RBMA: »I think it’s fair to say you represent the deeper side within this music. What’s the name of your own label?«

Mala: »I set up another label called Deep Medi. I was getting sent so much from around the world and I found myself in a position where you can go into a record shop and people are waiting to hear the records you’re bringing in. It goes back to the youth work I used to do. A lot of record labels don’t really concentrate on developing somebody, they just want a quick turnaround, but certain things in life take time. I thought I’d try to help bring other people’s music that I was into FWD. That’s why I set up the label. I have some guys from London signed, a guy called Goth-Trad from Japan, I’ve just signed some guys from New Zealand. Again, it’s about people from different parts of the world coming together to create something positive.«

RBMA: »And how do you run the label? Do you run it in a traditional way?«

Mala: »I maybe a bit sloppy, I think a traditional way is more organised than I am. I’m quite spontaneous I don’t have a rota saying this track’s gonna come out this month. I don’t do mail outs or promos, I’m not trying to sell anybody anything, I just put the music in the shop when it’s ready. I don’t feel I need to tell everyone about it, I don’t think it’s something everyone wants to hear. I just think sometimes in life it’s nice to go on a bit of an adventure and discover something for yourself, it can give it a bit more meaning.«

RBMA: »Have you got anything from the label to play us?«

Mala: »Yeah, I can play something.«

RBMA: »What does Deep Medi mean anyway?«

Mala: »It can mean anything you want it to, really. I don’t make dance music as such, music was always more of a meditation to take me away from the stresses of daily life. That’s why with the slogan and the flyer, we don’t put ‘dubstep’ on there, we just put ‘meditate on bass rate’, because that’s what we used to do. I’ll put this on. Have any of the guys at the back got a record cleaner?«

RBMA: »I doubt it, maybe there’s one upstairs.«

Mala: »Don’t worry (cleans record with T-shirt). I think it’s important to (inaudible) and don’t be limited by what other people’s descriptions of what it should be. That’s why I do this Deep Medi thing. This is a guy called Silkie, a guy from Hammersmith in West London. I think he’s an amazing producer, and an amazing character too.«

(music: Silkie – Poltigeist / applause)

»Big up, Silkie.«

RBMA: »The correlation between the music you make and straight up reggae and dub is so evident. It’s interesting you say you got into them from listening to jungle. You didn’t have reggae around you when you were young?«

Mala: »I had a lot of music around me, so I was always open.. You go into the corner shop and there might be an Indian guy listening to his tapes or something off a film. Then you might get in a taxi and it’s an African taxi driver and he’s playing a tape from Africa. I remember growing up I was always listening to lots of different sounds. Listening to dub and reggae was definitely something that [seemed natural] once I’d been listening to jungle. Obviously, I listened to Bob Marley because that’s in everyone’s household, but learning and hearing about stuff like Burning Spear and Augustus Pablo happened a bit later, maybe around ’97/’98. I listened to a lot of Sizzla, and one thing I like about music, when people ask what inspired you, it’s not always the sound itself, it might be the attitude or a way of thinking that makes you perceive something differently. At that time, listening to a lot of Sizzla made me stand up straighter as a person within myself.«

RBMA: »Why?«

Mala: »Just a lot of the things he was talking about. Rastas seem to have a very clear vision of what they’re talking about, and when I was 17, I could definitely relate to the whole thing about being against the system and Babylon. You can look at it in many ways, but when you look at the world, certain things are clearly obvious as problems. It made me look at the world with a different eye, that I’m not just going to accept what’s going on, but question it and enquire into it.«

RBMA: »So apart from jungle and reggae, were you into house and techno?«

Mala: »Yes, house, Larry Heard, Masters At Work. There’s so much music I like, but half of it I don’t know the names of the tracks or the producers. I was always like that at school, I’m more of a feeling person, I don’t need to know the name of everything or a be human encyclopaedia for music genres, I don’t care about that.«

RBMA: »What do you make of the noisier end of dubstep? There’s been a bit of a trend in the last couple of years, with maybe some of the younger producers making more of a ravey dubstep.«

Mala: »Maybe the fact that they are younger means they have a different kind of energy. For me, when I started making my music, you look at this stuff that has ridiculous amounts of energy - when you look at some of the breaks they were using in jungle, and we used to go down Metalheadz and listen to what they were tearing out down there. So when I got to this point it was about slowing things down, not build-ups, stripping it down. Everything goes around in circles so it was inevitable that this genre dubstep was going to go many different ways, and it might not always be a direction you like. There’s noise and there’s noise. There’s something done well and you can tell that it’s done well; then there’s something which you can tell is an imitation. You’ve got the replica kit on instead of the kit with the sponsor’s name.«

RBMA: »At the other extreme, is a record of yours I actually heard someone else play, the Extra Deep one.«

Mala: »I don’t know if it’s the Extra Deep one, I think that’s just your mind.«

RBMA: »It might have been, but I’d like to hear that one anyway.«

Mala: »OK, or do you wanna hear some more ‘up’ things first? Because I want to play you something that’s noisy, but it’s serious, it’s not the replica. Coki, the guy still fascinates me even after knowing him all this time. I’m going to play a track called Haunted, which I think he did in 2005, and we were sitting in my car at the end of the road and he said: “Have a listen to this tune I’ve done, it ain’t finished yet but it will be finished next week.” DMZ was next week. And he played me this tune and I just started cracking up laughing because I instantly knew what it was going to do to people’s minds. I think the track was very instrumental in what was going to happen later on in this dubstep thing – I hate saying that word. Here’s a question: why does the media always have to put things in boxes? Can we talk about it, why does that have to be? Is there any benefit from that? (inaudible replies from participants) Easier in what sense, in the sense you can pick up The Sun and go: “This is what is going on in the world”?«

Participant: »But most people live on the surface and don’t want to look into anything, they just want to know it’s cool. They don’t really care about why it sounds like that or why it’s called that. They’re told it’s cool, so (shrugs).«

Mala: »I don’t know the answer, so I’m quite interested to know why. (another inaudible question) Here you go, let me give you this microphone.«

Participant: »All I know is in Israel – I’m from Israel - dubstep is really big now. There are lots of DJs who came and there’s a huge trend following it and lots of people are spewing the word ‘dubstep’. Dubstep this, dubstep that – I’m sick of it. It’s not because of the music, it’s because of the word itself. But why do people give names to these genres? I was thinking about this with the word ‘wonky’ that turned out recently that defined a style of hip hop beatmaking. People are taking about a style of music, and instead of saying that style of music – “the style with the bass thing” – they just say “dubstep”.«

Mala: »I think it creates limitations and that’s what I’m fundamentally against.«

Participant: »People think it creates this set of rules, but it doesn’t.«

Mala: »Nothing has to have rules.«

Participant: »Hey, we met yesterday. You run the label and you just press dubplates? You don’t make wax for people to buy?«

Mala: »There are records for people to buy in shops, we have distribution that covers worldwide, but we’re not really focused on mp3s and CDs. There are a few things available but that’s it.«

Participant: »Do you try to release everything on wax, or are there things that you just put on acetate?«

Mala: »There are some things we’ve made on dubplate that won’t come out.«

Participant: »How do you keep the label going without putting everything out so you can make money?«

Mala: »I’m not really trying to make money, so the number of records I put out in a year is largely irrelevant.«

Participant: »But you pay £50 a dubplate, it’s not cheap.«

Mala: »No, it’s not cheap, but that’s the overtime I worked when I was working at a debt recovery agency or Vodaphone or wherever. You put in the overtime to cut the dubplate so you can go and play. It comes down to the individual reasons for why you do something. For me, it was so I could share sound the way I thought was best for people to hear it.«

Participant: »You’ve got a label and you want people to hear your music, so you must be a self-sustained business to keep afloat so you don’t have to have two jobs – one at your label and one at wherever so you can support your label.«

Mala: »We’ve released a healthy number of records over the last few years, we’re still at a very early stage in the business. We’ve just managed to get by.«

RBMA: »This record is available to listen to and to buy?«

Mala: »No, you can’t buy it anymore, unless you find it on eBay, but this one is DMZ 7 and altogether we sold 2-3.000. We did one repress and that’s where it’s gonna stop. This is Coki, a track called Haunted.«

(music: Coki (as Digital Mystikz) – Haunted)

RBMA: »So how did that change things?«

Mala: »It changed things because of the effect it had when it first got played. I remember playing it at DMZ and it got pull-up four times, to the extent that the last time I didn’t want to put it back on, I just wanted to smash it over my head because the energy was ridiculous. I think with Coki’s line of work you can see how that evolved – you can see a timeline of how he was working towards this.«

RBMA: »Have you got Tortured?«

Mala: »I don’t think I’ve got Tortured on me, I might have it still (examines computer). No, this is another track by Coki from a year later called All Of A Sudden.«

(music: Coki - All Of A Sudden)

»These tunes were made a time when these were the only tunes in the set that would sound this way. Now, you can go to a dance and there are many versions of this kind of thing going on, which is fine. (looks through record bag) I should play the last one to show where Coki is at lately. This is his latest on DMZ, called Spongebob.«

(music: Coki – Spongebob / applause)

RBMA: »So can we hear one of your tunes now?«

(music: Mala – Living Different / applause)

»What’s that called?«

Mala: »Living Different.«

RBMA: »For anyone coming to London who wants to see DMZ, where are you currently?«

Mala: »Still at Black Mass in Brixton. We do them every other month, we like to have that gap in between. It’s generally the first Saturday of every other month.«

RBMA: »And you’re travelling a lot at the moment?«

Mala: »Yeah, I am. I say it like it’s a problem. For the last year-and-a-half I’ve probably had about six weekends without a gig, which is great, but like everything in life, there are two sides. When you’re doing something, something else gets neglected. It’s a constant struggle to keep things balanced.«

RBMA: »And when you’re playing a tune as deep as that, how does that go down?«

Mala: »I remember when I first played it in New Zealand and it really sounded different from most of the set. Sometimes I like starting with it, sometimes it’s nice to play it in the middle of the set when things have been up for a while, to play something a little more grounded. I might play something else on that low-key vibe.«

RBMA: »And what’s the international scene like?«

Mala: »It’s really interesting when you travel just to check out other people’s cultures and see how people get down to what you do. I don’t know if it’s just where you live people have all the attachments and are just more narrow-minded, but I find when I play abroad people are more open. In London they’re more specific, more picky maybe, just because they’ve got so many events to choose from. I only like playing at DMZ in London, and FWD, nowhere else in London, I don’t really like playing there.«

RBMA: »Talking of FWD, have you got Lean Forward? You’ve got to play that. Hope you don’t mind listening to a lot of music today.«

Mala: »This is DMZ 12. Most of these tracks were made a year before on dubplate. I find the dubplates are like A&R men, they do all the work out in the field. After a period of time it makes sense to put something out, that’s how I've always done it: I try to do things that feel right, that feel natural.«

(music: Mala – Lean Forward / applause)

RBMA: »Time to open it out to the floor. Are there any questions? Microphone, please.«

Participant: »When you said you’re not really trying to make money out of music, do you sometimes feel that when you try not to make money, that’s when you actually do make money?«

Mala: »It’s funny how things work out.«

Participant: »The more integrity you put into it, the more you stick to what you believe in, the more people eventually will come ‘round to you. Then you make more money than if you’d gone with a big label in the first place.«

Mala: »I don’t know, I can only speak about what I’ve done. For me, it was more the right place, right time and right circumstances that led me to where I am now, not a conscious decision not to make money. Obviously, we all want to make money, we need food to put on the table. But that wasn’t a meditation on why I started making music, because music started long before I began making it for myself. It’s really just an extension of going deep into what I’m into, the way I like sound to be made and played. That’s why I do what I do, not because I’m not trying to make money.«

Participant: »Yeah, obviously dubstep is the in thing at the moment, so have you had the more commercial people get involved?«

Mala: »I don’t think I have, just because over the years I’ve been quite open about my opinion of pressing things on major labels. So maybe they’ve got my vibe. I haven’t been approached by any major labels. But just through being there something’s happened. I got in from work in 2006 and found an email in my in-box from Universal Pictures who wanted to use my tracks for a Hollywood film. So it can happen, going many places where you least expect it. Over the years I’ve met people who I’ve respected as musicians and it’s all been through sound. When you put something that’s personal to you in the public domain, it has a life of its own. Where it takes you, you can never know.«

RBMA: »Please join me in saying thank you Mala.«

(standing ovation)