PLASTICIAN
Photo by Alex Surguladze
Interview by Sam Supa
How is Plastician doing at this point in time? What’s up with Plastician?
I’m all good, been busy lately. Off to Dublin today and then Russia on Saturday, with a couple of London gigs in between.
After finally releasing your album Beg To Differ, how has it been received?
Yeah, it’s been recieved really well – digital sales have really surprised me, it’s been selling amazingly online. I thought the CD sales would outweigh the MP3, but I was wrong. Still looking forward to releasing a few bits on wax soon as well, there’s always a demand for vinyl in our scene.
Seems like you are worldwide, playing all over. Do you enjoy traveling?
I enjoy the sightseeing and the mingling with persons of other cultures but it really does take the fun out of airports!!! I’ve taken a recent dislike (call it hatred) for indirect flights. There is nothing worse than enduring a 4 hour flight only to be told there’s a 5 hour wait before your next 6 hour leg of the flight. Once you’re on a plane you just want to get to your destination, all the waiting around is just stupid.
What are a few of your most recent memorable moments on the road?
So many come to mind! The last major moment I can think of would be the crowd rushing the stage in Dublin. Skream and I performed a 3 hour back to back, necking a litre of vodka and about 10 beers in the process. At one point Skream got on the mic and invited people to rave on stage – within seconds there were about 50 to 100 people on the stage jumping and cheering. Two girls got up on a foldable table which was supporting our record bags and stuff at the time. Needless to say it was struggling to hold everything up and the two girls fell through the table like a scene from WWF!!! There’s actually footage of the stage rushing on Youtube – it captures the 2 or 3 minutes of madness pretty well…
What American city have you enjoyed the most?
I think my favourite gigs to date have been in Miami at the Winter Music Conference, and more recently my gig in Los Angeles for Smog’s 2 year anniversary. It’s really hard to choose between those two right now – amazing vibes at both. I don’t think you can do a bad gig in the States though. Wherever you go, people seem to be excited to have you over from the UK, and the whole city seems to turn out for it.
What do you think are the main differences between the UK and American Dubstep scenes?
I don’t see a great difference anymore, and it’s one of the reasons the sound is becoming so big globally. Most of the States and some countries in Europe have really good close knit communities, helping each other out to put on good shows, release records and generally get things moving. That’s pretty much the same over here as well. The only difference is in the UK we have a lot of the headliners still residing here, but the lines are blurring rapidly. As fast as the scene is moving, there are huge artists popping up all over the globe. It’s already started happening now that artists from overseas are headlining nights over here, and I can see it happening more frequently in the next year.
Do you think doing a radio show is important as an established DJ/Producer? Do you enjoy it?
I enjoy it thoroughly – doing the Rinse show with Nomad, who’s been a good mate of mine even before I was doing music, is always good fun. I also think it’s highly important. Playing out regularly is definitely down to the fact people can check what I’m playing on a weekly basis, and I often get people talking to me about the radio show at my gigs, so you know there are a lot of dedicated listeners out there who will check for you when you’re spinning in their town.
At what point did you stop cutting plates and start using Serato?
I bought Serato whilst touring the States with Jamie Vex’d back in 2005 I think. It may have been 2004 actually. I can’t remember but it’s been a long time now. At the time I was starting to play out a lot more and wanted to see if I could make a small living from just doing music, so cutting out my average spending of £180 a month on dubplates seemed like the first step towards doing that.
What do you think about the heated vinyl versus digital debate?
I think it’s getting a bit tired now. I love spinning vinyl the same as most die hard vinyl fans do, but using Serato opens up a whole new realm of capabilities for me personally, without taking the fun of using the 1210’s away. Spinning accapellas and double dropping tunes has become a trademark in my sets – things like this would not be easy to do if I were spinning regular vinyl, and I’m not a massive fan of CDJ’s. I can easily drop over 60 tracks in 60 minutes using Serato – I do it on a regular basis. This would not be possible using regular vinyl unless I had 4 arms and 4 turntables, and even then it would be some feat! Obviously there are arguments in vinyl’s favour as well though – sound quality is much warmer and this helps when playing the big rigs. Also the fact that everything has been mastered to ensure tracks sound their best. I still carry some tracks on vinyl when I play out, but I really enjoy using Serato and it compliments my DJ style – especially given that I play both Grime and Dubstep – it just means my record collection is almost bottomless when playing out.
What more can we expect production wise from you in the near future?
The Kosheen remix has just landed on wax, after that expect stuff to drop early 2009 on Terrorhythm such as Magma and Elixir, which you can hear clips of on my Myspace. Also sending out some stuff to a few other labels, as there is so much stuff here which needs to see light of day!!!
*BIG UP*
Sam Supa
…all the listeners to my Rinse show on Mondays, people who are buying my releases and supporting the movement, and everyone who’s been there from the start – the Big Apple days!!! They know who they are, I just hate listing them, cause I always leave people out!!! Also, all of the promoters who’ve been kind enough to give me the opportunity to show the people of their cities what I’m all about!
