Eyeballin': The Cornerstone Grime Tracks of Plastician's Decadence Tour

Croydon native Plastician has been in this DJ/producer game from whence garage and grime begat dubstep - or vice versa, depending on how your perception of that particular bass music lineage blossomed. His sets have been one of the constants, standing tall for all the dark room energy he got hooked on in the beginning. It’s a concept he’ll be exploring further when he brings his Decadence tour to Room One a week on Friday, so, in anticipation we caught up with him to feel the theme out: “Basically, Decadence is a two to 2 and a half hour set that documents the important tracks from the last 10 years in UK bass music,” he offers in summation. “Basically it's like a sonic journey of my own growth from the roots up to what I'm playing today. It starts with UK garage, moving into that kinda So Solid/Pay As U Go era, before moving into the roots of grime and dubstep. Eventually it goes through the golden eras of the genres and finishes up with present day, with a look to the future to close out the set.” Using cornerstone tracks of the set to help better illustrate the concept and a little bit of his history we asked him to explain the idea behind the tour in a bit more detail… JME & D Double E - Serious Thugs This is like 2004 right? It sounds so raw, like a mixture of g-funk and UK and then that chorus… so simple but effective. Do JME & D Double mark a particular time for you? Like how did you first come into contact with grime? Yep, it’s 2004. I think I picked this one out because it is a proper "if you were there, you know" kinda track. It's rarely heard out and about anymore - even in classic grime sets it seems to get overlooked so I wanted to spin it in the set. It definitely reminds me of the early days of hearing grime sets on the radio proper, even the recording quality and effects on the vocal sound raw, like a home recording, which was what grime was all about back then - young kids wanting to make music, but with home recording equipment and cracked software. Big E D - Frontline (Terror Danjah mix) Terror’s production always sounds so recognisable... did he have an influence on the way you made your own music? A little yeah, I remember experimenting with square waves in synth lines as opposed to bass lines after hearing a lot of Terror's production. This is my favourite track of his, I love the short intro and the really full sound of it. There's so much going on, yet it's so simple. It’s really hard to get that balance right in production… Wiley - New Era Wiley’s always had this almost cartoonish personality in his rhymes. I don’t think there’s anyone who’s really been able to do that as well as him. He’s also like a bonafide beat genius… what made you pick ‘New Era’ out of all of his old tunes? Again, it’s kinda just because it would be so easy to mention ‘Eskimo’, ‘Avalanche’, ‘Ice Rink’ etc when you mention Wiley. This track for me was like the first batch of new styles from Wiley, it kinda marks the transition from Wiley's simplified eski sound, and into him kind of finding himself as an artist who could do whatever he wanted to do. I have good memories of dropping this track over the years so I had to include it. Dizzee Rascal - Strings Hoe One of Dizzee’s realest instrumentals... In essence it’s really fucking simple, that string sample and then the beat but I guess that’s the trick innit, spotting a sample that can so perfectly evoke that same hype on its own… Do you ever really sample like this? I mean I read about your early Fruity based tunes having no/little effects on them in the mixdowns etc… Did Dizzee influence your own production in a way? Dizzee definitely influenced a lot of my early productions - particularly the 8 bar stuff from those times. I think back then we used to all search for the killer samples and loops, and you would tend to build a track around the sample. That’s how ‘Japan’ happened really. I had a drum loop I had written, and then searched for a big sample to sit on it, and happened to see House of Flying Daggers which gave me the idea to sample the lovers theme from it. Plasticman - Cha Why did you choose this one out of all your own material? I mean I can draw a line from the beats you’ve selected to this one (the way it’s just a riddim; raw, driving and just open for vocalling etc) but what does it mean to you in the context of Decadence? To a lot of people who've listened to me from those times they will remember ‘Cha’ dropping in a club. Of all my tunes it's been the one that had the biggest crowd reaction at the time in terms of the raw energy it brought to a set. I guess its similar back then to how nowadays something like ‘Bass Cannon’, or ‘Sweet Shop’ drew a huge reaction in a club when they were being dropped for the first time… In the context of Decadence this track appears in that grey area period where my own production was starting to cross lines between grime and dubstep around 2003/2004. I started building bass heavy grime tracks so I could drop them at FWD>>, and as we leaked into the larger clubs I needed weight to fill the room so the bass was really important. I think that part of the set is my favourite part as there's no proper direction, it's all a jumbled bag of big ideas from young producers who don't really know what we're doing - we just knew we wanted to make bass music. There are so many huge tracks from that era and that part of the Decadance set is really heavy hitting and anthemic that if the punters were there when they were dropped at the time, they really will appreciate hearing a lot of the tunes again. Catch Plastician performing Decadence in Room One on Friday 16th November. Tickets & info here.