One of the dubstep mixes that I have been caning for the last couple of month’s is Plastician’s May 2009 mix, which you can download here.
Plastician (or Plasticman as he used to be known back when I interviewed him in 2005) is one of the leading dj’s in dubstep/grime, having long straddled the borderlands between the two genres, although these days he is probably better known as a dubstep dj (dubstep having long since outsripped grime in global popularity). Besides being an excellent producer, he is one of the best dj’s around, with an absolutely razor-sharp mixing style, which he deploys to good effect in this mix. If you are looking for other examples of his mixing prowess, his disc on the Rinsessions compilation remains for me pretty much the finest grime mix cd I’ve heard, and his Rinse 06 mix cd was a wicked combination of dubstep and grime.
Here’s the tracklisting (taken from the DubstepForum post):
Footsie – Big Band
RX feat. Chae Hawk – Malt Liquor
Crissy Criss – Fackin Ell
Jakes – In Tha Place Ta B VIP
12th Planet – Sixty Eight
Jakes – Rock Tha Bells VIP
Nero – Act Like You Know (Dubstep Mix)
Seven – Siren VIP
Noah D – Serious
++Gracious Nappa Man K – Migraine Skank (Acapella)++
Benga – Buzzin
Joker & Ginz – Re-up
++Tempa T – Next Hype (Acapella)++
Tempa T – Next Hype (Plastician Remix)
Chase & Status – Mad House
Chase & Status – Saxon
Chase & Status feat. Murs – Mad House
Crissy Criss – Don’t Be Scared
Plastician – Retro
La Roux – In For The Kill (Skream’s Lets Get Ravey Remix)
Dead Prez – Hip Hop (Instrumental)
Trolley Snatcha – The Future
Doctor – Tek Your Time
Skream – Metal Mouth
The Streets – Blinded By The Lights (Nero Remix)
Jakes & Joker – 3K Lane VIP
Crissy Criss – Kick Snare
Look at that.
I mean really.
As collections of big tunes go, can you argue with that?
Some of the absolute biggest tunes of 2009 are on there, including the remix of ‘Blinded By The Lights’, ‘Saxon’, ‘Kick Snare’, and Skream’s absolutely enormous remix of ‘In For The Kill’ (which went gold not long ago).
Obviously, the purists who hate wobble and want only to listen to introspective smokers’ tunes will loathe it, but I love cartoon bassline antics, so I think it’s great! What’s cool about this mix, though, is that even though a lot of it is banging, he has structured the mix so that it is not just one dark tune after another, but that it flows through different moods, whilst still maintaining a good energy.
What’s nice about this mix is that, even though it was done in May it still sounds fresh, since so many of the tunes featured are both (1) excellent, and (2) still unavailable. Some, like ‘Serious’, are only just being released now, whilst others, like Skream’s banging ‘Metal Mouth’ and Plastician’s own ravetastic ‘Retro’, are still unavailable, whilst others, like the various Jakes VIPs, are unlikely to ever see the light of day. The only low point is ‘Tek Your Time’, which is a good tune ruined by an autotuned vocal (I hate autotune, does it ever not suck?). Oh, and the 3K Lane VIP is not a patch on the original.
Besides those two tunes, it’s great!
The mixing is particularly on point, with excellent use of acapellas, and a very clever mix of the two Chase & Status tunes, switching from the instrumental of ‘Mad House’ to ‘Saxon’ and back to the vocal version of ‘Mad House’ (which is itself a rare example of an American rap sounding good over dubstep beats), and an excellent layering of the vocal from ‘In For The Kill’ over an old Dead Prez instrumental before the utterly banging ‘The Future’ by Trolley Snatcha is wheeled out.
Wicked mix.
In fact, I liked it so much I made a cue file, which can be downloaded here.
More info:
Plastician on Twitter
Beg to Differ (artist album)
Rinse 06 (mix compilation)