Interview: Caspa & Rusko (Fact Magazine, 2007)
I know it’s still weeks until Santa heads for the chimneys, but it’s snowing here and that’s all the reason I need to get out the brandy and mistletoe. So if all you want this Christmas is for that one rich relative to finally pop their clogs and sort you and your immediate out with a real Yuletide haul, then you could do much worse than getting Caspa and Rusko over for dinner on the 25th.
They won’t intentionally kill anyone (so long as nobody challenges Caspa at Street Fighter II) but they’ll hopefully throw on their Fabric Live mix CD; a seventy minute slab of dubstep action that’s more subtle than people would have you believe, but still contains sub-bass potent enough to duppy your grandma off to the hospital morgue before the New Year’s in. FACT caught up with the holiday hitmen in the midst of their press day at Fabric’s offices to talk life, death and Riko.
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So has doing press all day got boring yet?
R: Nah it’s cool; we’ve got some people who don’t know anything about dubstep, we’ve got one girl who I actually know really well who was asking me quite personal questions, so it’s varied, you know?
What sort of personal questions should I be asking?
R: She was asking me about Phil Collins songs because she knows I like him; she was trying to embarrass me basically…
I know Slix from Ruff Sqwad is a Phil Collins fan, so you’re in good company…
C: Really?
R: That’s good. She was doing the interview for RWD Magazine, so I was trying to appear all cool, you know?
So you’re the first dubsteppers to do a FabricLive mix, why do you think they went with you as opposed to someone like Skream or Digital Mystikz who might be seen as more of a safe bet?
C: Because they love us, that’s why!
R: They do, yeah, that’s it. They do our publishing, don’t they?
C: Yeah, me and Rusko signed our publishing over to them this year, so we linked up with them that way. We’ve been working alongside their other artists like the Scratch Perverts and Claude Vonstroke; we’ve done a few remixes for them.
R: We’ve been swapping remixes and tunes and supporting each other, and sort of getting in with the family in the last six months…
C: And they’ve seen how we’ve been getting quite a bit of attention in the scene itself, and they like what we do; they know we’re really passionate about what we do and that we’ve got a lot of energy in our sets and in our music.
Other than Fabric, what are your favourite raves to play at?
R: Sub Dub; I’m going back up there next month, and New Year’s as well…
C: I don’t play at too many raves over and over; I’ve played FWD>> about four times which has been pretty cool; it’s been a bit random each time with all the new people going there and that, but I don’t have a favourite rave. The best thing is playing your music to people who don’t know what you’re about and who’ve never heard you before, because they have no expectations.
R: Which is why Fabric is perfect.
C: Exactly. I played in Israel two weeks ago to about 1300 people, so to play there and have people be like ‘do you have that tune from your myspace?’, and then you play it and everyone goes crazy; it gets reloaded three times, people are jumping up and down on the stage… For me, playing the sound everywhere is just as important as playing it at one particular venue.
Looking back at the mix now, is there anything you wish you’d have done differently? Any other tunes you wish you’d sneaked on?
C: Nah, you know what, me and Rusko were saying this; it’s raw and it’s real. There’s even a few mixes on there that you’d say weren’t the best, not saying that they’re out of time, but…
R: But it was live!
C: Yeah, it’s live man. What’s the point of doing a live CD if you’re not actually live? There are crackles in it, there are points where it chops out a bit early or you can hear the crossfader’s not over enough, but there’s nothing about it that I’d actually change.
R: The two or three weeks leading up to it we were pretty intensively gigging; playing back to back, and the night before we went into the empty club to mix the CD we’d played in Sheffield for two hours, and we were writing down ideas for it in the car on the way back. We just came in and did it, dub for dub, straight out the record bag. We were going to take it back and put some effects over the top, but then we thought we’d be better off keeping it truthful…
Quick one for Rusko: that Cockney Thug remix, the Buraka Som Sistema one on there…
R: Oh mate! Every man and his dog has been asking me for that tune…
Did you get in touch with them specifically to do that, or did they just surprise you with it? How did that one come about?
R: Well they play my tunes quite a lot, and they’ve sent me some of their more up-tempo, soca-style tracks which I’ve been dropping into my dubstep sets – which go off, by the way; absolutely mental! And they just asked me if I wanted to do a remix, and I thought brilliant, as the more cross-pollination between the different genres and sounds that we can get going the better; I think that’s the good thing about dubstep really…
BSS usually play with an MC, and I think the Bug and Flowdan tracks that have come out this year have really whetted people’s appetites for dubstep tracks with MCs on. Are either of you considering going down that route?
R: I did a track on Tempa two or three months ago called Jah Love, with a reggae singer called Danman, that one’s out now. I’ve been on more on the spiritual, Jah Rastafari vibe, rather than the standard toasting type of stuff. Working with vocalists is definitely a route we both want to go down, but it’s not about acapellas! That’s been done, the famous acapella bootleg thing; it’s boring, it’s done to death and there’s nothing new or inventive there…
C: I’ll tell you what, if there’s one person you could put me down to work with, it’d be Riko from Roll Deep Crew.
R: For me, he’s my favourite.
C: His voice is so raw… [at this point Caspa drops some Riko bars of his own, and Rusko cracks up laughing]. I think especially over my tunes, he’d sound amazing. I tried to contact him about working together, but I couldn’t get through…
He doesn’t seem to do much these days, but he’d be incredible on some dubstep tunes, he’s already got that sort of bass to his voice…
R: I’ve got a Geenius B2B Slimzee set on my walkman where they’re playing dubstep with him on top, from a while ago. It’s much more dubsteppy than grime, and he’s proper, proper going for it. I think it’s either New Year’s Eve or FWD>> Birthday, so if you can find that, it’s serious…
So what can we expect to see from Caspa and Rusko in the remainder of 2007, and in 2008?
C: We’ve got the CD coming out 3rd of December, and then we’ve got a release coming out on the first ever dubstep Australian label, called Aquatic Lab (‘Bread Get Bun’ b/w ‘King George’). I’ve got a 12 inch coming out on Pitch Black (‘Louder’ b/w ‘Noise Disorganiser’), I’ve done a remix of Wonder’s ‘What’ that’s coming out on his label. I’ve got Ave It Volume 2 coming out, so there’s loads and loads of things happening, even before February…
R: I’ve got the Claude Vonstroke remix coming out, with the Goldie remix on the other side which should be some real good exposure, there’s a Sub Soldiers release (‘Too Far’), a ‘Police in Helicopter’ remix that someone’s putting out on a sneaky white label for the underground. And I’ve been asked to do a bit of commercial production for a big American label that I’m working on at the moment…
Can you give us any details about that?
R: Not really. I’m not gonna do it all secretly; it will be known that Rusko produced it. But yeah, that’s for a big American corporation… [laughs]
Last question then: Rusko did a tune called SNES Dub, who’s the better gamer out of you two, and what’re your favourite games?
C: You know what, I played at Wigflex at Nottingham, and at the front of the stage they had a Super Nintendo with Street Fighter 2 on, with big screens at the front, and people could play it as they were raving and stuff. So once I’ve done my set, I jumped down from the stage, like ‘right, who’s gonna challenge?’, and I played one of the guys from Search and Destroy… I killed him, absolutely merked him. I won like twenty-five games without even losing that night, no lie.
What character were you playing as?
C: Ken, of course Ken.
R: I actually was saying to my missus a couple of days ago, she was asking if we had a boy what we’d call him, and I said Ryu! But she loved it, she loved it.
Could be worse; it could’ve been Dhalsim…
R: That’s what I was thinking! I reckon Ryu’s quite a good name for a little boy actually, it’s short and sweet innit…
