Destination party town: All 1 More Thing roads lead to Planet Wax and Rough Tempo right now for our birthday weekend on June 17 – 18.
Both parties stacked with exciting, forward-thinking names across the bass spectrum, we can’t wait to celebrate our first anniversary with our friends and these beautiful DJ humanoids, especially as each of them has played a role in our development so far. Artists like Plasmator.
Frequently appearing in our Freshest Drum & Bass playlist, and previously spotted on this site as one of our Artist Of The Week features last August (a regular series we hope to bring back soon), Plasmator’s passion for the culture and dedication to the craft has been paying off in a major way in recent years.
Clocking up releases on the likes of Guzi’s GZ Audio and Sola’s Grand Theft Audio, very few months go by without a key release from the Plymouth artist. Most recently he was rose to the top of a hundreds of entries in a high profile DJ Rap remix competition where his remix of her iconic Saviour tune smashed the Beatport hype chart.
Meanwhile in his capacity as a DJ, Plasmator’s years of skill-honing and genre-hopping have led to a masterful vibe that can cross all groove terrains in the most exciting of ways. Currently co-running a multigenre night in Plymouth called Bedlam Ball, his sets can take you on a journey like this…
From sexy breaks to scorchio D&B in less than 40 minutes, this mix has so many twists, turns and teases it will have you hooked until the very last minute. Exactly the type of vibe we want to create at Planet Wax on June 17. Plasmator will be joined by LSN, Scartip, Trex, Baronna, Ghost Hardware, Lakeway and NoDave. Turn on, tune in, drop by.
Good time for multigenre vibes!
Yeah. I actually started running a multigenre night Bedlam Ball since we last spoke and we’ve done three nights so far. We booked our first headliner Dutty Moonshine last month and it’s been a really interesting learning curve. We have quite a bit of drum & bass but have been moving towards making it fully multigenre rather than leaning so heavily on drum & bass. There’s another night here called Sub 43 which starts next month. A collaboration between local brands Revolution DNB and Gully Riddimz, they’re 140, breakbeat, grime and all sorts of other bits. I’m actually playing my first non D&B set there so that’ll be interesting.
As a new promoter, can you give advice ahead of this first ever 1 More Thing event?
Well London’s a whole thing unto itself but for us, we bang on about it online as much as possible, do things like artist focused posts with a bit of bio and information. A lot of badgering people at drum & bass nights. Going out, wandering the streets at 2am with flyers. Josh, who I run Bedlam Ball with, wanders up to people and asks if they like drum & bass. You want to make connections. Don’t waste time and effort giving flyers to people who don’t care.
Old school! You’re out pounding the streets!
Oh yeah we go out all the time. Because it started as a private event among friends and we wanted to keep that going. Obviously we advertise it on social media but we want to meet people and get talking to people who are on the same kind of level and will bring something to the night.
You want to build a community
Yeah. Josh does a lot of the heavy lifting of approaching people but we’ve got a good team going. And that’s advice for anyone, too; you can’t do everyone on your own. You’d have to have skill in so many areas to do it and you’d spread yourself too thinly. So have a good team.
What makes a perfect party? When you’re raving. What are you looking for?
The venue itself is important. It needs to have a vibe. That’s such an overused term but you know what I mean. Like Images, where our night is. It’s one of the oldest clubs in Plymouth. It’s a bit dirty and falling apart like good clubs should be. And there’s an outdoor part but it’s close to the music so you don’t lose the vibe of the music.
Adding attention to detail and bringing your own production is important, too. We bring in smoke machines, lasers and some of our décor. That’s a big thing. We wanted to take influence from festivals like Boomtown and Balter where there’s a lot of character and there’s emphasis on it being part of the show. We’ve done some themed Bedlam Ball nights like Valentines and done things like putting love hearts on the wall and the set times in picture frames on the bar. It’s little touches which catch your eye and just add to people’s memories of the night. Having a proper soundsystem of course and DJs with a good mixture of music. All these things are really important, too.
Great advice. You’ve been busy on releases since we spoke. Including a DJ Rap remix!
Yeah it got released on the final collection which was really cool. My remix got picked by Beatport’s Spotify playlist and ended up going quite high up the hype chart. I ended up speaking to Rap, she was really supportive and there might be some cool plans ahead.
Nice! You’re very consistent with Grand Theft Audio, too.
Yeah I’ve got a track with Guzi and Woolf coming out at the end of the month. I love playing this one out, it does the job. I’ve got a few collabs with Sola in the works and another collab which is out so far in the future I’d best not say who it’s with.
Sola and the whole label have been so supportive of 1 More Thing. Huge respect for him. Back to your mix, though…
I am enjoying these mixes where you go from house to drum & bass. I didn’t have the opportunity to do it before. I was doing my regular drum & bass radio show but that had to be strictly drum & bass. But in recent times I’ve been getting so much into slower tempos. I love the emergence of the neuro breaks scene and the amount of amazing jungle and 160 music. There’s so much good stuff and I want to play it. I did this mix years ago for an American brand called Synesthesia. It was my favourite mix I’d ever done and the tempos go all over the place. But that was the only mix of that nature I did at the time. So it’s cool to explore that a lot more now. Although in terms of doing DJ sets I like the idea of the gradual increase of tempo rather than flitting all over the place.
Some DJs can do that, though. This Jon 1st mix for example. Mixes like that blow my mind. Which was the last DJ to blow your mind?
It’s got to be JFB. I don’t think anyone else has ever been able to combine turntablism with party DJ stuff so well and seamlessly. You get to geek out on the routines he fits but he always keeps it flowing and energy is unreal. He’s a human metronome. It looks so easy when he’s doing this ridiculously technical stuff. There’s no coincidence that he’s won so many awards.
Yeah he won them all the other year. It’s an amazing story. He really smashed it. I especially love his b2b with DJ Angelo. The choreography of sets like that!
Totally. I love C2C and how they sync together so perfectly. Their album Tetra is so, so good. I’ve got a tune coming out with a section that’s entirely influenced by C2C. All the parts are scratched and build progressively.
That sounds cool. Can you scratch?
Yeah man. I do bits and pieces. I’ve done some scratchy bits on the album I’m working on. Some bits for other people. I’ve done some scratching for a Beskar project. And on this C2C influenced tune I was just saying about, Beskar played live bass which adds a whole other dimension and sounded so good. He’s such a cool guy to collab with. But yeah I was obsessed with turntablism as a teenager and was always practicing techniques and how to beat juggle and things like that.
Sick. Are you gonna scratch for us on the 17th? What can we expect?
There might be, but I’ve basically put a lot of effort into bringing some of my all-time favourite double drops into a mix, plus lots of new ones so it’s similar to the mix I’ve done for you here where it goes from 128 to 174 and we’ll have a lot of fun along the way.
Have fun with 1 More Thing on June 17
