Mala of Digital Mystikz

Digital Mystikz’ ‘B’ is the first dubstep record I ever bought and the first dubstep record I fell in love with.  Mala was the man who made it, the man who was and still is utterly instrumental within the genre and, arguably, without him dubstep would lack much of its musical soul.  He’s a big thinker, a quiet talker, a genuine gem; I had high hopes for this hour-long journey with the legend himself through his streets and sights and sounds of his London via Red Bull Radio.

The programme kicks off with Mala back in his childhood ends of Norwood and runs through some of his earlier musical memories & local hang outs.  He rattles around a couple of record shops and south London markets and winds up in Forest Hill, where he gets technical about cutting dubplates.  He plays us a few of his favourite tunes, old and new, we meet some of his collaborators, he tells us how cool Red Bull Academy is etc. etc. etc.……Ok, so I’m a huge fan and I know a fair bit about Mala already, but given that he’s such a central figure in such an urban scene, even my Nan could’ve guessed that he probably used to listen to pirate radio in his room, that he hung out in Croydon at Big Apple Records and that Blackmarket is something of a spiritual home to him.   Quite frankly, Wikipedia could’ve done the job.

Look, there are bits of this programme I loved- Mala on the phone to Coki and the subsequent chat with his long time friend and label mate, the nods to fellow Londoners Jehst & Roots Manuva, the bits about him using every penny of his overtime money on that precious first cut of a track.  I get that it has to be about Mala’s connection with London, but I just felt that this programme didn’t entirely do him justice.  A lot of the time, there’s little link with what he’s talking about and the music in the background.  Who were his favourite artists growing up?  Which nights did he go to?  Where in London did he meet his fellow dubsteppers?   Where did he work before he made it?  There’s not even a mention of Brixton, the home of his DMZ night- the biggest dubstep event in the capital, which is rammed to capacity every month.

You very much get the impression that London is something of a disappointment to him, not somewhere he feels totally at home.  At one point he says that he in no way feels patriotic to its cityscape and grey concrete, but that it probably has shaped him.  And maybe that’s the problem.  Get him on the topic of music and he’s away, talk to him about his current locale and he has less to say.  However, for the tracks played along the way, for Mala’s insights into dubstep’s evolution and to get a beginner’s guide to where it all began, you still need to tune into this.  Personally, I’d just like to skip to the sequel.