Son Raw was going to slam that shitty Rusko X Cypress Hill song, but what’s the point?

Jeff was a bit optimistic yesterday in describing Electronic Music’s current forward drive as there’s more than enough nostalgia for yesterday’s futurism to go around these days. Much like it’s ancestor Jungle, Dubstep evolved so ridiculously fast that purists somehow managed to get misty eyed about the old stuff ahead of time; resulting in collapsed timelines, evil twins with goatees and Simon Reynolds books. After the cries of “first!” and the usual complaints that “it used to be better” however, comes the unenviable task of putting the last decade into “context” and figuring out what bits still sound good and which ones were the result of one too many pills. With all apologies to the dark UKG heads, smart money says that 2004-2006 will go down as Dubstep’s great “classic” period as the genre mutated from Garage’s dark offspring into an unpredictably experimental form of Grime to a full-fledged movement and genre. Cue the usual milestones: the first DMZ singles, Midnight Request Line, Mary Anne Hobbs’ Dubstep Warz, Burial…

Plastician’s latest Rinse show is a trip down memory lane, exploring the 05-06 era in detail. Aside from a few breaks to identify tunes for curious trainspotters ‘longside a few wistful memories of the days when you could apparently buy shrooms in the hallways of Bristol clubs (this explains so much…) the former Plasticman wisely opts for “less chit-chat, more slipmat.” Looking back, perhaps the most exceptional thing about this music is that despite sounding infinitely more unified than today’s exploded scene, every tune here sounds like an outlier. Reggae sampling collides into roughneck bass line experiments, indie remixes meet Grime instrumentals, subtle electronica meets the roughest drum breaks this side of Rza and yet it all feels apiece. By stripping things down to the bare essentials, this generation of musicians left so much to the imagination that everyone from Minimal Techno geeks to maximalist bros saw space to remake the genre in their own image. Sit back and light up a blunt to this one.

Download:

MP3: Plastician old school special on Rinse.FM 22/01/12

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