Mosca
From: London. Tracks played by: Kode 9, Alexander Nut

If you know Mosca, it’s probably from ‘Square One’. Accurately described by Bok Bok – who this month made it the first release on his Night Slugs label, as a “house track swallowed up by the UK soundsystem portal” and Hyperdub’s Kode 9 as “rendering any nit-picking between UK garage, dubstep and funky totally irrelevant”, it’s a loping anthem for London’s willfully indefinable underground dance scene.

Of course, the tracks that have followed it aren’t half bad either: ‘Gold Bricks I See You’ is introspective, broken house music at its catchiest, while the grandiose ‘Nike’ is a 10-minute journey through slanted 8-bit, tribal house, bashment and everything in between. All of the above, plus his killer remix of Kry Wolf’s ‘Mucky’ and old track ‘Jook Jook’ feature on Mosca’s mini-mix below.

“Hello hi.”

What’s the name from?

“Hmm, few reasons there. It means fly or parasite in Spanish, Latin, bare languages I think, I’m kinda drawn to that idea of feeding off others (any Jamaicans reading, stop sniggering, you know what I’m dealing with). Also me and a few others at school put like 6, 000 stickers up back home round town just saying ‘flies’, and we bred a fridgeful of flies in the art department, don’t ask why.”

There’s a lot of elements to your production that I’m not familiar with, but they sound pretty, er, ‘world’ – whether that’s Latino, or Jamaican, or what. What’s your musical background, and how does it crop up in the productions you make now?

“Well Jamaica’s an obvious one, I listened to alot of reggae, dub, ska etc as a kid, then got into bashment. Not sure how I got into world stuff, I guess I just felt like I wanted a bit more than UK and US so looked further afield and found Rio funk stuff, cumbia, kuduro, gwo-ka, reggaeton, rai and all that, and the stuff in between – Swedish producers with Brazilian MCs making UK-influenced stuff put out on German labels, all that madness.”

How would you describe your music? Can you even describe it – or are we past all that?

“Just house and garage inspired club stuff I guess. I’m not gonna ramp and say it’s beyond description – I could go on all day about dub stabs and shakers and a sense of balance in the tunes – but in terms of describing it saying it’s ‘funkstep’ or whatever, giving it a name, I think that will be the beginning of the end. As soon as you start building a scene with a name, say X, there will be people there to say “That’s not X, that doesn’t sound like X.” Like with grime when people started making wifey kinda hip-hop tunes, the scene started to split and get a bad rep, even though bare people are into that poppy wifey sound still.

“The trouble is, this scene will inevitably get a name soon, it’s not going to magically stay in this relatively fresh potential period forever. And as a journalist myself I feel the need to come up with names to bunch people together! But how can you put say, Julio Bashmore next to Shortstuff next to Ill Blu, even though that seems to be the ‘scene’ right now? So no, I don’t think we’re past it, people love their boxes.”

Who do you feel closely aligned with in the music you’re making right now? And what’s influenced you most over the years – music, experiences, otherwise.

“I always feel torn between out and out club gear – juke and Baltimore and Niche and jerk and that – and the more moody side of it – Basic Channel and dark reggae or dark r’n'b and drone and experimental stuff. So I get drawn to a weird bunch of artists. I’m going to skirt round the question and just say I’m feeling R1 Ryders, Busy Signal, Levon Vincent, Joy and Julio and Deadboy, Marcel Dettmann, DJ Pantha, I could fill the whole page really…”

Your ‘Square One’ has become an anthem at club nights like Night Slugs – tell us about the creation of it.

“Not a lot I can say really, just seemed to flow! I took a long time making it though, it was on and off for months. I don’t think it’s finished still.”

Speaking of Night Slugs, you’re putting out their first release. How’d that end up happening?

“We put Alex and Sara (Bok Bok and Manara) on for our first club night and just stayed in touch. I’m really glad they started a label at the same time ‘Square One’ was kicking about! What a sick label, and the work ethic is just a mad grind, bare fingers in bare pies. Alex and James have done alot with the promo so I’m really grateful to everyone involved.”

What do you build your tunes on?

“Reason pon the PC.”

You run the club night U Dun Know, and Bruk Magazine. Tell us about them.

“They’re both part of the empire me and Unknown Soulja are steadily building. We’re going to launch the U Dun Know energy drink and Bruk condoms later this year. In terms of the night – I guess we just fancied having a go, it’s not like there weren’t any other decent nights at the time. We thought it would be a good way to meet artists we rated, and to steal their dubs when they went to the toilet.

“Very noble of you to mention Bruk! It’s just another urban music thing I guess but I aim to have intelligent but readable commentary on the stuff that gets a little overlooked. But it’s been a bit on-off because it’s a lot of work getting a magazine to print as you know, and what with the music ting kicking off I’ve had to backseat it a bit.”

What do you have in the pipeline for this year?

“Standard producer stuff! A couple of big remixes soon, some OG tracks and some collaborations. Hopefully I’ll stop taking 8 months to make one riddim as well. Lots of bookings coming in, headlining Glastonbury, DJing at Obama’s kid’s parties etc. etc.”

And finally, tell us something we don’t know about Mosca.

“My old man is Sean Reid. He did Beenie Man’s ‘Reverse Di Ting’, Elephant Man’s ‘Gully Creepa’, Tifa’s ‘Dem Nuh Ready’, the Outada, Zero Tolerance, So Sick and Survival Mode riddims amongst many others.”

Tracklist:
Mosca – Nike
Mosca – Gold Bricks, I See You
Mosca – Square One (Julio Bashmore Remix)
Titus 12 – Step Up (Mosca Remix) (Instrumental)
Mosca – Square One VIP
Mosca – Jook Jook
Kry Wolf – Mucky (Mosca Remix)

This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.