Little can be said about Mala that hasn’t already been discussed in depth.

One half of Digital Mystikz, he co-founded the DMZ label that remains, with the majority of its catalogue steeped in legend, out of print and only available for collector’s prices, dubstep’s original great imprint. His own productions, among them ‘Left Leg Out’, ‘Blue Notez’ and ‘Anti-War Dub’, are revered in dubstep circles and beyond, and years-old unreleased dubplates are still in constant discussion – when’s this coming out? Is this ever coming out? And so forth.

This May, Mala will release his first album, Return II Space. Well, we say album, the catalogue number is DMZLP001, but Mala – real name Mark Lawrence – is simply viewing this vinyl triple-pack as a chance to release some of the productions that have been highlights of his DJ sets. Not that he’s revealing what those tracks are. Not yet. FACT’s Joe Muggs called up Mala to discuss how space itself influences his style, his musical kinship with Francois K and the Bomb Squad and more.

So, the big event coming up is the release of the ‘Return II Space’ album… or is it an album?  What are you calling it?

“It’s just a triple pack to me really.”

OK – so does that mean you feel like it’s it just another DMZ 12”, or does the fact of it being bigger mean it’s more of a milestone release?

“I guess it is [a milestone] actually for various reasons. One is just that I haven’t put anything out for over a year on DMZ – not for any reason other than everything’s just so hectic the last year, travelling and doing shows. But I really enjoy continuing the DMZ thing, so to put out a triple pack is definitely exciting, it feels like the right time to do it, and it’s almost like I’m just catching up with what I wanted to release in the last year but never got round to so I’ve put it all together, you know.”

It’s been interesting seeing all the inevitable speculation online about what would be on this, most of the tracks you chose are among the more popular choices. Was it deliberate to pick crowd pleasers?

“Hmmm, in terms of tracks being audience favourites, it’s not actually something I can necessarily gauge. Obviously certain tunes get a response, ‘Eyes’ especially has been an instant response kind of tune, as well as ‘Return To Space’ itself. But to me, like I say, they’re just pieces of music that I would’ve released over the last year and didn’t get round to, so really it’s like a letting go of these pieces of time and space that I’ve been sharing and presenting to people over the last couple of years. It’s nice, it feels like the right time – if I’d left it any longer I think it would’ve been too late and I might never have released them, which can happen with some music.”

So there are a few of your tunes, even ones that have been real favourites on dubplate, that you think will never get released under any circumstances now?

“Yeah [laughs]”

‘Sometimes it’s nice that pieces of music are just left resonating in certain walls of certain venues, rattling around from time to time in people’s memories when they’re reminded of the time they heard a certain piece of music. It happens to me in this day and age still.”

Quite a few?

“Yeah, quite a few [laughs again] In a strange sort of way it’s not my choice. I’m a strong believer in moments in time and space, and sometimes you just get a vibe or a feeling for things where you could put something out and a hundred people would buy it or whatever, but sometimes it’s nice that pieces of music are just left resonating in certain walls of certain venues, rattling around from time to time in people’s memories when they’re reminded of the time they heard a certain piece of music. It happens to me in this day and age still, but it’s the same thing as in the past when you would go and listen to Grooverider and you’d know that you very likely weren’t going to hear it again, you didn’t know what the name of it was and if you wanted to hear it you’d just have to go and check for ‘Rider again and hope that he played it – but if you don’t go and hear him the next week, if you wait six months, the chances are you weren’t going to hear it again.”

And even then you’re not going to have the exact same experience when you hear it, same as you can’t live the exact same day over again…

“There you go. So we have to start really looking at time and space and how important it is to really start looking at moment. I’m not trying to sound cheesy or hippie or clichĂ©, but I do think that in life we go through things that make you understand thing a little bit differently and you do see time in a really different way – in that it’s not days or weeks, it really is moments, that’s how it is sometimes.”

So you’re saying that by not duplicating the music –  the experience – you make that experience and the sound sharper in people’s minds than if they were able to copy it and listen to it at will?

“Yeah I think so… I think… well, it’s weird because moments just happen because they’re happening all the time, but there’s certain circumstances and situations where we happen to remember a moment with more clarity. And for me – obviously I can only talk from my own experience – over the years, I’ve just had that etched-in-the-memory moment so many times going out and listening to music. So this brings us to the reason that I always cut dubplates – you know, people know this stuff, I’ve told this story so many times, but I genuinely value these moments, I genuinely value these things and I don’t want to abuse them just because you can make extra money out of it or extra fame or whatever. It’s fine if that’s other people’s intentions but it’s not mine, so the way I do my thing is just being true to myself and true to my love of these particular moments in time.”

“I like the fact that you just go and play live and play your music and people hear it, and they can go home and remember it, and if it pops into their mind ten years later that’s great and if it doesn’t it was a moment they experienced there and then anyway. For me, releasing music isn’t the most important thing; it’s the process, it’s about being there in the studio building tunes, it’s not the end product but how you get there, and even if you don’t get there it doesn’t really matter because… well it’s just about doing, isn’t it? For me it’s just about doing.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Features, Interviews and tagged with Digital Mystikz, DMZ, Mala. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.