Escaping the frost-biting winds of Montreal’s Old Port at the world’s hottest sub-zero festival, Igloofest, I was blessed with opportunity to converse with a legend in the sanctuary of a booze-riddled trailer, heated with its own external generator. Member of Digital Mystikz, co-founder of DMZ, and creator of Deep Medi, Mark Lawrence is one of the few bonafide pioneers of a genre we’ve come to know and love. Take your time and digest his teachings because it is a veritable rarity to learn a history from the mouth its author.
LL: What were you looking forward to coming to Montreal?
M: When I play shows, its always the same things really. You never know what to expect in places, so. The reason why I enjoy doin’ what I do is because of people and because of music. And its about bringing them two together. So that’s why I enjoyed comin’ here. I knew it was guna be really cold as well.
LL: I can see you that you brought your jacket.
M: I actually bought a jacket at the airport. Cus it had some 50% sale on.
LL: I didn’t know you could buy jackets at the airport.
M: It was in Belgium actually I bought the jacket. Lucky I did cuz I knew it was gunna be cold out here, but yesterday was cold man.
LL: Balls cold.
M: Yeah.
LL: Anyway, I’ve heard from a little bird called the internet that you recently, or are planning to go down to Cuba with your friend, Mr. Giles Peterson. I was wondering what’s going to come from that Cuban influence.
M: Um. I went to Cuba twice last year to work on this project. I worked with a guy called Roberto Fonseca and his band. If you check this guy out; If you check a lot of musicians out in Cuba, their ability to do what they do is unbelievable. Overwhelming actually, because I don’t really see myself as a musician.
LL: No?
M: When I get on the computer and make music, to me, its like playin’ computer games. Ya know, I’m from that Nintendo generation.
LL: Donkey Kong, Super Mario..
M: You know what I’m sayin’. I see music in maybe a different way from those guys because they understand music in terms of it being pitch perfect as well as musical scales and those things there.
LL: They’ve been clapping the clave since they were in diapers.
M: Ya man, unbelievable. So you know what I mean? I didn’t know what to expect. And I still don’t know really what to expect. Cuz, you know, the album’s still building. So, you’ll just have to wait and see.
LL: We most certainly will. So how did you start up that relationship with Giles?
M: Like most of the things, just through music. It reaches people and, ya know, someone like Giles, he’s championed so much music over the years. You know, that guy. When you see his record collection… And I know for a fact that I’ve probably only seen a quarter of it. It’s ridiculous. And I was very lucky that he invited me a couple of times to his Radio One show and I did a Brownwood’s podcast with him. And yea, just bouncin’ like that. Ya know what I mean?
LL: Yea.
M: He’s been doing this work in Cuba.
LL: Mutual respect.
M: Yea, its just one of those things. Luckily, he decided to bring me with him on his adventure, ya know.
LL: Ya. So, now, who do you find yourself being influenced by? Other than the musicians of Cuba, of course. But, present day, what are you listening to and making music after you listen to it?
M: I listen to so much music and I’m on the road a lot as well, its not always music that influences or inspires me. Its more the experience of people and places and certain things that happen. So, its kind of a difficult question to answer now a-days because, ya know, if you’d go back to when I first started writing music, there could be definite musicians and producers and I could say ‘Yea, I draw influences from these guys.” But now, I’ve been doing it for so long, I don’t even know what happens. This is just what it is, ya know. It’s who I am.
LL: Yea… you see a piece of art. You see a building…
M: You know what I mean.
LL: Absolutely. You mentioned earlier that you could pinpoint things that influenced you back then better than you can now, so what were the things that influenced you?
M: The main thing was Jungle music. You know, I grew up as a teenager early in the 90’s and Jungle was on a lot of pirate radio stations. So when I started hearing hard-core Jungle in ’92-’93 it was that sound there that made me wanna get involved in music, some how. You know what I mean? I didn’t know how at first. It was just something that like kind of just overwhelmed, overwhelmed me. And from that I kept listening and kept searchin’ for new sounds and somehow I just started tinkering, ya know what I mean? But, Jungle was an interesting sound ‘cuz those guys there, they drew influences from everywhere, so you’d hear like a Roots or a Reggae sample in there, or you’d hear a Hip-Hop sample, or you’d hear some Acid, or you’ll hear some Jazz, ya know? You just heard everything. And from Jungle music, that expanded my mind really, and I just started diggin’ deep all over. No prejudice, ya know what I mean?
LL: Absolutley.
M: You neva’ know what you’re gonna’ like so I never not listen to nuffing, whenever someone sends me something to have a listen to. I always have a listen.
LL: What brought you to the co-founding of DMZ?
M: Again, it was just meant to be, really. Ya know, I’ve known Coki and Pokes since I was about 11 years old. We went to the same school. We lived in the same area. So we was always doin’ music from young growin’ up. MC’n. Swappin’ tapes. Goin’ to each other’s yard and jamming. We used to play a lot of parties in the area. At a young age we’d become residents at like, under-18 (‘una-ay-een’) clubs. We’d play with people like Mickey Finn, and Kenney Ken, and Randall, Jumpin’ Jack Frost, and Groove Rider. You know, this is when we were like 14-15 years old. We’d MC for these guys, and we met Loefah when we was about 15-16, and what I found is, you know, you probably find it for yourself, a lot of your friends, your common thing that you all love and how you became friends is music (*big grin). And from then your like-minded and you go on a path together. It was just one of those things. We found that we were in a time in London, where the Jungle thing had changed, the Drum and Bass thing was doing its thing. We used to go to a lot of Metalhead’s parties and that. And it just got to a point when we were all making music and there was nothing really happening. We weren’t interested in signing records to major record labels or anything like that. It was… I always think, its very difficult because when you are creative or whenever you want to present something to somebody, when other people get involved, whether it be a distribution company, a record label, or a PR company, or whatever. You have to be very careful, I think, when you’re coming through, that you don’t get misrepresented. We were very, very conscious not to be misrepresented with we we’re doin’ because what we were doing, it wasn’t this and it wasn’t that. It wasn’t Jungle. It wasn’t house. It wasn’t Techno. It wasn’t Garage. It was this. It was a DMZ t’ing. So it only made sense for us to just start up our own thing and start up our own parties. Ya know what I mean? It was just like that really. Just because, you know, Big Apple brought us through. People, you know, Hatcha, Artwork used to also be at Big Apple Records. Jon that used to own Big Apple Records. You know, we would take our tunes down there, and it was Hatcha that first started cuttin’ our tunes onto dubs. And unfortunately Big Apple closed. They released our first record and about 6 months later they closed. So that’s why we just started, we were gunna do our own thing – press off 500 records and see what happened. It trickled through. I remember goin’ to record shops and people bein’ like, “Nah. We can’t sell this. We don’t know what it is.” So we’d take anotha’ and by about DMZ004, I remember goin’ to Soul Jazz Records, dropped off a box of records, and didn’t even get back home – I was on the underground – I went to go back home, and by the time I got off the train there was a voicemail sayin’, “We’ve already sold out. Can you bring us another box?”
LL: Big day.
M: Yea from then, there was a feeling that people started to understand what the music was dealin’ with. At parties – people would come down to our parties and they would just vibe, ya know. There was a certain type of person that’d come down to the vibe, and that just spread out, ya know? I mean, It was just a word of mouth thing; it was an underground thing. It wasn’t just what we were doin’. It was what Kode9 was doin’. It was what Skream was doin’. It was what Plastician was doin’. And people like Chef.
LL: It was the whole movement.
M: It was everyone. We were all together, all buildin’ tunes. It was like sparrin’ with each other. You know what I mean?
LL: Some competition…
M: Not even competition because I don’t see myself or music as competition.
LL: Friendly…
M: Yea. And I hear someone’s tune and its sick and I’m just like “ Wouahh! Right. Bam! Go back in the studio,” like, “Yeah! Wus’goin’ on?” It was that. It was that. It wasn’t just us four that built DMZ in my opinion. It was everyone that’d come to our dance and brought their friend, or every journalist that said, “Yeah. DMZ is this or that.” Or every photographer that came down and took a picture. You know, DMZ is a universal thing. For everyone, nah mean? No prejudice man.
LL: In that case, Why Deep Medi after DMZ?
M: Well, at that time, I was getting sent a lot of music and I was finding that when I was goin’ into record shops and people would be kind-of wanting to listen to what was coming out of DMZ or what us guys were doin’. I was doin’ youth work at the time so it was just where my head was at the time. If I can help otha’ people with the music that they’re doin’ and share it and spread it out , then I’m goin’ to try to do that. I didn’t want Deep Medi to be a side line of DMZ. I didn’t actually tell people that Deep Medi was my label until about 2 years after.
LL: 2 years after the creation?
M: Yeah. So I just wanted the music to speak for itself. I wanted the producer’s, ya know, their music to be recognised in their own right, and not like, “Oh. Its comin’ from DMZ or Mala, so it must be x, y, z.” So I just wanted it to be clean for them on the label. And I think all them, everyone that’s been on the label has gone and played shows around the world. You know, its just if I can get people out, if together we can everyone out, to be self-sufficient, one way or another, I think that’s a good thing.
LL: A very fucking good thing.
M: Cause no one wants to be doin’ this 9 to 5 grind, doin’ things they don’t enjoy doin’. So if I can help people do what they love doin’ then….
LL: That’s noble of you.
M: Nah man its not like that. Its just the way things worked out. It’s a blessing, you know what I mean?
LL: Yeah. So what do you see in the next 2, the next 5 years, whatever, for this genre that you helped pioneer? What’s out there?
M: I never knew what was comin’. I don’t what’s comin’ now. So, you know, I love what I do. I feel very lucky to be able to do what I do. With that mind set I’ll continue to explore and to keep pressin’ in whatever direction I go, ya know? I try not to follow, n’ah mean. Just go wherever it feels right.
LL: Thanks Mark. That was phenomenal.
M: Thank you.
sam.i.am
L O W – L I F E
