Caspa: A global force in Dubstep, his commitment and creativity is coded deep into the scene\’s earliest framework: the Dopest Ghost In Town was hard at work long before the seismic cultural explosion in the late 2000s. Long before Dubstep even had a name. He is constantly looking to take his sound, his label, his artists and his skills to new levels.
Caspa spent the early part of 2014 working on his latest mix compilation ‘Dubstep Sessions 2014’, which was released in March. He spent the Spring residing in the US for 12 weeks, and played two festivals in North America, as well as various dates in Europe including Berlin, Ibiza and Denmark. Caspa held his first ever remix competition this year with UKF using parts from \’Mad Man\’.
His next releases will come from the ‘500’ album project which continues with the second of three episodes. Caspa will eventually comprise each ‘500’ episode – plus additional productions – to create his clearest, most confident long player to date. A salute to the underground from which he, Dub Police and the whole genre took root, each ‘500’ episode takes us back to the dark sweaty subterranean clubs that this music was originally designed to complement.
Caspa will be visiting Chicago for his North American tour!
When: 12/12/2014 (Friday)
Where: Sound Bar (with The Others)
Tickets: $10 Puchase
You have returned to your roots with the \’500\’ project. What does this mean for you? How has it affected the album and your North American tour this Winter?
It honestly means everything to me, it’s the most personal piece of music and tour I’ve ever done anywhere. I wanted to put something together that was truly for myself and the Caspa fans, and that’s what this is – good music, intimate venues with affordable ticket prices – all being played on a huge sound system!
The artwork for the first 2 episodes looks amazing and I wouldn’t have been surprised if I found them hanging in my local cinema. It looks like you’re taking a cinematic approach in general by releasing the album as three EP\’s first. Why did you choose this approach?
The vision all along was to make something that sounded like it could be the soundtrack to a movie, it suits my sound and style and it really fitted into the vision I had of ‘500’. I also wanted to treat the album like a movie or TV series and that’s one of the reasons I decided to split it up into three episodes with a final piece at the end.
Looking at the tracklist, I\’m guessing you’re an 80\’s kid. What do you remember most about the time period?
Great movies, bad haircuts, the best TV shows and cartoons and some of the sh*ttiest music (in a good way!)
You\’ve collaborated with Flux Pavilion recently. What can you tell us about that collaboration and working with him in general? Are there any other collaborations to look out for?
We’re both fans of each others music so it was a natural thing for us to get together – it was more down to schedules just to make it happen. I always find it really creative being in the studio with someone very musical – coz I’m not – I’m more of a beats and bass man. It was really cool to just have a chat and catch up, we talked about the scene and the future, smoking pipes, drinking whiskey and rum! The tune’s sounding really good, just need to get another session in together to finish it off. As far as other collabs, I’ve got a tune with Emalkay that dropped recently called “Tomorrow” and have just finished something today with Mayhem – called “London to Atlanta” which is a banger! Outside of that, the rest of the collabs are vocal features forthcoming from the 500 album.
You must have some unique Dubplates in your collection. Can you unveil your favourite one to us?
If you’re talking about real dubplates – yeah I’ve got a tonne of them sitting in my loft and I’d love to do a full dub plate set one time. It’s hard to pick just one coz there are some real gems! But if I had to, it would probably be the VIP of Rusko’s Jahova, which never got released, and I’ll most definitely be playing it on tour.
Did you see any good movies lately?
I watched a Tom Hardy film called “Ivan Locke” which is completely shot with him in his car driving somewhere – it sounds bizarre but it’s a great film. Also the new Planet of the Apes film, which I thought was sick. I’d love to write a soundtrack and score for a film one day.
Episode Two will be released very soon, can you tell us about the track selection?
I wanted this episode to be darker and heavier, it was almost going to be Episode One, but it wasn’t quite ready. The lead track “War Drum” is all of my musical influences from Reggae, Dancehall, Dubstep & Drum ‘n’ Bass all thrown into one melting pot and it’s one of my favourite tracks I’ve ever written. MC $pyda really took the track to the next level, if you’re unfamiliar with him he’s the guy that vocalled Pendulum’s tune “Tarantula”. But Episode Three is the one that’s gonna do it!
\’500: Episode Two\’ will be released: 24/11/2014 Pre-order
\’500: Episode One\’: Purchase (Beatport)
More information and North American tour dates: Click here
