Ripping Up Fabric - Caspa & Rusko

Late 2007: as end-of-year charts start to pile up like the snows of pre-global warming Christmas past, up steps the consistently excellent FabricLive mix series, to chuck in their tuppence-worth to the ongoing dubstep gold rush. But rather than asking Skream or Burial to mix the CD – two DJs already fawned over by the mainstream press and clubbing fraternity - they turned to Leeds-based jump-up dubstep producer Rusko and his DJ partner Caspa, who delivered a slamming, genre-defying smack in the kisser of a mix.

As energetic and hyperactive in person as his tunes are on vinyl, Rusko attributes the rough and ready style of FabricLive 34 to his free party background: "Coming from Leeds, the dub and soundsystem street culture was a lot more prevalent. I still make my tunes doing live mixdowns on the fly, in a rub-a–dub style – I guess that's the northern in me." Where was dubstep's home in Leeds? "SUBDUB! Every month at the West Indian. That was always the good one: saw so many influential people there. Used to go to a lot of free parties with the soundsystem up in the woods in Leeds too. RAVERS!"

Rusko is looking forward to the exposure the high-profile Fabric mix will bring: "Most of the usual Fabric CD audience will not have heard any dubstep. Maybe [they will have] heard about it, but [will] certainly not [have experienced] a raw, dubplate-for-dubplate mix like the CD."

One of the duo's biggest tunes has been the anthemic, string-laden dub of Cockney Violins. A later track in the mix is titled Cockney Thug. What's the reasoning behind all the Cockney chat? "It is a kind of running theme innit!" says Rusko. "There's a Cockney Pipes and Cockney Rug too – it could go on forever! A lot of our tunes we make quite quickly while there's still that initial excitement. I think it's important to get that into the music and get that feeling to the crowd."

Another aspect that Caspa and Rusko's mix showcases is the diversity of the dubstep sound, with beats ranging from garage 2-step to layered breakbeat, to pounding hardcore and ska. "Yeah, dubstep is very diverse," agrees Rusko. "The mix is very kinda truthful in a way. It was unplanned: recorded straight out of our record bags, off the cuff. It is a close as you can get to seeing us play. There are tunes from a diverse range of producers on there, but we just do our thing – if it's a fat bassline it's all good!"

Rusko explains that he got into dubstep through other styles of music: "Initially I got into dubstep through UK dub, like Iration Steppas, Bush Chemists, Vibronics… I know a lot of people came from garage. Dubstep is like one big melting pot of influences. I've always listened to a lot of drum & bass; that's influenced a lot of tracks. At the moment, I'm all about the crossover. [I'm] working with Benny Page... done a tune with Clipz… its all cross-breeding!"

Rusko recently came to Edinburgh's Cabaret Voltaire for a gig, at the behest of recent arrivals on the Edinburgh club scene, from Brighton: Dub Pressure. How was the atmosphere? "Awesome! Sometimes when you play in London, you get used to people being a bit conscious. In Edinburgh they didn't care! They were HAVIN' IT! There was some moshing, someone [got] headbutted outside, [there was] beer all over the decks. All in all a pretty wild one! Loads of crew came out too - I wanna do Glasgow next. Hopefully next year I'll come and spill more beer, and jump up and down again."

With Rusko currently working on a remix for Claude Von Stroke, his own drum & bass productions (under the name Tintin) and an exclusive re-dub of ragga jungle and dub anthem Police In Helicopter, it looks like early 2008 will be a busy time for this particular sub warrior. Catch a fire – grab a copy of FabricLive 37 and, as one of Caspa's samples advises: "Hold tight, rudeboy."