I first heard about the Plump DJs a couple of years ago when a friend gave me a copy of Urban Underground – Breakbeat Elite, and I LOVED it. It is now one of my favourite recovery day CDs! Funky, chunky breaks made with seriously groovy tunes and bass-lines that will set your bones vibrating are the basis of the Plump DJs sound.
Plump DJs are Andy Gardner Lee Rous – two mates who together decided that the world of dance music after the nineties was leaning to far towards Cheddar and desperately in need of some serious super-sizing in the breaks department. Since their first release “Electric Disco” in ‘99 this duo’s popularity and demand, like their sound, has grown decidedly obese. The single “Creepshow” is now DJ Mag’s #1 Best breakbeat single. I spoke to Lee Rous who was yawning after having been at the Beastie Boys concert at Wembley Arena last night. “It was WICKED!” he raves, telling me all about it.
The guys will be seeing in the New Year down under with two New Years Day shows planned for Melbourne and Sydney. “I expect there’ll be a lot of champagne on the planes!” he laughs. I asked Rous how Plump DJ’s began and if they had always been into breaks. “Well, when we were kids we were really into hip-hop, and then the dance music of the nineties was just so cheesy, you know, so we started getting into more breaks and electro styles. It started out with Andy, a few mates and me together down at the Islington Bar (near their Soho studio, “Laboratoire Plump”) We started this night called Freshly Breaks which was just basically a bunch of mates, getting pissed together, and playing breaks”.
They have had numerous successful breaks compilation CDs including an “Elastic Breaks” covermount CD for Mix Mag, which sold the highest number of copies yet. Their reworking mastery has been called in to do remixes for Freestylers, Mint Royale, BT and Orbital, Gary Numan and Terence Trent D’Arby, and more recently on Lee Coombs “Shiver”. Their album, Eargasm came out last year and was followed by tours in UK, Asia and Australia. When asked how the reaction to the album has been, Rous says, “It’s been really great. I mean, in a climate where people aren’t supposed to be selling records, it’s done really well”. He goes on to cite the increase in CD DJ’ing and MP3 downloading as reasons for the downturn in record sales but says that as breaks has been traditionally a “vinyl-led niche” they continue to thrive. Although he does explain that when it comes to sales and the business side of things, he doesn’t tend to get too involved, choosing to leave all that in the very capable hands of the Fingerlickin’ label and gives them credit for doing the job so well.
We talked about the tendency at the larger festivals to push breaks to the smallest rooms and asked how he sees breaks fitting into the dance music scene. He agrees that all forms of dance music should have equal opportunity for exposure and goes on to defend breaks popularity. “We don’t want breaks to take over, we just want people to listen. Breakbeat is well received everywhere. We have been having these Eargasm breaks nights once a month on Fridays at a club called “Fabric” which is right on our door-step. We fly all these people from all over the world, like Krafty Kuts, DJ Icey, Freq Nasty, Timo Maas and the like and have this wicked night which has turned out to be one of the busiest events the club has had”.
The guys have also been busy working on a new complilation CD with (according to the website) “a very special and elite bunch of break-makers” which will be released next year after touring again. Although secretive on the details he says, “I don’t like that word ‘elite’, necessarily, we’re all people. Anyone pushing anything new, but Evil9 takes the cake for the most inspirational more rocky-style breakbeat”. For someone plugging all things new, it comes as a surprise to learn that Lee Rous’ favourite track of all time, and he swears I can quote him on this, is Rolf Harris “Two little boys”! “Yes, I’m serious!” he says emphatically, “My uncle used to sing and whistle that tune when I was a little boy, maybe around four years old…It still makes me cry!”
Although they don’t get much free time with being holed up in the studio from Monday to Thursday, as Rous says “listening to seriously loud breakbeats, then Thursday to Sunday playing it” he contrasts that by preferring to listen to chill and eclectic radio jazz in those quieter moments. “But we still enjoy clubbing, and the gigs, and we’re kinda spoiled having ‘Fabric’ right here”. So what is the funniest thing that has happened to them while they were on tour? He pauses to consider, “Hmmm, something funny…. Apart from getting to sign some girls ahem breasts with Armin Van Helden at a Godskitchen gig in Australia? OK…(insert raucous laughter here) actually it was in Byron Bay. Ming (from Fuzzy) and I went crab fishing one night. Ming wanted to surprise his girlfriend with a crab breakfast, right? So, anyway, he’s woken in the morning to his girlfriend screaming from the shower. He’d put the crabs there until the morning and now they were running across the floor of the unit and over the balcony. That was pretty funny!”
Of their upcoming tour to Oz he promises “a lot of new music with twelve or more brand new records in the 2-hour set” I’ll be up for that one for sure Plump DJs! Super-size me!
You can see the Plump DJs at the following events in January:
Sat Jan 1st – Sydney, Field Day (SOLD OUT)
Sat Jan 1st – Melbourne, 33 1/3 Breakbeat BBQ (BUY TICKETS)
Sat Jan 8th – Gold Coast, Summafieldayze (BUY TICKETS)
