From Siberia to Singapore, these old-school British DJs are back to deliver a much-needed shot of breakbeat chaos as well as share some unsavoury tales with Alexis Ong


Plump DJs Lee Rous and Andy Gardner

AO: Is this your first time in Singapore?
LR: Nah, it’s our third time.
AG: Fourth time, actually – it’s our fourth time.
LR: We’ve also travelled through Singapore a lot to get to Australia, so we’ve actually set foot here a number of times.
AG: Yeah, we know the airport very well.
AO: Well, it’s not a bad airport to be stuck in.
LR: There’s a spa. A spa and massage in the airport.
AO: Do you have any upcoming plans – any new releases after Headthrash?
LR: We’re getting married. It’s been ten years now, might as well get on with it!
AG: After that, we’re basically going to get down to a bit more underground stuff, I think, and the gigs are going really well for us at the moment, so lots more deejaying. We’ve got a UK tour coming up, [and] we’re doing an Australian tour at the end of the month.
LR: Then we’re doing a Headthrash event at Fabric [in London] in December, I think. I think we’re going to try to get Tony Tay over for that one. We’re going to see how far this Fabric thing stretches.
AO: Where are you headed right after Singapore?
AG: Well, it’s in the region for us, not so much for you – but Taiwan, yeah.
AO: Oh, that’s a bit far away.
AG: Exactly, it’s ages [away], but for us it’s all the same. We’re playing at the Luxy [popular Taiwanese nightclub]. Unfortunately, we had a gig there earlier in the year, but a guy was ill on our aeroplane and we had to abort the gig. He had a heart attack.
AO: On your plane?
AG: Yeah, and the plane had to be diverted to Siberia, so we had a forced landing in Russia which was quite scary – 24 hours in Russia.
LR: Actually, it was somewhere on the border of Mongolia and Siberia.
AO: Jesus.
AG: And they wouldn’t let us land – when we landed, we were closer to, where was it…
LR: The middle of nowhere!
AG: Ha! No, China – we were close to an airport in China, but they wouldn’t let us land there because people didn’t have visas. So we had to turn around and go back to this place on the Siberian border.
LR: The runway was like…there were no lights on it, and there was gravel on it, and burnt mattresses and stuff on the edges of the runway. There was a building with all the windows all smashed up in it. It was really funny, and they left the plane overnight on the runway. We all went away, and came back the next morning and the plane was still in the middle of the runway with ladders. The pilot literally just got in it, turned it on, and we flew off.
AO: Where did you stay that night?
LR: In a dodgy hotel.
AO: Ah, the ol’ gulag.
AG: In a sort of prison. A prison hotel. It seemed like a prison.
LR: There was a used tampon on the bed.
AO: That is vile. One of many things you never knew about the Plump DJs.
AG: Right.
AO: Is it true that you guys got your name from a porno magazine?
AG & LR: Yup.
AO: What kind of magazine was it?
AG: Fat women.
LR: Really, really, really big women.
AO [to AG]: He’s way more diplomatic than you are, you know.
AG: Yeah.
LR: Really, really big women.
AG: Slightly overweight.
AO: How did they feel about you using their name?
AG: We’ve not really had any action from them, actually.
LR: The thing is, when you type ‘plumpers’ into the internet and do a search, it actually comes up with us rather than their magazine, so they must be a bit gutted about that ‘cause it’s quite a big magazine. Maybe they’re holding off until we get really big or something.
AO: That’s kind of sad.
AG: If we ever get big.
LR: Is it still around?
AG: Plumpers? Yeah. I bought a copy of it. Loved it.
LR: See, at the time the dance scene had really begun to overspecialise in the UK. There were a lot of subgenres popping up and there were a lot of people being quite pretentious about what they were doing. You know? We like to party and have a good time – we love the music, and we’re really passionate about producing, and passionate about the art, but people were taking it way too seriously. We thought the word ‘plumpers’ was quite a non-serious word, so it seemed like quite a good banner or word to have on your shield no matter where you might be.
AO: Speaking of music production, which role do you enjoy more – DJ or producer? If you had to pick one.
AG: That’s a really tough one, because if you spend too long doing one, you really miss the other. So you do it sort of hand in hand.
LR: Producing’s lovely, but then it has its downfalls, just like how deejaying is lovely but it has its downfalls as well.
AO: A lot of DJs these days feel the need to go into production on the side. So I was wondering if you felt they’re mutually exclusive things, or…
AG: I think it’s really good to be able to produce and do what you do, so that you can make tracks into your own.
LR: I think some DJs have something specific that makes them a natural. Some are good scratch DJs, or they have real big personalities, or they’re really good at placing records. But nowadays with the versatility of modern technology and the versatility of the CDJs, you can really go to town on producing.
AO: What do you think of Girl Talk and mashup DJs?
AG: It’s all good fun. Basically the whole Soulwax thing started it. It’s a slightly different crowd, to be honest. It’s good stuff.
AO: Any hints on the kind of direction your music is going to take after this tour?
AG: More experimental, I suppose. Actually – dancehall. No, no – trance.
AO: We get enough trance music here, thanks.
LR: Not Irish trance.

What’s in your stacks?
Five tracks on heavy duty this month
TOS: I’m here to interview you for ‘What’s in your stacks’ in our Nightlife section.
LR: What’s in your sacks?
TOS: Stacks! Stacks!
LR: I think I’ve still got two at the moment. [Laughs]

1. ‘Fake Blood’ by Mars (Cheap Thrills Records)
AG: It’s a really massive track for a lot of DJs, but it’s still brilliant.

2. ‘Shifting Gears (Stanton Warriors Remix)’ by Plump DJs (Finger Lickin’ Records)
AG: That’s been stuck on repeat.
LR: It certainly has, recently! [Laughs] I’ve actually got a record called ‘Stuck On Repeat’ that’s been stuck on repeat.

3. ‘To Protect and Entertain (Crookers Remix)’ by Busy P feat Murs (Ed Banger Records)
LR: You know the one with swearing on it. What the f**k! AG: What the f**k!

4. ‘Fancy Footwork’ by Chromeo (Back Yard Recordings)
AG: This Chromeo song will always be a good track.

5. ‘They Live!’ by Evil Nine (Marine Parade)
LR: We’ve done a sort of bootleg mix of Stanton’s bootleg, so it’s a triple bootleg.
AG: We do a lot of edits and stuff now, a lot of mix-and-matching to make it our own, you know?