When you absolutely, positively, have to obliterate every bass stack in the goddamn room, MRK1 is the man to call. The Manchester DJ/producer (real name Mark Foster) first rose to infamy as one of grime’s foremost innovators, stretching the genre to its limits with early underground smashes like ‘Proper Tings’ for Immunity Recordings and ‘Turn It Up’ for Texture Records (both 2002). Later, he began to sculpt futuristic, razor-sharp beats for his deadly MC squad Virus Syndicate, bringing a raw sampladelic hip-hop edge to grime’s militant spaceage pulse on albums like ‘Work Related Illness’ (2005) and ‘Sick Pay’ (2008).

While the grime competitors struggled to keep up, MRK1 was already moving on, his expansive, city block-levelling basslines and roughneck instrumentals purpose-built for the incipient dubstep scene. He’s since carved a niche as one of dubstep’s baddest lieutenants, with a DJ schedule almost as formidable as his back catalogue of bass-splurging, gully wobble steppers on labels like his own Contagious, forward-thinking  experimental stamp Planet Mu, and Pinch’s revered Tectonic.

MRK1’s recent series of cuts have tended towards the outright sick, designed to demolish the dance, and new single ‘Move Your Soul/The Electrician’, out now on his Contagious imprint, precedes new MRK1 and Virus Syndicate albums this year. “My album is gonna be the best-selling releases I’ve had out on Contagious, with a couple of newer tunes, and tracks and remixes from Skream, Marlow, Chimpo and Jack Sparrow,” said MRK1. “There’s the new Virus Syndicate album coming in March or April, too. It’s sounding really good, it’s just finished now.”

These are his latest club bombs…

Jakes
‘War Face (Remix)’
Hench
“It’s a high energy tune, with a military-style
intro, with a sample taken off some old war
film. It’s got a lot of screaming in it! It’s also
got a very powerful drop, a big bassline — it
smashes it every time. Jakes is on my AIM,
so we send each other tunes quite a bit, I get
all his new stuff off him. That’s one of the
outstanding ones at the moment. I think it’s
a VIP mix, though, which makes it that much
more special!”

Benga vs Virus Syndicate
‘Untitled’
Dubplate
“This is another big one. It’s on dubplate at
the minute, not sure what we’re doing with it.
It’s one for the clubs, jump-up style, with the
usual Benga sort of feel, his trademark. It’s
like ’26 Basslines’, with catchy lyrics from Virus
Syndicate.”

MRK1
‘Move Your Soul’
Contagious
“One of my most recent tunes. It’s got a big
orchestral, eerie ensemble string breakdown,
and then it goes quiet, before you’ve got a big
crowd sample of people screaming. If you’re
in a club, people think it might be the person
next to them making noise, so they might feel
obliged to make some noise too!
“I’ll go with a certain sound for two or three
tunes, and then get a new piece of equipment
and drag out some new sounds. I’m trying to
update all the time. This has got a drum & bass
feel to it, this tune in particular goes back to a
track called ‘The Pulse’ by Bad Company.”


Doctor P
‘Sweetshop’
Dub Police
“It’s quite different to what I would normally
play. It’s got a kind of hardcore rave intro, with
a ‘take me higher!’ vocal sample, and people
are like, ‘what the hell is he playing?’ And then
it drops into this disgusting bassline, with a
high-pitched, Joker-esque sort of feel. That
always gets massive reactions. It makes a tune
stand out if it’s got something a big different
about it. I remember when I used to go and buy
tunes, and say, ‘I don’t know what it’s called but
it’s got this sample in’, and then instantly the
guy would be like, ‘yeah it’s this one’, and you’d
be buzzing, thinking, ‘yeah I’ve got it!’”

Virus Syndicate
‘Crazy’
Dubplate
“When I play this out it gets one of the best
reactions from the crowd. This one is slightly
different to my usual productions. It’s got the
heavy bassline, but the vocals, because of the
way they’re mixed down, stand out on top of
it, so I’ve been trying to mix it up a bit with a
grime element. It’s a skippy beat, with a bit of
bounce to it.”

‘The Electrician’
Contagious
“This is the flip to ‘Move Your Soul’. It’s an
uptempo dubstep tune, sort of in the Caspa or
Rusko style, with a screaming bassline. Instead
of being a wobble, it’s a straight sine synth, a
mixture of a synth and a sub. It’s getting quite
a bit of play, people like Diplo are playing it as
well.”