Calyx & TeeBee are edging closer to the climactic release of their ‘Plates’ series, an album that encapsulates the elements of releasing music which are sometimes forgotten in the contemporary culture of instant gratification.
For two decades, Calyx & TeeBee have forged an unprecedented path at the forefront of the drum and bass scene. Before they came together to form a duo Calyx & Teebee had already amassed astounding back-catalogues. Individually their releases have spanned all of the drum & bass genres seminal labels, including imprints such as Moving Shadow, 31 Records, Juice Recordings, Vision & Renegade Hardware.
Dub Plate Culture
Calyx & TeeBee have been steadily releasing music on Ram Records since signing with them in 2012. By 2019 the duo had built up a stack of new beats – and a brand new concept.
The concept? ‘Plates.’ Taking it back to the days of acetate, ‘Plates’ will be a series of releases themed around original dub-plate culture, both musically and aesthetically – culminating in an album of the same name.
The attention to detail for this project carries over to making the artwork look similar to the label stickers that adorned the original jungle dubplates cut by the infamous Music House cutting studio.
Speaking to Mixmag in 2019 the duo said:
“We want to step back from the immediate culture where the first time people hear new music, it’s the full track ‘premiered’ online and it’s immediately ready to buy. So a load of our forthcoming Plates are already getting played by a bunch of people we respect and love in this scene and as the year unfolds they’ll be coming out one at a time: some deep, some heavy, some that hark back to our early days, and others that sound like nothing we’ve made before.”
Set The Tone
‘Set The Tone’ takes ‘Plates’ to the next level, reminiscing on the old-school whilst also infusing the record with Calyx & TeeBee’s innovative stamp.
Following in the footsteps of tracks such as ‘Big Sound’, ‘The Fog’, ‘Made in Detroit’, ‘Look to the Skies’, ‘Cloak & Dagger’ and ‘War Dub’, ‘Set The Tone’ is a minefield of free-falling breaks and a vocal call-to-action rolling between its smashing crescendos & kick starts the resumption of ‘Plates’ releases as the LP project builds to completion.
Plates Documentary
Back in January 2020 the duo teased a trailer for a documentary video about all things ‘Plates’ related. The full video is still in the production process and will document build up of the full project all the way up to the point of mastering dubplates & vinyl for the full album release.
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