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Diplo & Switch :: Remixing tuna sandwiches and M.I.A. records with this international duo of mystery

By Brandon Perkins   Photography by None

09/14/07 :: URB web

"Diplo is Wes and dryly American. Switch is Dave and very British." This is what I said to the interns who transcribed the brief little translatlantic interview you are about to read. Together with M.I.A., they turned Kala into one of the best reviewed records of 2007 (all three on the beats, Mya would be happy that you know). Diplo is b'more. Switch is house. That's what they used to say, but now they're working together on dancehall records and numerous remixes and a North American tour. Shit is going to get so crazy that no one is going to have anything to say anymore.

URB: Are you guys working on projects now or are you laying low before you hit this tour up?
Diplo: I'm making a tuna sandwich right now

URB: How's that tuna sandwich coming out?
Diplo: It's cool I've put in some hot peppers and some celery, Dave [Switch]'s actually a cook so he probably makes better tuna sandwiches.  Yea but I'm working on a song I'm gonna play out an edit I did right now in the studio.

URB: What song is that?
Diplo: An instrumental that I put on iTunes with this girl rapping, it's a James Brown blow your head kinda thing.

URB: So when you guys go out on the road do you play together or do you do a separate headlining gig?
Switch: We'll probably just go to the club and get drunk and not play at all. Nah, we got chaperones to make sure that don't happen.
Diplo: HA! We have a babysitter on this tour.

URB: Do you guys get into a lot of trouble together is that how it works? You just came back from Jamaica I can only imagine what kind of trouble...
Diplo: Yea, we didn't get into anymore trouble, Dave just got stuck in the hurricanes. We were actually really business down there. We got a lot of work done.

URB: How's the work coming? I know you were working with some big names down there.
Diplo: Yeah, it sounds really amazing the stuff we got. We just gotta get together to finish a lot of the things. 

URB: Are you guys trying to do dancehall records or are you doing your own kind of production with dancehall artists?
Switch: We're gonna make it a double CD album. It has one cd which is like us, our take on sort of contemporary dancehall sound. And then, there will be another CD which will be more of what Wes does and what I do separatley where we'll take the same songs and give them a little twist and switch it up.
Diplo: What we're good at already is taking any song, any syle and tempo and just fucking it all up and making it crazy like for a club mix, like Dave just does that weekly for the songs he remixes and I do that with the bootlegs I do. So on one side Dave and I are good enough as producers we're just gonna try and do a record that's dancehall that's so across the board crazy. We're trying to make a record that can be played in Jamaica and then on the other side we're gonna take all those parts and bits and kind of remake the record in a more crazy way. That's what people expect from us anyway.

URB: Are you ready to take that on the road at this point?
Diplo: Maybe, we'll see. We haven't really worked together. I just left Jamaica a couple of hours before the hurricane hit and then Dave left; he was stuck there a couple of days. So we just worked hardcore for about seven days and we haven't touched it since then. So this tour we'll be a point where we can actually break these records and feel em' out and stuff.

URB: It's never just one project with you guys, you have a dancehall record, you have a tour. So, what are you working on, in addition to all this stuff?
Switch: I'm just kid of concentrating on Dubsided at the moment. I've got a new Switch single coming. I'm just trying to rattle off a few thinfs and use the tour as sort of a testing ground so we can kind of feel out and play some exclusive stuff, some up-and-coming stuf and on the road see what bits are working. Apart from that there, obviously the Jamaican stuff which is looming as soon as we find time to get that underway which I'm hoping we'll get to test a few bits and bops on the tour.

URB: What about you Wes, do you have any other projects your making soon?
Diplo: I'm just working in Philly a lot. I bought a building so I'm just fixing the studio up and doing little remixes and things here and there.

URB: So you actually have a little fix-it project?
Diplo: Yeah everyday I go to the building and scrape the shit off the walls and kill cockroaches.
Switch: It's amazing this place that he's got I'm moving in.
Diplo: Yeah, Dave's going to live in the cockroach nest. Yeah it's gotta bunch of old rooms like a masoleum where they used to build headstones for graveyards. It's right around the corner from my house and I just bought it and it's real crap but we've fixed up a coupple of rooms now that we can record in. Amanda blank lives around the corner and Plastic Little lives around the corner and Spankrock, I dunno where he lives but he's always here. It's just a cool place in Philly where we can go and start working in a proper studio. I was really inspired by the studios were worked at in Jamaica. Tuff Gong was amazing you know? the studio set up and whole vibe the whole attitude of the place was really nice and I'm trying to make something like that in Philly and in the meantime I'm getting ready for this tour.

URB: I'm sure there's been a million questions about 'the men behind M.I.A. tour'...are you sick of answering that kind of stuff?
Diplo: That's Dave's question.
Switch: Nah, We're both pretty heavily involved that project so they obviously expect some kind of twist on that angle. For me it's that my sound is moving more towards the kind of music Wes plays and Wes' is moving more towards House and uptempo stuff for the moment.
Diplo: I think me and Dave both represent a real shift in music. In the UK I've been to some of Dave's parties and there just ridiculous you know? I met him once in Dublin, and I think Dave has been to some of my parties here in Philly and we're both part of something really unique and in America especially, Dave hasn't been here long enough for tours and this will be my first club tour really. I've done the rock thing, like last year I toured with CSS and it's still a rock vibe but we're actually going out there just to really like put together a party that really showcases what we do as far as making music and making people dance and I think both of us have and admiration, cuz we're both really progressive in our sounds and our styles and we really wanna just fuck things up.As far as M.I.A., when me, Dave, and her work together it's like really something special. We like really I think... we were together in Trinidad area for a couple weeks, about a week, and I think what we did there was like really just as demos, they just turned out to be really awesome. Like the things that we worked on and I think we made a really good team, when we collaborated with all three of us with our ideas and stuff.
Switch: We should invite M.I.A.
Diplo: Yeah, you should. Actually, M.I.A.'s playing on David Letterman tonite. She's gonna do "Paper Planes" on David Letterman, that's pretty exciting.

URB: Bun B really holds it down, "Paper Planes" seems ready to make moves...
Diplo: I have the mix a little better. I worked on it a little more last night. The label has started giving it out. I'm getting so many requests for it, I'm just gonna start giving it out to people. So they can play it out, cuz it's a really good mix.

URB: It is a great mix ya know. The song itself is great. It's almost like it's waiting for a rap posse cut.
Diplo: You know what's funny, 50 Cent's management actually emailed me for the instrumental cuz they wanted to use it for a mix tape. But his record was already out now so I doubt they did it. That was really cool.

URB: Alright man, I know you guys are real busy if your leaving tomorrow for tour and stuff. Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Good luck with the sandwich.