Grime and dubstep pioneer Plastician has made the KRK Kreate 8 studio monitors his primary reference speakers, praising their low-end punch and warm character as ideal for club-focused music production.
Chris Reed – known globally as Plastician – has spent 25 years at the sharp end of UK electronic music. As a DJ, producer and founder of Terrorhythm Recordings, his ear is finely tuned, and the gear in his studio has to work as hard as he does. So when he landed a pair of KRK Kreate 8 monitors through an event with the Anti Social Producers Club, it didn’t take long for them to earn a permanent spot in his setup.
“The bass on the KRKs is great. There’s a nice warm sound on them. They’ve been my main set that’s plugged in,” he says. “I only really use my other monitors when it comes to the mixdown process, just to check the mix in a different set of monitors. But KRKs are my day-to-day now.”
Check out our deep dive on the KRK Kreate Series here.
For producers working in bass-heavy genres, that balance of warmth and low-end presence is everything. Plastician is clear on what sets the Kreate 8s apart from a standard reference monitor, and why that matters for the kind of music he makes. “For the size and the quality of sound you get out of them, they produce such a nice warm sound,” he says. “It’s definitely different than a reference monitor – for me, that’s a positive.”
Running a label and preparing tracks for large systems means Plastician needs to know how his music will hold up when it’s played at a loud volume. “They do a great job at giving me a feel for what songs might sound like in a venue or club. Personally, that’s the most important thing. I want to make sure songs sound good when they’re played loud through proper club systems. You get a good reference of a basic club system on these monitors.”
The Kreate 8s also offer Bluetooth connectivity via a button on the back – a feature Plastician notes as a genuinely useful addition. “The thought of having that quality of sound in a living room, if you’ve got a nice vinyl setup, or you want to switch between listening to records and connecting your laptop, is very nice. You don’t normally get that feature with a pro audio monitor.”
With a touring schedule that takes him to Australia, Thailand, New Zealand, Canada, the US and Europe, studio time is at a premium. “I have a lot of projects to keep me busy,” he says. “But these KRK Kreates have been great. They’ve become my go-to speakers.”
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