Artwork

Torsten Schmidt

Our very last day of lectures today opens with a young man from the outer boroughs of the greater London area. Please give a very warm welcome to someone who his mum, I presume, knows as Arthur Smith.

(applause)

Artwork

Not so young.

Torsten Schmidt

Well, young is pretty relative these days, isn’t it? I mean, if President Carter gets away with calling 30 the new 20 or whatever.

Artwork

I’ll go with that, yeah.

Torsten Schmidt

So, take us to Croydon.

Artwork

We had a record shop in Croydon. If people don’t know about Croydon, it was, well, it wasn’t very trendy, if you know what I mean. Nobody cool was there, it had a bad kind of reputation.

Torsten Schmidt

Bad reputation for what?

Artwork

For everything, there’s not a lot going on there.

Torsten Schmidt

What’s the size of it?

Artwork

It’s quite small, it’s not really in London, it’s in Surrey, but they like to call themselves London. I was born there and grew up there, and there wasn’t a lot going on. If you wanted any kind of action you had to go into London. There’s nothing really to do there.

Torsten Schmidt

How long would it take you to get into, let’s say, Leicester Square?

Artwork

Probably take you about an hour. It takes you 20 minutes on the train then you’ve got to do some tubes and stuff like that.

Torsten Schmidt

I guess, it’s a big phenomenon especially in England, but in many other countries around the world, where you have the boys from the ‘burbs or even the proper countryside that really make shit happen, because everyone in the city itself is just so blasé about being in the city. But it’s those kids who really want to aspire to something and who then start to make things happen.

Artwork

Yeah, it was weird. I’ve often been interviewed and people say, “Oh Croydon, you know, this amazing place, blah, blah, blah.” And it was just because it wasn’t an amazing place that things happened. I’ve met people in America that say that they want to come to Croydon to visit the home of dubstep, you know? (laughs)

Torsten Schmidt

What would you do then, take them down to the local chippy?

Artwork

Yeah there’s nothing there. There was nothing in Croydon, so don’t go there! But we had the record shop, which was kind of our oasis, the little place where everyone would meet.

Torsten Schmidt

So, was that the first specialist record shop there, or were there Our Price’s and those kinds of things?

Artwork

Yeah, there was a shop very early on called My Price in Croydon that had Jazzy M, who was one of the first people to bring house music to England, and it was his shop. That was when I was really, really young and that was the shop that I would go into and buy acid house records and Chicago records and stuff like that. So there’s always been something in Croydon, even if it’s a tiny little thing, where you could get hold of music and meet people, and Big Apple records was our one.

Torsten Schmidt

You’ve spun up a tune there (gestures to decks). How would that relate to all of that?

Artwork

Yeah, this is the first record we put out on our record label Big Apple. The shop was run by John Kennedy and I had a recording studio above the shop, and we were making white labels and stuff like that and selling them in the shop. Then there was the point where we decided that we wanted to make records for our community, for our little group in our shop, and so we decided to make a record label that could only be sold in our shop. It wasn’t going to be sold anywhere else.

So we pressed up, and this is one I made, our first release on Big Apple. It was kind of weird, we knew we didn’t have to make records to play to a big market because we just wanted to make records for us, for my friends. We knew we were going to make a loss, it wasn’t going to make loads of money. But it didn’t last long because we were doing really well. People came from places around to buy our records, but then we were getting so much hassle by everyone, that we had to sell them.

Torsten Schmidt

What year are we talking about now?

Artwork

I don’t know, something like, 2000.

(music: Artwork – “Red”)

Torsten Schmidt

So that was released 11 years ago, under which moniker?

Artwork

That was under Artwork, it was called “Red.” At the time it was garage music, and it was vocals. There was some darker stuff around but when we first got it pressed up the guy was like, “Well, I’m glad you’re selling it at your shop, because you’re not going to sell many!” (laughs) We made it a red-coloured vinyl, we really wanted to make it a little bit special and it didn’t sell many when it first came out.

Torsten Schmidt

Maybe to put it into a historical context here, would you happen to have any sort of garage from that era, or somewhere near?

Artwork

Yeah, probably. Excuse me.

Torsten Schmidt

How do you organize these things?

Artwork

I don’t. (flicks through) Some garage…

(music: unknown)

Torsten Schmidt

Well, that works as a kind of wake-up call in the morning.

Artwork

Yeah, that’s the darker side of garage, the kind of speed garage thing that we were into where we were from, and then there was the 2-step kind of thing at the same time that was happening. But it was all about our shop, and there was a club called FWD>>. We’d just go into that club once a week on Thursdays.

Torsten Schmidt

FWD>> was at a different venue at the time, right?

Artwork

Yeah, FWD>> was at Velvet Rooms, which is gone now. I went up there and it’s completely gone. We used to go there and there were probably about 50 people in the whole club and 35 of those were producers, people that were making the music, so you’d go there to hear your records being played. So all of us from the record shop, probably 12, 13 would go up.

Torsten Schmidt

What was your favourite mode of transport for going up?

Artwork

Well, I was just going to say, that we worked out that if we all got in cabs that it would cost us like £40 each, so 12 of us would hire a really horrible limousine from a stretch limousine company and we’d all go up in that. The rest of the producers thought we were (laughs) trying to be flash, but it was the cheapest way of getting there.

Torsten Schmidt

What was the drink of choice there?

Artwork

In the actual limousine? Well, the limousine company were kind enough to put a bottle of really, really cheap fizzy wine which we used to call “trampagne,” which was horrible, but it was really big. One night Skream drank the whole bottle before we got there. (laughs)

Torsten Schmidt

So what’s new?

Artwork

Yeah!

Torsten Schmidt

He wasn’t even allowed to drink, right?

Artwork

No, I think he was allowed to drink inside the limo because he was with adults.

Torsten Schmidt

So who was posing as his guide?

Artwork

Hatcha, unfortunately. He was also a minor at the time (laughs).

Torsten Schmidt

You say “we” an awful lot. Can you perhaps sketch out who these people were?

Artwork

We had John Kennedy, Hatcha, who used to work behind [the counter] serving the records, Benga and Skream, Horsepower, Benny Ill, Hijack, who used to run the drum & bass floor. But then the people who used to come to the shop were DMZ, like Mala and Coki, Loefah, DJ Chef was in there, N-Type, Kode9, just so many people at the time who used to hang around in the shop and exchange ideas and come to the studio and make some stuff. It was kind of like a small Red Bull Music Academy. (laughs)

Torsten Schmidt

Perhaps with a little more drinking.

Artwork

Yeah.

Torsten Schmidt

So, one just doesn’t wake up and have a studio above a record store. What were the circumstances? Because at that time it was a rather privileged position, to have actual access to a physical recording facility.

Artwork

Yes, it was just something I’d done since I left school. I did it the hard way and went and worked making tea in a recording studio.

Torsten Schmidt

What studio was that?

Artwork

It was called F.O.R. It’s outside of Croydon and it was tape, and a tiny little sampler, like 10-second sampling time. I’d have to make the tea, but I had a job at the same time working for my dad making swimming pools, so I’d work in the day and then leave to work in the studio during the night and I’d have about two or three hours sleep. In the end my dad was like, “You’re sacked.” So I had to go and work in the studio full time. And then I just gathered my own equipment and then John from the record shop was like, “I’ve got a room upstairs, you can put the studio up there.” And it worked out really well.

Torsten Schmidt

Is there anything that was recorded at F.O.R. that the world will know?

Artwork

No, definitely not. The best band that I recorded there was a group of guys that worked in a mortuary. They were called Haram Scarum and I recorded them, and to practise, they used to prop the bodies up so that they could have an audience.

(laughter)

Torsten Schmidt

Right, so I take it they were doing uplifting music?

Artwork

No, a little bit different.

Torsten Schmidt

When you were saying you were doing that all the time, I somehow have the feeling that there was a little bit of a gap between then and 2000. Was there anything you’d like to share that you’d been recording beforehand?

Artwork

Yeah, before then I was making techno music and it was weird, it was crossing over, I was really into techno stuff.

Torsten Schmidt

When you say techno, what do you mean? Coming from a land where techno can mean a lot of different things...

Artwork

Oh yeah, I was making stuff under the name Grain for FatCat.

Torsten Schmidt

Another seminal record shop.

Artwork

Yeah, I had the second release on the FatCat label.

Torsten Schmidt

How did you get in touch with those boys then?

Artwork

Because it was two record shops. They were coming into our record shop and we were going into theirs, and because they knew we had our own recording studio. John knew Alex Knight, the guy who ran FatCat, and they just approached me and said, “Do you want to put some of this stuff out?” I can play you some if you want.

Torsten Schmidt

Yeah, that would be great.

Artwork

I got this ready, I know where this is. Same stuff, just different. I have to find the right one. It was that kind of stuff.

(music: Grain – untitled / applause)

Torsten Schmidt

Mildly bigger rooms there. Did you have any other techno monikers?

Artwork

No! (laughs)

Torsten Schmidt

And what are the secret ones that you don’t want to tell us about?

Artwork

There’s many, quite a few different ones. I swore I’d never tell anyone, so…

Torsten Schmidt

Do you want to whisper any in my ear?

Artwork

No! (laughs)

Torsten Schmidt

You know, there are incredibly credible people in this building who you find on Top Of The Pops and stuff, with early stuff they’ve done, so you know, you’d be in good company. In the UK especially, and in Germany quite a lot, too, they have the same sort of thing that they did, trying out various monikers and things. Sometime things that they might not be telling their mum about. I mean, production-wise.

Artwork

Yeah, I mean at one point when we were doing the garage stuff, we realised that we’re pressing up these records and we were getting one out every week, every two weeks. So at one point in the record shop, we had one of the walls that was all the stuff that I was either doing by myself or I was doing with other people.

And it was under the same sort of name, so we thought, “We’re going to have to start coming up with different names.” So we made up about five or six different names, and then we had the whole wall. But then people were coming in and saying, “Oh, I like that, I don’t like these lot, I like them.” (laughs) It was the one way we could get a lot of records out, to make different names up.

Torsten Schmidt

That was pretty good for your acting skills as well, right?

Artwork

Yeah, of course.

Torsten Schmidt

You know, “No them lot, I don’t like them.”

Artwork

“Yeah, they’re rubbish.” I think we started beef between two of the people at one point as well. (laughs)

Torsten Schmidt

Oh, so DOOM got that idea from you then.

Artwork

Yeah.

Torsten Schmidt

Yeah, I get it. There’s something very striking for people who were not from the UK, this whole ‘over the counter’ culture. That you had someone behind the counter serving you records who was just going, “Play them,” and then just put them away. It wasn’t in a way where you could go and dig for yourself.

Artwork

Yeah, we had the shop downstairs where Hatcha was a genius at picking up a record, turning it up full volume, and then just looking you in the face until you buy it. And then you’d get people who’d get home and be like, “God, what have I got here?” You know, but that works. But then we set up the listening booth so you could go upstairs and there were five or six chairs you could sit in and you could take your records up and make your own mind up, and you’d end up with stuff you actually wanted.

Torsten Schmidt

How much did sales decline after that?

Artwork

No, it was good! They were really, really good. It was a great idea, so people could have a listen to their own stuff and you’d have your favorite booth. You know, you’d have the one that had the needle that worked properly and the headphones that weren’t broken.

Torsten Schmidt

Were there any other sort of connections outside the shop of how everyone got in there, or was it a ‘walking down the road’-kind of vibe, and ‘what’s going on here?’-sort of thing?

Artwork

It was a place where, if you were into music you’d just go to this place because from 12 o’clock to 1 o’clock, in the day till about 7 to 8 at night, it would just be people hanging out. The same sort of people who were making music usually would turn up at some point to bring a CD that they’d made at home to test it out on the system to see what people thought about it.

Then you’d be standing next to another producer and they’d be like, “How’d you make that bassline?” And you’d be like, “Oh, I did it like this,” and you’d end up making tracks together. And you learn so fast in that kind of environment. I don’t think you get it the same with the online world, record shops are gone. They used to be a place where if you were really into music you’d go there just to listen to music all day. But then that kind of learning curve happens really fast for producers and people who were making music as well, because you’re surrounded by the same sort of people.

Torsten Schmidt

But at the same time, especially if you’re a newbie in that scenario, it can be incredibly intimidating in that setting.

Artwork

I don’t think it was there. If you had something to play, we were really into playing it and listening to it. The whole kind of scene, the dubstep scene and that FWD>> sort of vibe was, “Yeah, bring stuff along, if it’s good it’s gonna get played.” It was very open, not closed shop at all.

Torsten Schmidt

But at the same time, it’s human nature and especially amongst males, that there’s a strong element of one-upmanship.

Artwork

I don’t think it was, we were gentlemen about it. (laughs) But yeah, you always wanted to make the best kind of track you could and bring it in. You’ve got a shop full of other producers and you’ve still got to bring your track down and say, “Can I put this on?” And you’ve got that moment when you put it on and you’re standing there looking around. But because it was a record shop, the good thing about it was that if you brought your record down and said, “Hey can you play this?” - and put it on, usually if there was a record shop full of people, you’d get people saying, “I’ll have one of those.” And that was it. You knew it was cool.

Torsten Schmidt

It’s like an instant litmus test. You maybe want to play something else?

Artwork

Yeah.

Torsten Schmidt

Is this chronologically?

Artwork

Yeah, I sort of did it like that. This is a remix I did very early on. This is probably going back to the garage kind of stuff again, sort of showing where it was blending over. This is quite early on.

Torsten Schmidt

And what is this?

Artwork

This is a bootleg we did, one of the early bootlegs we did.

(music: Artwork – unknown / applause)

(music: Menta – “Sounds Of Da Future” / applause)

Torsten Schmidt

You could already tell now, looking back that at the time, it kind of stood out, especially compared to a lot of the R&B a capella kind of stuff, because there’s definitely a lot of textural kind of stuff going on there.

Artwork

Yeah, and it was good. It was that club FWD>>, it was being able to have that stuff played, and that was our little world, we didn’t care about where else it was getting played. You would make a record just to get played at your club or you’d make a record for your friends. So you weren’t worried that it wasn’t getting played up and down the country because we were mainly just going to that club, that was our world.

Torsten Schmidt

At the same time, there was this connection between FWD>> and Rinse, and so on and so on. Can you recall going to Rinse for the first time?

Artwork

Yeah, I think I went up with Hatcha. It was a pirate radio station but it’s done pretty well now, it’s quite a nice studio. It was strange. You had Sarah, who was running FWD>> and Rinse, and we were doing stuff under the name of Menta with Danny Harrison, which we were putting out on Road, which was a label she was running as well. So she was very, very important. Her and Geeneus were very important in the start of dubstep and how it worked, because without that club and without the radio station we would still just be a little record shop with some geezers hanging around in it.

Torsten Schmidt

I guess her day job must have helped, because she always had her ear to the ground and stuff. Can you elaborate a little on that, because that’s a really unique setting? A very strong woman and a person who probably doesn’t get enough credit.

Artwork

She doesn’t get enough credit. She was working for EMI at the time, so she had big connections and she could get big people like vocalists. And people would listen to her. For me, if you’re looking at the history of how dubstep has got to where it has, that’s a key player, Sarah Lockhart. Without her, none of this would be here.

Torsten Schmidt

You said about the Menta stuff. Who was that?

Artwork

Me and Danny Harrison.

Torsten Schmidt

You talk about Danny Harrison quite a lot.

Artwork

Yeah, he’s very important, we did all the Menta stuff, and the Sounds Of Da Future stuff, and we did loads of different remixes and bootlegs and countless stuff together. He was a very important guy at the shop as well, and he’s still in everyone’s mind the funniest guy in the shop. Yeah, good guy.

Torsten Schmidt

On the bootleg front, I guess things are gone long enough that’s its probably safe to talk about them now. Any bootlegs that you recommend looking out for?

Artwork

I don’t know. Unfortunately, my memory’s not that great.

Torsten Schmidt

It happens. Comes with the bootleg territory. Would you happen to have any stuff on there?

Artwork

Of the bootleg stuff? Not really. Setting up and getting ready for this, I didn’t quite know the sort of stuff I should bring. I suppose the next kind of thing I should play is when FWD>> early on started to get there, as Hatcha was the main DJ there, and he was asking people to make darker records.

If you were making records for him, he’d say, “Oh, I want more bass, blah, blah.” So he’s quite instrumental in how that sound changed, because it was like, breakier stuff and the Sounds Of Da Future stuff, and there were Zed Bias records being played, and El-B records being played.

Torsten Schmidt

And they were both not from south London.

Artwork

Well, Zed Bias is from, well, not from south London. El-B is from south London, he used to come in the shop as well. Hatcha was phoning people up and asking them, “Could you make me this? But I’d like that, and I want this a bit more dark and a bit nasty,” and stuff like that.

Torsten Schmidt

So he was basically acting as a very serious A&R / curator person for that particular scene?

Artwork

Absolutely. And what he was playing then would filter out because people would be making stuff for him, and then people would be copying the styles that he was playing as well. And this was the kind of point when it went dark. This is a track I made called “The Soul.” This is early Artwork this is just after “Red.”

(music: Artwork - “The Soul”)

Torsten Schmidt

When Hatcha phoned you up and said, “I need more bass on this, and it needs to go more in this direction and that direction,” you’re talking about a time when you could not go onto YouTube and go like, “Oh, OK, how am I gonna do that sort of bass?” or whatever.

Artwork

Yeah, this is pre-internet, we didn’t have the internet in the record shop. That’s sort of why it stayed in its little place for quite so long, because there was no internet.

Torsten Schmidt

So who did you specifically learn from about bass treatments?

Artwork

We had drum & bass to listen to, and we had a lot of the stuff from garage to listen to, but it was all about going into the studio and sitting down and thinking, “How do I do this?” - and messing about until you got the sound. But the lucky thing was that you got studio monitors but you also had a record shop downstairs that had speakers bigger than this (gestures to speakers), so it was great because you could just walk downstairs, plug it down, or bring your tracks and think, “Oh, it’s not quite working, I need more bottom end.” Or, “I need this on the snare.” So that’s why it was good to have the record shop again, to test stuff out.

Torsten Schmidt

What was your favourite weapon of choice?

Artwork

For bass? At that time I had a Nord Lead 3 and I was just so into it at the time because it had that kind of weight, but I would always go back to taking the bottom end off it and putting just a subtone from the Akai S-3000. It was weird, nowadays you can go and ask someone, “How do you do that?” Back then we didn’t really have it, we were just going off each other and what we were doing.

Torsten Schmidt

The S-3000 already had a visual at this point, right?

Artwork

It did, yeah, I think, when I started off, the first one we had up there was a S-950, which didn’t, it just had little strips, but the S-3000 was well advanced. I think I paid about £2,800 and it’s worth about five quid now, quite annoying.

Torsten Schmidt

That was a lot of swimming pools.

Artwork

Yeah (laughs), or bootlegs.

Torsten Schmidt

Or that. Does this bootleg thing still make any economic sense nowadays?

Artwork

I don’t think so. Back then it was like, you kind of had to buy it on vinyl, you couldn’t get an MP3, so if you wanted a record you had to walk into a record shop and pay your money and get a piece of vinyl. It was good times.

Torsten Schmidt

Was there anything that you learned from that process that you can still apply these days in a totally different environment?

Artwork

I don’t know, it’s completely changed now. I don’t know how to make money out of music anymore. It’s a weird kind of set-up. It’s completely different to how we started. When we started you had control because you could make a piece on vinyl and sell it and that was the only way you could do it. I remember CD copying coming in and then MP3s, and that was it, nobody bought anything anymore, so it’s completely changed now.

Torsten Schmidt

If you were to draw a graph of sales of your releases, how would that pan out over the years?

Artwork

For vinyl?

Torsten Schmidt

No, just in general.

Artwork

Oh, in general, I don’t know. People are telling me now that out of people that buy this kind of music, only 20% of them actually pay for it, which is freaky, so I don’t know. It’s got itself in a mess, I don’t know how to get out of it, I don’t have the answers.

Torsten Schmidt

How many times a week do you play out then?

Artwork

DJing? Last week, four or five or something like that, some weeks twice.

Torsten Schmidt

Those four or five were stretched out over how many days?

Artwork

Er, five days.

Torsten Schmidt

OK, so you’re not doing those crazy sessions.

Artwork

No, there were two in one night but I try to keep it one a night.

Torsten Schmidt

I don’t know whether we should just jump start to the current situation or whether you want to take us in more of a chronological order, it’s up to you.

Artwork

Yeah, we were making that kind of music, and I guess the next thing that came along was that we signed Digital Mystikz, which kind of took it to an even darker kind of place. At the time, no one had heard anything like this, they were out there on their own. I’ll play some. This is “Da Wrath,” we signed this to Big Apple.

(music: Digital Mystikz – “Da Wrath” / applause)

At that point there was nothing else like that. When they came in the shop and we said, “Look, we want to sign some stuff,” that they were doing, they delivered that and there was nothing else like it at all, which was great for the label, it was great for us and what we were doing. It set a new benchmark for people. People could do exactly what they wanted. You could do something completely freaked out and people were interested in it.

This was about the time when we started to sell vinyl on the internet around the world, so you’d have people from Japan who were buying records from us mail order and getting the record mailed to them. So this was around the time when we just started to do that. So that’s the next step.

Torsten Schmidt

It’s interesting because it’s still pretty hard but at the same time you can have a hint of that dub element in there.

Artwork

I think just going back a little bit, everyone says, “Where does dubstep come from?” And one thing that always gets missed out is the Horsepower stuff, Benny Ill and Horsepower. Benny Ill used to come into my studio and he was making techno kind of stuff, and we were making garage, and he would say, “I want to make some of this garage.”

And he’d go away for two or three weeks and he’d come back and he’d have what he thought was garage. The beats were all on the wrong beats, the snare was all on the wrong thing, and he had dub samples from old dub records. And everyone was a bit like, “This is weird, this is not like the normal garage stuff.” But Hatcha loved it and Hatcha was playing it. It was like 2-step but it wasn’t, it had too much dub in it. So that whole very dubby sound and that 2-step thing, he’s got to have a lot of credit for it.

Torsten Schmidt

For years, there was some kind of riddle because if you were living a little bit further away from Big Apple records, you had no context for it. But once in a while you’d get one of these records and you’re like, “I have no fucking clue what this is supposed to be, but it’s got about every influence I like on the planet in there. It doesn’t really make sense but I like it.”

Artwork

Yeah, and that was the thing, that was what we were into. It was just about making records for your mates. It was about making records.

Torsten Schmidt

Yes, but at the same time, you have all these other people who were growing up with kind of similar influences very far away, places like Germany and Japan, which were kind of connected to it.

Artwork

Yeah, totally.

Torsten Schmidt

And they were probably just drawn into it by the purity of it. This is probably a good time to play some Horsepower.

Artwork

I don’t think I have any in this bag, sorry.

Torsten Schmidt

OK, no worries. For the YouTube folks out there, what Horsepower tunes do you recommend to go for?

Artwork

You can pick any of them. I mean, all of them are so good and they’re so well crafted. I’ve been sitting behind Benny Ill in the studio and watching him work and he’s a guy that will sit and EQ a hi-hat for an hour. It’s amazing to watch. So any of it, and that’s one thing I can say, if you listen to any of the Horsepower tracks, they’re all good. So just put in ‘Horsepower’ and pick any ‘cause they’re all good.

Torsten Schmidt

Did Mala and that lot have their party already when they put that out?

Artwork

I don’t think they’d done one yet. But obviously that’s another step that came on when they started doing DMZ in Brixton, which was even closer. We didn’t even have to get a limousine for that one. (laughs) It was really close to the shop, they started that party and it was amazing. It was a very good party and you could go and listen to great music just up the road.

Torsten Schmidt

The interesting thing, I guess, is that if you compare FWD>> to DMZ, FWD>> is still very much about going there more from a producer’s angle, and DMZ is a proper dance, like borderline raves.

Artwork

Yeah, I love it. Every time I’ve been to DMZ it’s been amazing. They got a lot more people in there, the producers are still there, but they kind of get lost.

Torsten Schmidt

Anything else you want to play or share with us?

Artwork

I’ll try and think of something. From that kind of era?

Torsten Schmidt

I guess, we can gradually move on.

Artwork

Yeah, let’s just go through this. This is a track from Coki who was signed to Big Apple, and this was Coki just moving it on. He’s one of my heroes. His stuff is just mad. I think this is one of the later Big Apple releases, I think it’s probably one of the last ones we did.

(music: Coki – “Red Eye” / applause)

Torsten Schmidt

Do you know whether he was working in construction before as well, because he’s always so good with using space?

Artwork

He’s just unbelievable. You think he’s reached a point where that’s mental and you can’t go any further than that, and he keeps doing it. He keeps coming out with something just as good. He’s always been a constant. For me, Coki tracks are something that I’ll listen to and think, “God, how has he done that?” He’s amazing, he’s really cool.

Torsten Schmidt

Rumour has it that Hatcha is not the only person in your family that has anything to do with music...

Artwork

How do you mean?

Torsten Schmidt

There may be others from the same camp that are doing music, and I believe you might know one of the people quite well.

Artwork

Who? I don’t understand the question.

Torsten Schmidt

Don’t worry. OK, there’s a bunch of teenagers, who are a little bit younger than you that one day kind of got into the shop.

Artwork

Yeah, Benga and Skream. So, they basically used to come into the shop and buy records, and they would bring their tracks in on MP3 players when they started making tracks. They’d keep bringing them back and keep bringing them back until at one point we were like, “This is actually getting really good now.”

So we signed Benga when he was 16 years old. It was for the second Big Apple release. I did the first one, he did the second one. To watch them go from the start and start making records... we put out about three or four of their records out as releases and what they’ve done is amazing.

Torsten Schmidt

How many years were they coming into the shop before you were like, “Yeah, this is the level now?”

Artwork

I don’t know, I remember Oliver coming in with his school uniform on, so they must have been about 14. They came in for about two years before they were even making any tracks. They were really cool, really nice kids that just wanted to be into the music. You could see that they were really, really into it.

Then, when we signed them, I think it was good for them to put their release out on our record label because we were putting out anything that was good, we didn’t really care about, “Oh it doesn’t have this, it doesn’t have that.” That was just what our label was about, so I think it was a good place for them to start.

Torsten Schmidt

How long were you managing the label?

Artwork

Between the three of us, it was sort of like, six years or something like that.

Torsten Schmidt

Do you have some of those old Oliver and Benga tunes on you?

Artwork

Yeah I do, this is one of my favourite ones actually. This is Benga and “Skank.”

(music: Benga – “Skank” / applause)

Shall we play a Skream one from back then?

(music: Skream – unknown)

Torsten Schmidt

Was that still on Playstation vibes?

Artwork

No, that would have been made on FL Studio, because they started making the beats on Playstation, which were good. Then they started making them on FLStudio and they got better and better and better, and then they were bringing stuff in. I mean, I had a studio upstairs which probably cost me about 25 grand, and they had a computer at home which probably cost them about 200 quid – and they were bringing stuff in and I was thinking, “Shit, how the fuck did they make that?” (laughs) It was sounding great. That was the reason we signed them up.

Torsten Schmidt

So you basically wanted to steal their trade secrets?

Artwork

(laughs) No, it was great, it was good to see them making music on such basic equipment and it kind of showed us that they had a real feel for it, and they weren’t really interested in the arms race, they just had their equipment and they knew it.

Torsten Schmidt

That was a definite shift because just a few years before that you could literally tell, especially in drum & bass, when there was a new piece of technology released. All of a sudden, with the S-3000, you could definitely tell, “Shit they’ve got something new.” Because all of a sudden the filters would sound different or whatever, but then, and all of a sudden, it was like, “We don’t care.”

Artwork

Yeah, when we were making the tracks, like when I was making “Red,” they were at 135 BPM, and by the time they were bringing these in, they were 140. I did ask Oliver, I was like, “This is like five BPM faster.” And apparently, when you switch on FL studio, 140 is the default setting, so that’s why most of the tracks were 140. (laughs)

Torsten Schmidt

And then America got involved…

Artwork

Yeah.

Torsten Schmidt

OK, can you tell me what happened in between the time of you signing them up? I mean, obviously this is a long stretch of time to cover here, but from that, up until the time you realised that maybe you could do something together as a project.

Artwork

Yeah. We got to a point with Big Apple where we were selling vinyl and then the shop’s vinyl sales just stopped. MP3s came along, and no one was buying the vinyl. And we weren’t really geared up for selling in that world. Sarah approached us and said, “Look, I want to put some stuff of Oliver’s and Ben’s out – I know they’re signed to you, but we want to put them out.” And we just said, “Yeah, that’s a much better idea for them.”

So then Oliver put an album out and Benga put an album out, and it was a great move for them. Again, Sarah was so well set up, she knew what she was doing, and she could take them to the next level. It was around that sort of time that we started talking about making some stuff together – we made some early stuff which I don’t have with me, sorry, you’ll have to have a look on the internet for early Magnetic Man stuff.

But we had an idea that we would make these tracks together, that we could play out live. DJing at the time was on vinyl; it was on dubplates and it could only go so far, but there was new technology coming out like Ableton, which was kind of interesting in that you could split tracks up, and you could do things live and take it to another level. If you look at these tracks, the elements are drums, bass and a top line, and we thought, “Well, if each person was controlling each part, you could do the tracks live and mix them into other tracks and stuff.”

So it was sort of an idea we started out with, and we made four or five tracks and started to piece it together. We did a half-hour show at FWD>> but we didn’t want anyone to know that it was us that was doing it.

Torsten Schmidt

Which was kind of hard when you have 50 people in there, and some might have to go to the back.

Artwork

No, it was cool, because they were so many people in there, and the people that knew, knew, but it was blocked off. We put a white sheet up and we put a strobe light behind us and played this set. People were kind of pissed off that we were trying to hide, they were like, “Who is this bloke, this Magnetic Man fellow?” They liked the records, and that’s all we wanted. We just wanted to make some new music that was a little bit different, and see if people liked it for what it was, rather than, “This is something that Benga, Skream and Artwork have done.” We wanted to see if people liked it for what it was, and it kind of went down alright. Then, we had a friend of ours, N-Type, who has a radio show, and he played one of the records and then bigged us up at the same time, so that was that.

Torsten Schmidt

But it’s probably worth noting that at the time, people from outside were probably like, “Who is this Artwork fellow?” And at the same time, if you asked Oliver and Benga they were like, “Oh no, he’s a real man and we always looked up to him.” It’s always really interesting to see how you’ve got this intrinsic perspective from your actual social surroundings.

Artwork

That was part of the reason we wanted to keep it anonymous, and it would have been great if we did, but it didn’t last that long. It’s difficult to do that nowadays.

Torsten Schmidt

But weirdly enough, like at Coachella for example, they run this thing where they ask what people want to see, and to put in their favourite five acts that they really want to see in there, so they can put it into their customised timetable. And they ran this experiment with Magnetic Man, and it ranked a lot lower than when they changed it to “Skream and Benga,” because people are like, “Oh yeah, we know that one.”

Artwork

Yeah. I don’t know, it’s weird that’s how it went. We just wanted to do something new, something that was disassociated. Something that was completely different so that it left the two things separate.

Torsten Schmidt

And to a degree, all of a sudden you are entering a territory where Magnetic Man is confronted with a whole different crowd that kind of goes beyond FWD>>.

Artwork

Yeah, completely. We’re doing festivals now that are like, 40,000 people, so it’s totally different from where we started. We just want to push something as far as it can go. And it does go back to that thing when you’re at FWD>> and there’s 50 people there, all you want is 100 people, and when you get 100, all you want is 1,000. You keep pushing that kind of thing. It’s a different vibe you get at a festival, you’re playing to new people who would have never listened to your music before, they’ve just gone along to listen to music and if they come and find you and they like it, it’s good.

Torsten Schmidt

One of the most exciting times in those sort of developments is when the first one, two, three singles happen and all the craziness that goes when things start to accelerate really very quickly. Can you take us a little bit through that time?

Artwork

Yeah, it was weird. We’d been touring Magnetic Man for three years as a show and it started off with a tiny little box, which was the sound of a puppet box with a projection in the back of it and then it moved on and we were doing quite big stage shows. Then a record company approached us after we’d won at Roskilde. We’d played to about 15,000 people, and put the video on YouTube and they approached us and said, “What’s going on, what is this, who are you?” And they didn’t really know about the music, it still was quite underground, that dubstep sound. No one had been signed to a major record label so they came to us and said, “Do you want to sign with us?” It was a weird time because you have to look at it and think, “What are we going to get out of this?” I think the good thing was that we wanted the exposure, we wanted to get to as many people as we could, and signing to a record label like Sony, well, you’re going to do that.

Torsten Schmidt

So the first releases were on Tempa?

Artwork

Well, they were on Magnetic Man, it was like its own little label.

Torsten Schmidt

But Tempa mailed them out.

Artwork

Yes.

Torsten Schmidt

Can you show us one from that time?

Artwork

I haven’t got any of them with me, I didn’t get the memo! But yeah, you can have a look, check the YouTube, check the early ones like “Eclipse” and”Cyberman” and things like that. They were the tracks that we were making at that time.

Torsten Schmidt

Was that the time that Laurie was working at Tempa?

Artwork

Yes.

Torsten Schmidt

Which is another crazy thing, you have someone who has their own nice little entity, which is really key, and probably you can elaborate on that.

Artwork

He’s a dude. (laughs) That’s all you need to know!

Torsten Schmidt

He does Apple Pips and all that, but he was also really busy. He was really, “These people need to know about that music,” and just mailing them out to different people and all that.

Artwork

Yeah, he was a big player because he was actually in everyone’s face, really pushing it. But all those people were, everyone to do with Rinse and FWD>> all those people, they were all really passionate about it, and I think that’s what you need to be.

Torsten Schmidt

You did bring some Magnetic Man stuff?

Artwork

Yeah, this is one thing, the record company came to us and said, “Do what you’re doing, make whatever you want to make, because you’re doing alright.” And you could tell some people were thinking that you had to go away and make some really poppy dubstep, or whatever. But we didn’t care, we went away to Cornwall and we sat down there for two months, went mental and made the three singles down there in the first week.

The rest of the time we were just messing around until we came back and then we made some progress when we got back to what we knew. At the same time, we had free rein from the record company, so we thought, “Well let’s see how much free rein we’ve got.” So we made this, which is the opening track of the record, because there was so much expectation from what people thought they were going to get from this, that we thought that we can see how far away we can go from it. Music’s music, we just thought we’d make this.

(music: Magnetic Man – “Flying into Tokyo”)

We wanted to spend some money, so it was like, “Can we have an orchestra?” “Yes, you can.” “Can we go into a massive studio and record?” “Yes, you can.”

Torsten Schmidt

But you did read the bit about all those things being recoupable and stuff?

Artwork

Not yet, no, we’re starting to understand that now. (laughs)

Torsten Schmidt

So how much did that set you back then?

Artwork

That was quite expensive, but it didn’t matter at the time. When you get someone that says, “You can make whatever you want, you can do whatever you want,” you go for it, you just do it. You just take it and go and make it.

Torsten Schmidt

And here’s the bit where in the ‘80s a lot of bands go bankrupt.

Artwork

Yeah. But no, it wasn’t greatly expensive, it’s just nice to be able to go and do something like that.

Torsten Schmidt

Did you have any help with the strings?

Artwork

Yeah, Sam Frank did some of the string arrangement. He’s just amazing. He helped us out with bits and pieces on the album, and he wrote the lyrics to “The Bug,” and two or three tracks on the album. He’s great, he’s a super talented guy, and he’s doing his own stuff now, so watch out for him.

Torsten Schmidt

You said that’s the opener. In the sequence of the album, what would be the next thing?

Artwork

I think it was “Fire,” wasn’t it? I don’t have what was next, but I can play you this, this is something we did with Ms Dynamite for the album.

(music: Magnetic Man – “Fire”)

Torsten Schmidt

You were talking about those expectations and you were signed because of your live performance. How much did you take the actual live possibilities into account when producing these tracks?

Artwork

When you’re making them you do realise that you’re thinking, “This will be great, because those drums, etc.” The more simple you can keep it, the better it is for the live show. You’ve got so much more possibility to change it to another drum, you can filter it, and it works a lot better live and we’re still learning with the live stuff, every performance you do is another rehearsal for us. You suddenly learn something and you do it and someone is like, “Oh, that’s good,” and we’ll do that again, but it doesn’t happen the next time, but it might the time after that. It’s interesting because then when we go to make the next album, you’ve learnt so much more from doing the live stuff that you can put that back into making a new album.

Torsten Schmidt

Obviously, there were a couple of singles on there that crossed over to pop chart territory and I take it that you’d then get booked to totally different environments. The promoter can put ‘Magnetic Man’ on there and be like, “Hey, they’re in the charts, I’m gonna have a full night.” And then you show up at the club and they’re like, “Fucking hell, what did I get myself into here?”

Artwork

Yeah, that can happen but it’s not as bad as it would have been years and years ago, because people have got so much access, they’re not as silly as they used to be. Those clubs that you’re talking about would not have had a clue because they wouldn’t have access to that music to go and listen to it, and they wouldn’t have gone to the clubs and stuff like that. But now, anyone can just go onto the internet, you can be as up to date as someone right in the scene going to all the clubs and stuff, because you just watch it on YouTube. I think people know a lot more now, they’re a lot more clued up than they would have been 10 years ago.

Torsten Schmidt

Does that increase the pressure of coming with special versions, special weapons?

Artwork

Yeah, luckily we’ve got access to all these vocals so you can put vocals over something else. It’s good, you get a good reaction when people think they’re going to hear a record that’s been going for a long time.

Torsten Schmidt

Let’s say you’re Mick Jagger and you’re like, “Oh gosh, I got to play this tune again.” What do you do to keep yourself entertained while you’re like, “Oh, they want to hear ‘I Need Air’ again,” but you want to keep yourself entertained at the same time?

Artwork

The thing is, you can be playing a DJ set and you know at any point you can echo out and put “I Need Air” on, and it’s great, you can’t knock it because it still goes off, people still go mad for it, and it doesn’t matter where it is, it’s still one of those records that goes off anywhere. And you’ll never get bored of that I think, to play that record and to get that reaction, it’s still a great buzz.

Torsten Schmidt

It’s that great buzz that we should generate when people get ready for their own questions now, so think of your question before you get a buzz.

(music: Magnetic Man – “I Need Air”)

What do you reckon people in 2002 would have said in Big Apple if you played them this?

Artwork

I don’t know, it’s a completely different time. This fitted this time, that music then fitted that time. It’s different, you know?

Torsten Schmidt

There’s a couple of sounds in there that in a lot of environments like Big Apple 10 years ago would have been the enemy, you would have been shot straight away.

Artwork

I don’t think so, because all of us in that shop were into so many different kinds of music. It was a shop that did actually sell techno and house and drum & bass and everything. So, it’s like that old thing – there’s only two types of music, good and bad.

Torsten Schmidt

Do you think people are getting chilled out enough to actually admit to secret penchants for trance now?

Artwork

I don’t know. I listen to so many different types of music, and you know, I like good trance, I like good drum & bass, house, I like everything. I’m into all sorts of styles and if it comes together to make something new, or something different, I’m up for it.

Torsten Schmidt

This track in particular works really well live. Where did you take your cues from as far as the live show goes, like how to set it up? And what other live shows do you really like?

Artwork

How we went about setting this one up, was that basically, we knew we had to get three sets of Ableton running so that we could have the two sounds going at the same time. And when we first started it we rigged them together and we realised that after 21 minutes at 140 BPM, it would fall apart.

So when we first did the show we had one master computer running two slaves, and that would run for 21 minutes and fall over. So we’d have to do 19 minutes, stop, and everybody quickly load up the next patch, the next block, give the nod, and then we could carry on. We’d do that three times in an hour and we got away with it for quite a while. But now, we’ve got something a bit more sophisticated so we can actually run the whole hour. And we can stop it, start it, go backwards, go forwards, or wherever we want.

Torsten Schmidt

Looking back it makes a lot of sense, but as far as live shows go, I’m quite surprised at how well rated something like a Modeselektor show was, especially in your kind of surrounding.

Artwork

Yeah, that’s a wicked show, that’s an amazing show. I’ve seen them two or three times now.

Torsten Schmidt

Or the Moderat show, probably even better.

Artwork

Actually, we saw them last year, that was a great show. What we tried to do, the main thing was, because it’s kind of stripped down, the main tracks are a lot more basic. If there was one sound, we wanted to shape something for that sound specifically in design. So we’d sit down with people, come up with that, so when that sound hits, you get a visual for it. And we’ve kind of got that now. It was a long time getting there because we had the visuals running live with a guy at one point. But now, the visuals are all completely when a sound has got its own MIDI signal to set off each separate part. So we’re getting to where we want to get with how it looks, but then you always see something and you think, “Ah, look at that.” (laughs) I think everyone does.

Torsten Schmidt

You’re using quite a lot of different vocalists in the project. To what degree do you think having the actual physical vocalist there alters the show?

Artwork

It does. Definitely. We play the Katy B record as our last track in the set, and it’s great and it goes off, but when she’s there, it’s absolutely amazing. And the same with Ms Dynamite, and with P Money. When we’re playing it does make a big difference.

Torsten Schmidt

Can we play the Katy one? Especially, as she was part of this little shindig last year.

Artwork

Yeah, this is “Perfect Stranger.”

Torsten Schmidt

Big up, Katy.

(music: Magnetic Man – “Perfect Stranger” / applause)

Is there a question by any chance?

Audience member

Hello. Obviously, when we hear the last two songs of the Magnetic Man project, I feel like it’s more of a project for younger people, for kids. For you, is it important to touch the kids and why?

Artwork

I’m not into touching kids, no. I’ll just say that from the off.

(laughter)

Torsten Schmidt

And just for the record, you’re talking from a 63-year-old perspective. (laughs) What is your age?

Audience member

I’m 23. I don’t know, I feel like it’s the kind of music, for example, when I go to the UK and I see the show for the younger children, that is the kind of scene and sound they use. And I think that the young generation is more sensitive because they are less critical about what they listen to.

Artwork

Yeah, I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but we just make music that we like to make, and if kids like it, great; if adults like it, great. We don’t care, we just make our music.

Audience member

OK.

Audience member

How do you guys collaborate? Because I’m assuming you use your laptops, so what’s your approach?

Artwork

On stage?

Audience member

Yeah, well, how do you write the tracks in the first place?

Artwork

When we wrote this album, we hired a mansion in the countryside, stupidly. Again, we thought the record company had all the money in the world, so we thought, “Let’s hire a mansion, we’re a band now.” We went down there and we did the first three singles there in the first week, and then the other six weeks we were there, we just went mental because it wasn’t like how we’d usually do stuff. Usually, someone will send something [to someone] who’ll send it to the other person. Maybe two people are in a room who’ll send it to another person, then we’d get a backing track together, then the studio with a singer or a songwriter and move it on, and pass it on to someone else to get it mixed. And that’s just how it gets done, that’s how we’ve done most of it. We tried to do it the old fashioned way and we went a bit mad.

Torsten Schmidt

So you had a proper Spinal Tap rock & roll moment?

Artwork

Yeah, it was. It was a bit weird down there. (laughs)

Torsten Schmidt

But wasn’t part of the idea to get everyone out of London to finally get shit done?

Artwork

It was, it worked for about a week, but there’s nothing to do down there. It was Cornwall in the off-season so it was just a bit Groundhog Day, a bit strange.

Audience member

Maybe some people here don’t know how huge you are, you were at Buckingham Palace and you had Prince Harry and William bigging you up. You went from “trampagne” to this, and I’m just wondering how do you feel about this? Do you want to just go back to FWD>> ten years ago, or do you enjoy it?

Artwork

I still go to FWD>>, I was there a couple of weeks ago, and I still drink trampagne. (laughs) I don’t know, because we’re all still together, we’re still the same group of friends.

Audience member

Do you find it hard to keep up with Skream and Benga?

Artwork

I find it hard to keep up with them drinking-wise.

Torsten Schmidt

Who’s the fastest driver?

Artwork

That’s Benga. He’s fast. But yeah, everybody’s still in touch with each other, and if you go and play or DJ at a dubstep thing somewhere, there’s going to be someone you know, because you were there ten years ago, so it’s sort of like a good little family. Everyone’s still in touch with each other, so it’s good.

Audience member

I was just wondering if you find it overwhelming.

Artwork

I don’t think so, because it all moves on relatively.

Audience member

My question is quite similar to hers, actually. I was going to ask what I presumed he was trying to say, I was also going to defend Cedric here (gestures to first audience member). I guess, what he was trying to say was that obviously when you were making music back in the old days it was a very underground thing, and as you know yourself, a lot of people involved in the underground have very biased opinions. And when you start to do something that’s on a different level, a lot of that kind of guys can be very negative and very critique-y.

So your music as Magnetic Man has skyrocketed in the last year and it was a huge teenage student market that adhered to it, and I presume coming from the underground perspective, do you feel like that was overwhelming? I guess, you answered it when you said you just wanted to make music that you love but if you could go back to when you were working at Big Apple… I mean, I worked at a record store and I know that the digital world is hard, but if you could trade seats to go back to that stage in your life, but in 2011, when the digital age didn’t take over, and records were still playing, and you and the guys were still hanging out in the record shop, would you?

Artwork

Oh, I’d definitely hang out in the record shop, because it was just so much fun. It was a great time and we had the most fun. I think all of us would say it was the best time of our lives. It was just absolute jokes all day, but then these things come to an end, you move on, you do something else. You could say, “I want to go back there,” all the time, and I think all of us involved even now, when we go for a drink, talk about what it was like back in those days in the shop because it was the best time. But things move on.

Audience member

And when you were there, you were probably like, “Fuck, I want to get out of this shop.”

Artwork

(laughs) Yeah, the grass is always greener.

Audience member

So you’d go back for a day…

Artwork

I’d pay money for that, yeah.

Audience member

That was not really what I tried to ask. I think it’s a very important thing that you answer this question because probably, a lot of people in this room have a problem with the mainstream industry. My question was more about teaching: when you read interviews, Skream and Benga, they call you the teacher, and in the studio, how important is it for you know to touch the kids, or not at all maybe?

(laughter)

Maybe there is a misunderstanding?

Artwork

No (laughs), no, it’s just the sentence, “What do you feel about touching kids?” It means ...

Audience Member

Sorry, it’s not my first language.

Artwork

No, I’m with you. I’m absolutely with you. I think it’s kind of like ... Yeah.

Audience Member

Obviously when you’re a kid, you’re like a sponge, you absorb everything. No? This is gross again?

In terms of music, OK? Maybe the best thing to touch the feelings of the people, is when they are younger and still sensitive, and still don’t really understand what they listen to? I don’t know.

Artwork

The thing really is, you don’t make music for a certain person. You can’t do that. You just cannot do that. You have to always make music for you and your friends. If you stop making music for your friends, you’re fucked. If you go into a room and think, “Oh, I’ve got to make music for this market, or for that person ...” Forget it, don’t bother. Just go and make music that you want to make.

At this stage, this is what we were like when we were making these tracks, we got with songwriters for the first time. We were allowed like, John Legend. Someone says, “Oh, you can do a track with John Legend.” You’re like, “Can I?” You just go and do it, and you make something that you really like. That’s all you can do. If it turns out that somebody likes it or somebody doesn’t like it, or blah, blah blah ... I don’t know, you just kind of make music that you like, that’s all there is to it.

I kind of see where you’re coming from there, I don’t know. We’re not trying to make anything for a specific market or anything like that, we’re just making music that we like.

Audience Member

OK, I try one last time. The first time we had Young Guru, and who came from basically a really little city and who managed to break through to the industry, and he was talking about if you want to do it and get in the charts as number one, you have to do it, but you have to do it your way, doing the things you like.

Let’s get the kid thing away. What’s your opinion about this and how do you think the music you do now is the achievement of what you started ten years ago.

Artwork

We just gave the record company an album of 15 tracks and we said this is what ... and if you listen to the album, the whole album, there’s tracks on there that aren’t like the ones I’ve just played, but then they get picked as the singles. When they get picked as singles they get played on radio, and when they get played on radio, the average listener of Radio 1 is 16-21 or something like that. Those people are the ones that listen to it, and they’re the ones that like it. If you listen to it as a whole album, there’s all different kind of styles that we went through and made. We do stand up for every kind of track, we loved making it and we like the songs.

Torsten Schmidt

I guess what he’s getting at, if you do a new record or especially album with your mates, it’s you lot sitting down making a plan, puff! That’s how it’s done. All of a sudden, you get loads of A&Rs, distribution people, some TV pluggers or whatever, it’s like, “Oh no, no, we need to have this thing in there and we need to have that element in there, so we can satisfy that demographic,” and all that bullshit when you really know that, okay, all they care about is getting that year-end bonus, and not what’s going to happen with my record

Artwork

Totally. We were very lucky, because they came to us, and they said, “Look, we see what you’re doing, you just do what you want to do, you make it, and give us it back.” So we did, we just went and made what we wanted to make. I’m sure it does happen, but we were quite lucky, because they did leave us alone, and we gave them what we wanted to give them.

Torsten Schmidt

And Sarah punched them.

Artwork

That’s the thing, because we had Sarah on our side, she’s like our manager, so she’s in there telling them exactly what’s what. You don’t argue with her.

Audience Member

That’s what I wanted to say to the people. Thank you.

Artwork

Cool. Yeah, we’ll leave the touching kids out of it too.

Audience Member

Hello, a couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to interview Benga and we talked about finishing tracks, and I was just wondering, because he said he finished up his tracks in a day or two, and I was wondering just how much time do you need to finish up a track when you’re working on your own, not with Magnetic Man.

Artwork

For me doing stuff, it’s a lot longer. I’ve seen, he’s just wild. He’ll sit down and start, and not eat until he’s finished. The Magnetic Man project that we were doing, each track was taking a lot longer, because it’s bounced around different people. When you do it ... making an album that three people have to okay. we’d send the backing track out, and maybe we’d have eight top lines back, by eight different songwriters. Then you listen to each one of them and then you’ve got to go through all of those. Then you have to find one and think, “Right, that’s good, now let’s go and record the vocal.” It’s a lot longer process for each record. Then you’ve got to mix it and stuff like that.

Audience member

I’m not really familiar with your discography, but you don’t have an LP, right?

Artwork

No.

Audience Member

How did you go about making an LP with Magnetic Man, because you have to have that distinct sound in LP? It’s not like singles. Singles you can have two tracks that are really different on the next, but on an LP, how did you go about doing that?

Artwork

It was weird. We had forty-odd tracks that we’d done together and from that you can kind of pull them out to make a sort of shape, a rough shape for an album. Then you’re still kicking tracks off and putting new ones in and kicking it off until you get to a stage where you think, “OK, that’s what I want it to be.”

Audience Member

Hey, what’s up. The reception in the UK has been really nice, what about outside of other parts of the world?

Artwork

Really good. We just did a tour of Australia, about two weeks ago, which is really good. We did all the cities there. We’ve done America, which is cool. I think America’s just starting to get it now, they’re starting to get the whole dubstep thing.

Audience Member

Has it been officially released in America, the record?

Artwork

I think it has. It was kind of weird, it seems... to have just kicked off now, do you know what I mean? We released it last year, earlier in the year, so I think it’s kind of like...

Audience Member

The dubstep scene back in America, was years behind. It’s just kind of making in roads within the last year, year and a half.

Artwork

I think America’s ready for something new. I think it could be a really good fun out there.

Audience Member

We have our own style, for better, for worse. They’re doing their own thing or whatever. Cool.

Torsten Schmidt

As the microphone travels over there, when you’re sitting in the diner or at the pizza stand in Coachella, and you got a bunch of heavy metal freaks going, “Yeah, Skrillex! Dubstep, yeah bro!” I’m like, “Right, why don’t you go wait and check out Magnetic Man and dem lot,” and they’re like “No, [inaudible].” How do you explain the difference to a young open mind like that? Why they should listen to you?

Artwork

I love Skrillex stuff. He’s done amazing and the production is just unbelievable, but it’s all different. In that kind of world, of that sound, he’s unbelievable, he’s number one. It’s different sounds and again, it’s that thing of there’s the good stuff and there’s the bad stuff and there’s an awful lot of that bad sounding stuff. Heavy, kinda of noisy stuff that I’m not into. The very good stuff I really like, and I don’t know. You just kind of go for whatever. You just find... It’s personal as well, because what I think is good stuff, somebody else might think is not. It’s difficult to explain to anyone, but I think just find the good stuff, that’s all.

Torsten Schmidt

Don’t be distracted by haircuts

Artwork

No.

Audience Member

Do you find that an album with a wide variety of styles on it is difficult for the public to accept?

Artwork

I don’t know. I’ve thought some of my favorite albums are all sorts of different stuff. No, I don’t know. I don’t really think so.

Audience Member

You’re a long time vinyl peddler and vinyl DJ since the ‘90s and I’m just wondering when you plug into a really big system with a digital setup, do you find you have to really change your approach to avoid getting it brittle and trebbly? Do you do long sound checks to find how to play...

Artwork

Yeah, with the Magnetic Man stuff we’re doing, we run it all through valve compressors and things like that to give it some warmth. We’ve got a sound guy, Johnny, that goes with us everywhere and he’s got some very special kit that boosts bottom end and things like that. There’s lots of weird kind of noise restrictions now at festivals that they’ve just brought in these new categories because they realize that people are putting it up at a certain decibel level but people were pushing frequencies that weren’t making it to off but now there’s new categories for all that sort of thing. It’s like a battle between the people that want to turn it down and the people that want to turn it up.

Audience Member

Do the bass guys get away with it though? Because bass does produce a lot more decibels without hurting your ears, or feeling like it though.

Artwork

Yeah, it’s weird, it’s like a fight between them. I don’t know who’s winning this week, but...

Audience Member

Good luck mate.

Artwork

Yeah, thanks.

Audience Member

Just going to ask you one more quick question. You obviously signed to a major label this year and you never know, out of everybody here, anybody who watches this online, they might get put in that same position. Obviously, when a label comes at you with an offer, there’s obviously a lot of small print, a lot of things you’ve got to really look through. I was just wondering if I could get your advice on if Sony knock at anybody’s door tomorrow morning, or Universal, certain things that maybe... mistakes you have made or not, or just certain elements of signing with a major label that you should take account of.

Artwork

Yeah, that’s a good point. I think that the most important thing, if you get any interests from anything like that, is to get yourself the best music lawyer you can, and ask everyone you know to find out who the best one is. Because you could look at it all day long and think, “This is absolutely great.” But there’s so many weird little things. They’ve been doing it for years. They’ve been doing it for 100 years or whatever it is, of making these deals that work well for them, and you need to have someone one your side that knows it as well as they do. Without them you’re completely and utterly lost. I think, it’s good if you get your deals laid out when you’re really hot. If they really want you, you can get a lot more than if they’re just um-ing ah-ing, which is obvious, but you can get away with a lot more.

Audience Member

You wouldn’t necessarily believe in the phrase, “Never take anything from the label.” A few artists have told me, “Jesus, take as little, if nothing, off them as possible, you’ll be paying it back the rest of your fucking life.”

Artwork

It depends because you can set up all sorts of different deals. You can set up deals just for that album. It used to be back in the day, deals would be cross-collateralized against. If your out with your first album, didn’t do so well, then your second, you’d be paying for that first album out of that one and it would go on and on and on. I think things have changed. Again, you’ve got to get that music lawyer that knows what he’s doing because they can do those things for you. But things are changing, because record labels are not selling the records that they used to and they’re going to want money for doing what they’re doing.

Audience Member

Like gigs and stuff, do you reckon they’re going to start taking percentage at gigs?

Artwork

Yeah, the money’s going to have to come from somewhere, they’re big buildings with lots of people in them. They’re not selling the records that they were because everyone is just downloading it for free. If you’re going to get your music out to as many people as you can, you need those kind of people to do that for you. I think things are changing, it’s a weird world out there now. But there’s always deals to be done.

Audience Member

Cheers, thanks.

Torsten Schmidt

Got one more? No? Do we got some music to end on a mildly more uplifting note than trying to save the recording industry. Could be anything, it’s a going away one.

Artwork

Uplifting. OK, going away, all right.

Torsten Schmidt

End of the night tune. Should we maybe give the man a hand before he plays the tune and thank him for being here.