To be honest, we first discovered your work through an introduction on Spotify’s Discovery Weekly. As such, how do you feel about the current state of music?As much as Spotify maybe isn’t the best for monetising people listening to music, I think it’s an amazing tool for finding new music, organising what you like and just having an enormous library at your fingertips. As much as it would be great to for artists to get paid loads every time someone listens to something they made, barely anyone has been making money off digital music since the internet started. Once you can get something for free, why would anyone pay for it? Maybe it’s unfair that a big company like Spotify is making loads of money off other people’s work, but to be honest it is a great interface and is an easy way to consume and find music. It’s great that Bandcamp has done as well as it has— I remember studying it while I was at music college and even then I thought why would anyone pay for something digital. I think it’s great that if you can afford it your money goes directly to the artist, and it 100% makes it more viable for artists to continue making and self-releasing music.
Outside of music, could you tell us about any scenes or artists that you are currently paying attention to?Outside music, I spend most of my time watching cooking videos to be honest. I’m a big fan of Matty Matheson, Brad Leone and Binging with Babish: they’re great because they’re entertaining to watch as well as genuinely having great recipes and cooking techniques.
Once the situation with COVID has resided, if you were to host a party of your own choosing, what sort of space, what line-up, and what sort of event would you like to do? Please tell us about what your ideal party would be.It seems obvious but I’d love to do a Wisdom Teeth party somewhere with an absolutely gigantic sound system haha. It feels like an extremely long time since the hairs in my nose were vibrating from a bass bin. The majority of the gigs I played before the pandemic were at slightly smaller venues with nice systems but maybe not the biggest low-end, which I think really effects the sort of stuff you might play. So much sound system music is so sparse and maybe doesn’t totally translate unless it is on a big system, and that was maybe what made me fall in love with the music. There seems to be less places in the UK that do those sorts of nights, probably to do with where you can get a license in a densely populated city to play blaring loud music. There are obviously still a few nights that focus on that stuff before the pandemic, like Iration Steppas and Sub Dub. My most recent memory of that sort of environment would have be V.I.V.E.K’s SYSTEM parties which have still been going strong for years; it’s amazing that he’s kept up the vibe and energy of the old dubstep nights like DMZ, but with his own stamp on it. But yeah, it would be amazing to curate something with that sort of vibe but with some of the artists that have released on Wisdom Teeth— like Piezo, Parris, AYA, Duckett, Lurka.
I reckon a live set from Steevio would be amazing on a system with all of his modular gear. It’d be awesome to get someone like Shielding as well, his EP was fairly ambient but has some amazing rhythms and nods to functional club music. It’d be amazing to get some of the UK Funky and Amapiano crew who’ve been releasing some amazing music recently, like Scotti Dee, Scratcha DVA, Karen Nyame, Roska, Apple, Teno Afrika. Would be awesome to get some of the Incensio crew involved as well, as I have been loving the output of Anthony Naples’ label.
Could you tell us about any upcoming plans, or perhaps new challenges or prospects you would like to undertake in the future?I’m setting up another label called Sweet N Tasty, which’ll be a kind of white label sort of thing where I’ll be putting out quite club ready EPs— I have a UK garage one and a footwork one on the way— then also trying to work on another album. And working on Wisdom Teeth, which has loads of exciting stuff lined up, including the new EP from Iglew which we’ve just put out and an amazing club oriented EP from Sputnik One.