Interview #715: Magnetic Man

Back in the early noughties, when dubstep was still known as the Croydon Sound, three of the producers whose work was most influential in creating and defining the fledgling genre were Benga, Skream and Artwork. Now united as the genre’s first and only supergroup they have helped to bring it out of London’s underground clubs and into the charts with their top-five, self-titled album.

We spoke to the trio moments before they went on stage at London’s Roundhouse, asking them about their live show, writing new material, the record store community and the rapid rise of dubstep.

“I Like Music because…it makes me feel a certain way.” Benga, Magnetic Man

”I Like Music because…it makes other people feel a certain way.” Artwork, Magnetic Man

"I Like Music because…I do." Skream, Magnetic Man

ILM: You're playing London’s legendary Roundhouse this evening! Are you looking forward to the show?

Skream: It’s always special doing a show in London. Especially something that is backed by iTunes, which is huge. I’m not overly into the win-the-ticket policy because you get a load of people who apply and just go to the show because they’ve got a ticket. I’m not overly into that. On the other hand, people who wouldn’t necessarily have come and watched you have a chance and opportunity to, so.... Anyway, it’s always nice for us to come and play London!

ILM: How has the Magnetic Man show changed in the last few years?

Skream: I think it’s taken us up until now to actually get it bang-on.

Artwork: Up until now all the shows have been amazing, and everyone says it’s fantastic, but you’re still thinking “yeah but if I had that, it would be brilliant.” We’ve just spent the last three months building the new rig that we’re using now and it is unreal. You can do anything you want. It’s limitless.

Benga: A lot of that is because we don’t get to watch the show. We’ve just recently seen the show on the DVD, and its like “wow, this is how far we’ve come!”

Skream: Obviously, because we’re behind it, you can’t go out and go “oh yeah, that’s great.” We can’t keep running through it where one of us runs out, watches it, and then comes back!

ILM: How much room for spontaneity is there?

Benga & Artwork: Too much!

Artwork: It’s difficult because whenever we rehearse or get together, when we get the new rig, it’s just… We can’t do it because there is a certain vibe and there is a certain adrenaline that is running when you're in front of the crowd, so we only rehearse when we are on stage. Haha! It’s the maddest bit. We do funny things sometimes. Like, something will happen one night where all three people are doing something perfect at the same time, and it just syncs in. We’re like, “yes, that bit was heavy, that bit was perfect! Let’s do that again tomorrow night!” Then the next day at another concert you start to do it and it just doesn’t work as well. But then another part will work really, really well. So it’s weird; it changes every night.

ILM: What’s been the newest addition to your set?

Artwork: P Money, who’s on the new single Anthemic.

Benga: Although it depends on how long ago people last saw us I guess. We’ve always got a vocal element in the show now. There's new visuals as well.

Artwork: Every song and every part of a song has got its own code, so wherever we are and whatever we’re playing it’s sending out a code to the lights, and we’ve had visuals built for each section of the music, each sound has got its own visual. So they all link now, it’s really weird.

Benga: One to watch out for if you are watching is the John Legend one…

Artwork: Yeah, that’s amazing

Benga: Mental!

Artwork: We had a guy sitting in a room for nearly two weeks tracing John Legend’s head with a pen on a screen for that!

ILM: What’s your technical set up? What’s up on stage with you? I imagine that’s come a long way since you started?

Artwork: Yeah, now we have four computers on stage. One is like a master computer that sends out signals to everyone else. Then you have the other three computers we stand behind; one will have bass, one will have drums, one will have the top line. Another one will have the vocals on it, one will have effects, one will have different things going on. So everyone sort of has two things going on at one time. And then you’ve got a mini controller so you can control all of the effects in Ableton. You can control everything on your screen with these super-duper new things from Novation. And then everything runs into a mix desk and we mix it live. Then we’ve got vocoders. Benga is the vocoders master! And we’ve got another DJ mixer as well for some of the drums, which Skream does his magic on. All these toys to mess about with!

ILM: Are there any other DJ sets or music shows which have inspired the Magnetic Man set up?

Skream: The Chemical Brothers. The big new tour they did not for the most recent album, but the album before. I never got to watch it once the whole way through. It was over a summer I saw it. The timing of each thing to each sound, it wasn’t like ours, it’s just weird. It’s really hard to explain. It was great though! It was even better being able to watch it detailed for fifteen minutes at a time rather than losing track over the course of an hour. Yeah, I just thought it was bang-on.

ILM: You're playing Outlook festival in September. That festival has really grown over the last few years and is a big event, particularly for the dubstep scene…

Skream: I think it’s more special for the artists! It’s the one time of the year where everyone gets to see each other and hang out for a weekend, and actually let loose. Most people have to work over the weekend, but it almost takes it back to the original when everyone was working together and everyone was going to watch each other’s shows. I love it. It was one of my best times of the year last year.

ILM: The summer is starting to round up; what are your plans for the autumn? There were slight rumblings that you guys were going to get back in the studio together and start working on another album?

Artwork: We’ve got to go to Australia first, and these guys have got to go to America.

Skream: UK festivals end, but Australian festivals begin.

ILM: Do you know what you’re doing for NYE yet? Is that booked up for you guys?

Skream: We’re just doing DJ shows. We still haven’t okay-ed, but it's either going to be Perth or New Zealand.

ILM: And how about new album plans. Have you got a time in your mind?

Benga: Everyone wants to know this, so we’re just going to tell you… June 2012.

Skream: I would have said… June 2086.

ILM: Are you going to go down to Cornwall again like you did for the first album?

Artwork: We ain’t doing that again!

Skream: Good food down there...

Artwork: It’s nice, but it’s not us.

Skream: We’re city rats.

Artwork: We did think it would be a great idea. It seemed like it because we’ve got such busy lives; everyone’s got something going on, the telephone's going mad, so we thought let’s go! Let’s go and do two months down there, and just make some music. We made more music when we came back from Cornwall! I mean, we did some singles down there...

Skream: We did the majority of the main songs down there, which were great, but we did them in four days.

Artwork: And the rest of the time we were just going mental.

Skream: The rest was just going over the same ideas, over and over and over, and then going “what shall we do now?” Just sitting there…

Benga: … eating chocolate. That’s what we did.

Skream: It's a sugar-fuelled album.

ILM: How would you describe your process of working together? Obviously you’ve known each other for a really long time…

Skream: We actually don’t anymore. we don’t speak to each other. Ha!

Artwork: There have never been any rules...

Skream: As long as everyone’s liked it. Everyone's believed in it I should say, rather than liked it. Because you can like something but not be 100% into it. But I think that was the main thing… that everyone was happy with each track at the end. Completely and honesty, and not just sit there and go “yeah.” Because you can sometimes feel pressure from the other two who are like “I really, really like this.”

Artwork: We do have a weird democracy. If one person doesn’t like it then it’s out, not if two people like it it’s in. If one person doesn’t like it it’s out and then we have to do something else until all three of us like it. It’s all a bit upside down.

ILM: The three of you met and came together in Artwork's Big Apple Record shop. Sadly, record shops are on the decline, although record/vinyl sales are up…

Benga: Recently, yeah.

Skream: It’s a trend, that’s why. It’s become a new trend.

ILM: But aside from the trend of buying vinyl, it's the community aspect of the record shop that was so important, so special. Now they're not around, do you still maintain that sense of community? Do you still share tracks, do you still see everyone?

Artwork: Yeah. The people that were there at the start are all still doing dubstep, and they’re on form. We all see them all the time…

Skream: A bond was built. It’s like friends from school but better than that.

Artwork: You won’t get that ever again. It was better than friends from school because we all loved music, and we were all there.

Skream: We all loved each other.

Artwork: We all loved each other, yeah.

ILM: Do you still send each other bits and pieces, like half finished tunes?

Skream: Yeah, a hundred percent. Do you know the saddest thing? We still play each other songs down the phone, rather than emailing MP3 ideas. That’s originally how me and Benga met, before we met face-to-face. We actually met by playing songs down the phone. And I will still talk to one of these two and they’ll go “what you doing?” and I’ll go… [does playing music down the phone impression]. It’s so easy.

Benga: Takes five seconds, yeah.

Artwork: Sometimes it sounds a lot better down the phone.

Skream: What you trying to say?

Artwork: I’m just saying yours sound a lot better down the phone... Haha!

ILM: How much music do you get sent by other people?

Skream: It’s actually one of my favourite perks of the job… getting sent music.

ILM: Do you get sent a lot?

Skream: Yeah, I love it. There are a lot of good promo companies now. You just get everything to your inbox. It does kind of save you from going to the record shop.

ILM: Have you discovered anything new? Anything that has taken you by surprise, that’s really got you recently?

Skream: On Greco-Roman there was a track called Close by an artist called Hackman…

Benga: Ah, sick!

Skream: …which sampled an Alicia Keys vocal. No lie, I had it on repeat for ages. It shows you what’s really exciting about music at the moment, because it’s like a mash of so many different things. Even the production techniques and everything, it’s just so current.

ILM: Do you get sent a lot of stuff that emulates your sound?

Skream: Yeah. I think I’ve been sent six tracks in the last four or five weeks that sound like demo mixes from the Magnetic Man album. That’s all I can put it as, it’s demo mixes.

ILM: We spoke to Benga in 2009 and asked him what he thought was next for dubstep. You told us you were starting to experiment with vocals, which have since become a big part of Magentic Man. What do you think makes a good vocal line? What do you look for?

Skream: Something that you remember.

Artwork: The vocal performance has to be good, but more importantly for me the emotion of the words has to match the emotion of the music.

Benga: For me I guess it's just the hooks; what they find in-between my notes.

Skream: And adding a dimension to the music that I didn't know was there...

ILM: How did you guys hook up with John Legend?

Artwork: A guy called Guy Moot, who is the bad-boy… he’s the head of our publishing company. He heard Going Nowhere and said “this is a very soulful record; you should get someone really soulful on it’.” We were like “yeah, like who?” and he was like, “how about… John Legend.” Picked up his book…

Skream: We all went “yeah, that would be great, but…” and he went, “well, I’ve got his number here.”

Artwork: So he rang him, played him the track, and he loved it. We got a vocal back a few days later. It was mad.

ILM: How have you found being part of a major label?

Artwork: Columbia are great, yeah, really great.

ILM: They’ve got a massive infrastructure...

Artwork: Yeah. And where they’ve been good is that they’ve just said “do what you do.” When they found us, we were….

Benga: Hah!

Artwork: What?

Benga: It’s the way you said they found us!

Artwork: Well, no, I know, but when they discovered us….

Benga: Like we was just lurking… down some dodgy alley with our pants down.

Artwork: But that’s what they do, record companies find people. We were already a band that was playing to 15,000 people…

Skream: A band?

Artwork: We were already a group of electronic noodlers that were playing to 15,000 people at Roskilde. They just came along and said “we love this music, we don’t know a lot about it, you just do what you’re doing,” which was really refreshing.

ILM: What’s your experience of the international interpretation of dubstep?

Artwork: It’s amazing. You get kids in the middle of Australia that are hearing tracks off the internet – they’ll download something, whether they pay for it or not is something else – two days after it’s been made. They’ll have a system that they’ve got at home where they can get in the studio and make something that has been influenced by that record and upload it straight back again. It comes straight back at you sounding completely different. It’s so fast now.

ILM: When did you first realise that music could have an effect on you?

Benga: Honestly, I feel like I have an emotional connection with certain songs, like Wookie – 365. That made me feel a certain way.

Skream: Yeah, I feel the same. And you always feel weird saying it, but I always feel it. I didn’t really feel connected with anything until old garage records. Like, Myron – We Can Get Down!

Benga: Yes!

Skream: Old garage tracks. And listening to it, and not realizing that you’re listening to it repeatedly. You keep playing it, and you keep playing it all day. You find it on a tape that you’ve got recorded from somewhere and you keep rewinding it. So, yeah it’s probably that. Or Stone Cold – Groove Chronicles.

ILM: Did you grow up in musical households?

Artwork: My Dad was a saxophone player in a band, so I grew up with jazz in the house. That’s all I can remember...

ILM: Looking back on everything that has happened so far, what have been some of the highlights of being in Magnetic Man?

Skream: I think Roskilde the other week was amazing.

Benga: Yeah absolutely… 40,000 people!

Artwork: It was amazing.

Skream: I wasn’t there by the way, that’s what I’m getting at here!

Benga: Having records out, that’s another one... having albums out.

Skream: Having my first release on a vinyl was a life-changing moment. From someone who bought records every week, to actually going “that’s mine, it’s on a green vinyl and it’s doing alright! And it’s getting really good write-ups.”

ILM: What advice would you give to aspiring producers and musicians?

Artwork: Throw away your telly.

Benga: I disagree.

Skream: We’ve all got different rules.

Benga: I used to have my telly on all the time while making tunes.

Artwork: I think the one rule is ‘listen to everything’. Don’t stop listening. Just keep listening to everything, all the types of music, because you get loads from all different types. Don’t just listen to one kind of music, spread it! And don’t try and make something that is already there. Just try and make something that makes you go “whoooaaa.” It doesn’t matter if it’s not like anything else; just make something that you really like.

Benga: Do you know what I remember from when I was young… from my music making days. It’s changed a bit now. It’s the fact that I was just trying to make the best tunes I could. That’s what you need to be thinking of, not trying to play the biggest festivals in the world.

Artwork: And always keep making music for your friends. Just make music that your friends will go “phooaaar, that’s good!” Don’t think, “oh I need to be making music that will get the record contract, or music that’s going to get me into this rave, or get me played here.” Just make music for your mates that’s going to make them go “wow, that’s a tune.” When you stop doing that, that’s when you lose it.