Touching Bass: Artwork

With Benga hanging up his headphones for a bit and Skream nakedly occupying buckets for Valentines, you might be wondering what Artwork is doing to keep the Magnetic Man flag aloft. The Rinse DJ was out devouring half a chicken at Nandos when we called him up to discuss #iPhoneProblems, old school aliases and his XOYO show alongside Heidi and Eats Everything this Saturday. Then he threw together an hour's worth of music for you to tuck into.

Noisey: What happened to your phone the other day?

Artwork: Ahh, I dropped it and smashed the screen the other day. Then, I was leaving the studio to go to a meeting and you know when you leave somewhere and only have about 12%? Yeah, that.

Is that an iPhone? I swear they program those things to deteriorate really quickly after you’ve had them for a certain amount of time…

100%. They got found out because a programmer/hacker looked at the programming and found that if you’re upgrading from a 4 to iOS 7, it switches on all the apps at the same time to burn the phone out really quickly. They got caught out.

I’m tempted to migrate away to Samsung or something…

I can’t do it because everything is all linked up with my emails and all the computers and stuff.

So where are you at the moment then?

I’m devouring a half chicken in Nandos. A lot of the time we’re working with singers and you get to midday and people need to eat. We always end up there so I’m quite well known in my local.

Has it got to that bawsy point where they know exactly what you want?

Nah, I move about quite a bit.

You player you. What have you been up to in the studio recently? A lot of people know about the Rinse show, which we’ll get on to, but you’re also making music very often too.

Yeah, well I’m currently just going through some music for Saturday at XOYO and then I’m also putting together another mix for Fabric.

I had a peek at your Twitter account and saw that you’ve got a church on the floor below. Are you ever tempted to go genuflect when you’re having a creative block?

It’s weird because I've never seen anyone go in and out of there in the week. As soon as it’s Sunday, the doors open and you’ve got an altar, chairs and a little choir.

So if you ever need a live choir, you’ve got that right there. Rejoice! I remember you previously speaking about a pre-Internet alias you had. What are your plans to work under the name Grain?

Well, a long time ago (around 2000) I was making a lot of techno stuff for Fat Cat Records and that was all before everything got put onto YouTube and it went under the radar. I was talking to Midland about Grain stuff and he was really shocked because he used to love those records, so he asked me to remix one of his tunes. So I remixed “Trace” and then a lot of people reacted to it. It’s strange how it’s all come back around again but it’s good.

How’s life as a Rinse FM host then? I always seem to tune in when I’m in transit, but you, Sgt. Pokes and Mehmet always give me sufficient amounts of chat.

We don’t have a clue what Mehmet does when he’s not with us. He’s obviously somewhere, but he’s a cool cat. I don’t know what his job is. Everything’s really good though and we’ve fallen into our own little groove with it. Eats [Everything] has taken over for the last few months doing an hour back to back. We’re just messing about though really; waiting to get into trouble. It is just us in a room just taking the mickey out of each other.

For the mix, what vibes have you gone for?

I think I'm up first at XOYO on Saturday, so I’ve come with a party vibe. It’s one of them ones you’ll put in the mood.

XOYO is quite the spot as well isn’t it?

I’m playing there quite a lot these days but I really love the layout of the room as well as the sound. It’s a wicked place especially when it’s nice and rammed, but looking forward to playing there again, yeah.

Artwork plays alongside Eats Everything, Heidi and Christophe at XOYO this weekend.