10 years on from ‘Midnight Request Line’, it’s safe to say that Skream has become a different artist entirely.

You already know salad days Skream – the spirited teenager who became one of the defining faces of the early ’00s Croydon sound, and, through his various productions, collaborations and remixes, brought dubstep into the charts and the public consciousness. Recent years, however, have seen him focus his energies on 4×4, ranging from disco to none-more-’14 house (his recent Essential Mix, featuring tracks from Hot Natured, Route 94, Jess Glynne and M.A.N.D.Y, says it all).

Once an industrious producer, cranking out his Skreamizm releases at a rate of knots in the ’00s, Skream’s output has slowed in recent years. Still, the last year has brought us a new label, Of Unsound Mind, the occasional single (including a release on 4×4 imprint Boysnoize) and a few choice WTFs for good measure (covering Smiths tunes with a Morrissey impersonator, crashing an episode of Newsnight)

Although not the first of the dubstep diaspora to have defected to house or techno, Skream’s got the most stick for it – and whether you have him pegged as a nomad or a dilettante, he’s certainly been willing to push out of his comfort zone. FACT caught up with Skream at Italy’s Movement festival last month, who talked about the scourge of EDM, returning to production, and how to make an album that isn’t an album.





“I do think EDM’s coming to an end”



You’re here in Italy at Movement – a well-known techno festival. How far along do you feel you are in your transition into this kind of style?

I finally feel like I know what I’m doing. So I guess I’m at the start, at the beginning of it all really. I’ve finally found the sound that I feel comfortable with, I’m producing again, and the stuff I’m producing has obviously fallen into what I’m playing. So – I’m ready. I’m at the point where I am fully ready now to play alongside anyone without feeling nervous. I’m at the start at the journey. After a couple of years of settling in, I’m at the bit where I know what I’m doing, I guess.

You took a few years out of releasing your own stuff – was that a conscious decision, or did it just kind of happen?

It wasn’t a conscious decision, I didn’t really have much choice! I class myself as a producer, although I DJ as well. When I stopped doing dubstep, it’s because I didn’t feel inspired by anything anymore. I couldn’t write music – that’s why I stopped what I was doing and started down another sort of path. Musically, I haven’t released anything in a while. The last proper thing was ‘Rollercoaster’. I had ‘Bang That’ out with Boysnoize records, which really I should have made a bit more of a song and dance about, but I still wasn’t comfortable, as I didn’t feel that ‘Bang That’ was my sound. It was more of a bridge record – it was 120BPM, but it had roots of the stuff when I was making dubstep, even though it was more of a techno tune.

You don’t decide to stop writing tunes, especially when that’s what you feel you do. Yeah, I didn’t know what I was doing – I’ve never not known what I’m doing [before]. It feels mad because, given how much music I used to write and how much I used to release, to actually look and think, “Fuck, I haven’t released anything in a couple of years…” I haven’t actually had a project or whatever. So yeah, it’s not a conscious decision – I was kind of forced into it, not writing. But, yeah, I’m fully back – back in the game, producing whatever, buying studio equipment, and just generally feeling like I know what I’m doing again.

You’re helping other artists on their albums at the moment. Do you think albums are becoming an outdated concept?

Do you know what, right? Henry – Riton – absolutely smashed it. I was with him in Paris and we played at the Ed Banger party, and he was like, “Yeah, I’m doing a mixtape,” and I said, “what do you mean you’re doing a fucking mixtape?”, and he was like, “well, it’s not an album – it’s a mixtape, and it’s not mixed together.” The way he described it, is that as soon as you take the word ‘album’ off, you’re cool, you’re sound. The word ‘album’ has so much pressure on it – he called it a snapshot of work over the course of the last couple of months. Whereas with an album, you put your bollocks on the table.

Albums are becoming outdated, but it’s more because of the pressures. We associate an album with ‘a band does an album’, whereas that thing Riton did was to say “this ain’t an album, it’s a mixtape.” It seemed like it took all the pressure off. I think albums are important. Look, there’s a million-and-one singles released every day through things like SoundCloud, where you can have a record out as soon as you put a new tune up. You end up with this entire fucking thing where it’s hard to release a single, because it’s so easy to hear music. I post something on SoundCloud; next day, it has a thousand-and-one reviews on it, but it’s like… you just put it up. It’s not necessarily a single, it’s just something you want everyone to hear.

Albums are important. It depends on what you’re doing, but I think they are important because it leaves some sort of structure , rather then people just putting out tunes. I think it makes people think they are working as well. Like you are doing something – it gives you a purpose. I think people get excited about albums. As long as people still get excited about buying albums – or downloading albums I guess – it gives it purpose. Whereas, I dunno, I suppose it depends which way you’re coming from – but I definitely think albums are still very relevant to music buyers – and the people making music too.

From a production stand-point, you’ve done the entire arc of the electronic music industry – do you think genres are even relevant anymore?

Do you know what? If you had asked me that a couple of years ago, I would have said no, not at all. You’d have sets where you’d hear drum’n’ bass, dubstep, moombahton trap, duh-duh-duh…But what with America and the whole EDM thing, everyone’s been put under a branch. Over the last couple of years, especially since the house boom, it seems like everyone’s gone very genre-specific again. But I think, in a sense, it does feel nice knowing what you’re going out to now. Whereas before, I’d go out, and I’d end up fucking sitting there and listening to fucking hardstyle/pop music. I sound like such a hypocritical cunt saying this, because a couple of years ago everything was just ‘bass music’…but, yeah, I think genre tags are still important, because…I dunno, I don’t know how to actually finish this question!

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