Temporarily distancing yourself from something you adore can have drastically positive results – take a leaf out of Rockwell’s book. After taking a hiatus from the drum & bass scene for nearly a year, Tom returns with one of his finest, most cohesive projects to date.
Low Art is Rockwell’s unintentional second album, created during the midst of both the pandemic and the cost of living crisis here in the UK. The LP is a slick listening experience from start to finish, heavily influenced by hard-core punk whilst lightly peppered with frustrations around capitalism with tracks like ‘Peak’ featuring Novelist.
We had a natter with the main man himself, digging deeper into the project that he claims to be truly symbolic of his good mental health and current state of mind. Things we love to see, ay…
Rockwell! How are you? Talk me through your day…
I’m well, thank you. Woke up in a hotel after Parklife, got on the train back to London, got back to the flat, did some work, started this interview!
Sounds exciting… and a bit sweaty. Please tell me you have a nice portable fan for those journeys?
I do but it’s analogue… I like to think it’s a flamenco dancer-esque fan, but really it’s just your bog standard fan.
So Tom, you have an incredible project called Low Art. This is your second album. Tell me about the LP. What’s the theme? The message?
Low Art is the album that I said I’d never write. After my first one I said ‘I’m not doing this again’. When listening back to Obsolete Medium, I feel like it’s quite a substantial listen. There’s just so much going on in it. So much detail and change. I can’t listen to it all the way through. My music doesn’t lend itself well to this format. But then, over time and as I wrote more and more music, I’ve naturally started simplifying things. Everything became a bit more streamlined. I then wrote loads of tunes throughout lockdown. It was good because I was writing drum & bass but I was completely dissociated with drum & bass. I think a lot of producers did this. Then, all of a sudden, when it came to the end of lockdown, I was like, ‘oh I’ve got all these tunes here, they really work together, why don’t I make it into an album?’ I didn’t sit down with the intention of making an album this time round, it just came together really organically.
What was it about the first one that made you not want to write another? Was the process strenuous?
I just went in so hard and I was in the studio from 9am-11pm every day. It destroyed me. I couldn’t think about anything else. It got in the way of my life and relationships. It wasn’t a good period in my life mentally to be locked away in a studio by myself for that length of time. I think, looking back, it was healthy at all.
When you listen to it now, do you feel like the music reflects how you were feeling mentally?
Yeah, definitely. It’s quite claustrophobic and manic. It’s quite unfocused in places. I know sometimes people like that my music can be quite stabby but when I listen to it I just think, well I wasn’t very well then. It’s funny because you don’t realise it at the time but when you listen back, it definitely reflected how I was feeling mentally.
And would you say that Low Art also reflects where you are right now mentally?
Oh 100%, although I suppose making a gothic drum & bass album doesn’t really scream good mental health! It’s also not the type of album you do if you want to fit in with everyone else but as I said, I’d disassociated myself with drum & bass. No one was DJing either so I wasn’t thinking ‘oh I have to play these tunes’ I was thinking, I’m listening to these hard-core punk records day-to-day and I think they’re wicked. They influenced me. So when I go to the studio, I’m not thinking too much about it but I’m being influenced by this other genre and suddenly, I’m making all of these like gothic tunes, which I really like!
I love that! Have you always been into hard-core punk?
It’s something that I’ve loved for a long time. There’s something in that music scene that is really exciting, both the creativity and the music is really great. It’s something that I loved when I was younger and I never lost touch with it but I’ve definitely got back into it all over again. The energy in that scene at the moment invigorates me. It is, in a lot of ways, the perfect music scene. Everyone looks out for each other. It’s always like ‘we’re doing good, everyone’s doing good, that’s sweet.’ And then I look at drum & bass and it’s like… is that the same story over here? Probably not. I yearn for that community aspect of a music scene, and I think we’ve lost that at the minute in drum & bass.
I hear you. So it sounds like rather than the sound of hard-core punk music influencing you, it’s the community aspect, the togetherness?
It’s everything. I love distorted textures and that’s rampant in that scene. I love the way the production values aren’t everything, it’s all about the vibe. I love that it’s edgy and it can be scary and intimidating. That’s actually one of the things that I loved when I first got into drum & bass. It wasn’t a safe space. You can go into these environments and anything can happen. I miss that about drum & bass, because it’s not like that anymore, but when you go to these hard-core shows, people are still doing that. People are doing crazy things, anything can happen. I now get everything I used to get in drum & bass, in hard-core punk.
Stepping away from D&B, how was it for you mentally when you returned? Did you feel out of the loop at all?
It’s not even feeling out of the loop, I’m still struggling to find the thread of where left it. I’m still really struggling. The way I kind of look at it is, I remember the pandemic. I don’t really remember much from just before. I can compartmentalise my life and career into a few different blocks, but that’s it. I’ve kind of forgotten how I did a lot of stuff before. For example, someone saying to me ‘Oh you have a show here’ and ‘You have a mix to do’, now, I get really nervous, almost like I have no direct experience of doing these things. If I have a gig now, I’ll do three days of practice because I really want to be ready and prepared, whereas before I might have a look at some tunes on the train, but probably won’t. It’s so strange.
Does that feel like a positive or negative thing, as you’re kind of experiencing your work as a newbie all over again?
It’s both. It’s exciting when I’m doing it because I’m like, this is all brand new again and at the same time, I’m like, oh… this again. It’s funny, even though I’ve played hundreds and hundreds of shows, before I go on now, I’m doubly as nervous. Going over different scenarios in my head. It’s weird but then as soon as everything starts, your muscle memory kicks in. There’s just a little bit of a separation there, mentally. I’m still trying to get over it.
Do you think a lot of artists feel like that right now?
There were a lot of artists that were like that before the pandemic then the pandemic kind of threw everyone off. I think a lot of the artists that benefited from the pandemic, they’re like ‘yeah we’re cool’ almost less effected it seems. There’s a crazy contrast between the old school and the new school at the minute. I think a lot of artists are struggling right now.
Back to the album, what’s the story behind the title Low Art?
Low Art satisfies a lot of things in terms of the way I feel about drum & bass, the way other people feel about drum & bass and how society looks at dance music.
Through the pandemic, there was a lot of talk about giving money to the arts and when they did that, they quantified, in their eyes, who the arts were. Opera, ballet, orchestras came first, but there’s so much more to it than that. It wasn’t good for anyone that worked in dance music, and other sectors, to feel that what we did wasn’t worth anything.
Another reason I called it Low Art is because everyone loves drum & bass and jungle but there’s a load of people that like electronic music, that will go to experience drum & bass at a festival, but won’t ever go and see drum & bass DJs play in clubs or go to drum & bass the events – why is that? I think it’s because of classism… And last but not least, low art in the sense that when people have previously asked what I do I’m like ‘Oh I’m a DJ’ and they go ‘Oh ok, what do you play? and I say ‘I play drum & bass’ and then they just look at you like you’ve got something on your face. ‘Oh I used to listen to that at University, then I got over it’. It’s always something like that. It’s sort of me poking fun at all of these different things, I guess.
It’s clever, I like it. You have some great features on the album. Novelist being one of my favourites. How did you come together to deliver such a poignant message?
We both live in the same sort of geographical area. So obviously, if you’re both young and you live in London, you understand the current pressure. Everything is mad expensive right now. It’s so difficult to find somewhere to rent. There’s so much pressure on young people in London and it was right in the thick of everything getting more expensive that we did the session. We didn’t even talk about what it was going to be about… I’m not going to tell Novelist what to write about! He can write about whatever he wants. I was just excited to work with him. He could rap about his breakfast and I’d still love it.
I think he’d do a good rap about breakfast, to be fair.
He would! But yeah, it was just around that time, summer 2022. You couldn’t escape it. It was on everyone’s minds and the session itself was just really easy. I’ve never worked with anyone that professional before, in terms of vocalists. He sat there and wrote for half an hour, did two takes and the tune was done. He didn’t make any mistakes. I was like ‘wow!’
Is there anyone else from the Grime world that you’d like to work with?
I just love Jamakabi, first and foremost. I would love to do a tune with him. Also, D Double E! Heritage artists. I’d love to work with either of those.
Back to the track, my guesses are you’re not even remotely worried about the ‘stick to your music – no politics please – you can’t have an opinion’ key-board warriors?
I’ve got a degree in politics, so why would I not speak about politics? That was always what I wanted to do, I wanted to work in politics. Politics is everything. Politics is when you’re filling up your car, when you’re buying a beer in the pub. You can’t avoid politics. You can bury your head in the sand but you still have to pay your council tax, your gas bill. All politics.
Very true! Before we let you get some well earned rest after Parklife Tom, what’s next from you/the label?
After Low Art, I have another digital single coming out on Obsolete Medium from a guy in Bristol called Thread. He’s got some great stuff coming out on lots of good labels, hot-tipped by some absolute dons. I’ve also got a killer single coming out from somebody called Chris Kastro, a guy from Newcastle. He makes very tasteful jump up. Which is really good. So yeah, lots of exciting bits incoming!
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