Artjom walks into the room with a tall, beautiful European woman.
“Is this the latest member of Mutated Forms?” I ask.
Interviewing Artjom from Mutated Forms is never a mundane task – however, this time there’s something different on the agenda.
“We’re gonna be the next Disclosure innit” he explains.
And he’s not wrong there. You see, the boys have been in the studio cooking up something spectacular. With months of secrecy it is our pleasure to finally be able to introduce you to…
Undercut.
Cast away all of your previous conceptions about that ridiculous hairstyle, and forget what you know about minimal house – Undercut are redefining the way we view both.
“The name Undercut came from Zub [the other half of Undercut]. He was getting a haircut and he asked the barber what the name was. He did the same with Crowlin’. He liked it because it’s a word that doesn’t exist. And it sounds good! And he did the same with Blop. Actually Crowlin’ turned out to be an island in Scotland and Blop… It turned out to be something that you can check out on Urban Dictionary. When I first got my undercut trim, a mate of mine said “whats with that haircut AJ, you look like you’ve been signed to Shogun Audio”. I was in stitches.”
So what is the story behind Undercut?
“We weren’t originally going to team up again. We’d actually had enough of each other at one point when we were Mutated Forms. We just had very different views. I would start a project and he’d be like… Nah that’s shit. He still hates Wastegash! We had a beer at the Bristol Bear in Selly Oak (Birmingham) and I was like dude, I think we’re at that point I just wanna do my own thing. I can’t work with you anymore. I wanna go solo.”
Sounding like the end of a ten year relationship, I wonder if Artjom used the line, ‘it’s not you, it’s me’. But – being men, they managed to find an amicable solution.
“I’ve got an idea for a solo house project. I want to do house music. I would advise you to do the same”.
Artjom and Zub talked for a bit, and it turns out Zub had been thinking along the same lines.
“No hard feelings, I just wanna do my own thing”. He explained to Zub that too many of his ideas were taking a back seat because they couldn’t agree on anything.
The boys went solo for a while, but something wasn’t quite right; something was missing. Artjom’s music was lacking originality, and Zub was making so many short, unique clips that required more substance.
“I realised that without him, I could make a lot of music, but it was just missing some kind of… Something avant-garde. I made a lot of average music basically!”
And what about Zub?
“He made a lot of interesting things. Really short clips that just needed a bit more… Something.”
Artjom sat down with Zub again and suggested they try again. “Zub was like nah, nah – I don’t wanna do that. We’ll just end up in the same fucking boat!”
Zub liked the work that Artjom was producing, but was reluctant to take Artjom back; until one track brought them back together.
Artjom was working on a piece with Luke Truth that Zub was keen to work on, but he wanted to remain a separate entity and produce it as a collaboration. Zub effectively wanted to keep the relationship strictly non-exclusive, presumably so that they could ‘see other people’; but Zub eventually ended up succumbing to Artjom’s charm and became pinned down to yet another producer relationship.
“We’re like Ying and Yang innit.”
We talk more about a shift in sound, and I ask Artjom what his thoughts on the term ‘drumstep’ are.
“I want to punch a baby in the face right now. The worst thing was when we went to Paris and on the poster there was something in French. I put it into Google to translate and it said ‘Mutated Forms – Kings of Drumstep’. I just hate new labels for subgenres of music. How the fuck is our music a mixture of drum & bass and dubstep?! Undercut is predominantly between 120 and 130bpm – which can be anything between house, techno, garage, whatever. Even trap!”
The Undercut project started all the way back in June, and the boys have produced an unmentionable number of tracks. With all this effort put into such a grand project, does this mean the end of Mutated Forms?
“Undercut does NOT mean the end of Mutated Forms! I wouldn’t want to just flush that down the toilet – we’ve been doing Mutated Forms for over ten years now. We’ve had ups and downs, always. It’s hard enough to find the time for music in general as it is, let alone trying to decide what to put all of your energy into. I get bored of making the same thing – we’ve got some drum and bass in the making now. Hold tight!”
There have been no release dates set in stone for Undercut yet, but the boys are in talks with several record labels and have been offered an exclusive Undercut launch at a festival in Belgium this summer.
Check out ‘Never Coming Back’ below. The track was inspired by a flight back from Denmark (“I never really wanted to come back!”). If you look closely, you can see Artjom’s feet in the photograph (taken by his girlfriend!).
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