“Having spent a decade diligently honing my chops as stickman for an assortment of transatlantic outfits – not least Damon Albarn’s mighty Gorillaz Sound System,
I also assumed the role of MD (musical director) for Jamie xx and FKA twigs. In demand for countless high-profile gigs, and with well-received sideline modelling at both Tokyo & London fashion weeks, I opted to leave the MD world behind and focus on my solo career. My debut body of work The Idea of Tomorrow, featuring Idris Elba, solidified the launch of my live shows with an opening slot for Sampha’s Mercury winning “Process” album tour. When I’m not on a world tour or in the studio – I call Brooklyn home, where I am the co-founder and resident DJ at monthly party and record label Back to Life. In 2018 I released my sophomore EP, “Secret Life of a Badman” whilst penning my freshmen LP, “The Power of your Subconscious Mind.”

“I sing to express, to understand and to feel. It’s a mechanism for me to experience emotion. I’m humbled and accept the knowledge that my voice is not only for myself but that I’m able to share it with others.”

“The album really looks at nationalism post-Trump and post-Brexit, and the spread of xenophobia and the fear of foreigners. The song line starts with “red, white, and blue,” and although these are the colors of the Union Jack, they’re also obviously the colors that are in the United States [flag]. The song begins with a [1968] speech from a well-known Parliament member called Enoch Powell, and at the time, he was suggesting that all people of color, the situation of immigration be taken care of, otherwise the U.K. would end up as multicultural as America. And the speech was then banned and made hate speech, so a lot of people weren’t familiar with the Enoch Powell speech when I made the song. I was feeling very isolated, and disconnected from the U.K. in general. I started making the album post-Brexit and post-Trump, and that’s why I went to Tokyo to start writing the album before traveling to Beijing to record with the orchestra.”

“My work, described as “speaker-shredding” (Half Letter Press), “wonderfully strange” (John Corbett), and “characteristically curious” (Marc Weidenbaum), activates sound in unconventional, temporary, and ephemeral ways using appropriation and remix as a critical practice. My solo and collaborative projects, installations, and public performances often investigate the mundane sonic nuances of everyday electronic devices. My research is situated in contemporary and historical practice of media, radio, and sound art, which also encompasses performance, media installation, and networked art.”

Read our conversation with Jeff

“Everyone has a very different interpretation of the love wall — whether it helps someone get over a loss or a facilitate a new balance in their life. I have received thousands of emails in different languages telling me about the impact the love wall had on people’s lives. It has this wonderful contrast from positive to mourning. Going forward, I definitely would like to use the wall to make more of a politically-charged message. I feel a huge responsibility for the message this [artwork] puts out into the world. With the current political forecast, it’s more important than ever to make a statement with my artwork.”

Read our chat with James

“I was depressed after I got out of jail. I stayed in the house, I didn’t wanna be around people, I didn’t wanna DJ any parties, I was paranoid and scared. I didn’t know what to do. I did not want to be around people. Is this guy gonna accuse me of something else? Who knows. I just didn’t want to go back to jail again. I didn’t wanna go back, so I put all that fuel into painting. The one thing that I had to do was I had to make something from this. That’s what I learned from being an artist during this difficult time: you have to channel your emotions and create from that. And that’s how you create your best work. Anything can be your muse at any time, and this whole experience was my muse.”

“I grew up in a society where being mixed race was a minority, I looked different so had the choice to follow the cultural stereotypes or embrace who I was, have fun with it and take advantage of my cultural fusion. It began at a young age where I’d buy fabric from Ikea and make a dress by draping fabric on a mannequin and jazz it up by adding buttons from my very large vintage buttons collection. Then, as now, everybody wore the same clothes, followed the same trends, but I wanted to wear avant-garde interesting clothing and create my own trends, so studying fashion and moving to London and creating my own label was a way to do this. First and foremost, I am a creative who is inspired by bringing vision to life. Up until now has focused on fashion but who is wide open to conversations about everything, literally! We can always push the boundaries of design through technology and creativity and I want to champion this.”

“I am not the artist. I am when categorized. These are helpful tools in society. I am a part, I come from the back door to create change, to flip it all upside down. I don’t believe in titles, groups, or it being about me Michael. It’s energy. Systems destroy creativity. Creativity is freedom. I am happy to be alive to be a vessel of all this “art”.”

“My interdisciplinary work combines video with elements of sculpture, installation, and performance. I use multi-sensory, discomfiting elements to create something highly experiential and to engage the complexities of trauma and desire – addressing their nuances in regards to sexuality, alienation, power structures, etc.”

“I’m a New York-based artist fascinated by digital semiotics and the situation of identity in the blurring contexts of physical and virtual.”

“The art music that I create with Zither, Voice and Keyboard is improvisational,spontaneous cosmically inspired ..
Exploring experimental instrument tunings,electronic effects and creative performance trances I channel immersive soundscapes, for deep listening concerts and blissful recordings.”

“I am an environmental educator & healer, working to connect people to the earth through wellness. I combine earth stewardship and social justice advocacy for a healthy and sustainable future, at my educational healing space, Earth Arts Center.”

“We got a lot of people involved in our #savenightlife campaign internationally. So, all of a sudden, the three Islington councillors were being sent hundreds of thousands of pieces of correspondence. We were on TV, in the press… everyone was talking about Fabric. There was a lot of pressure on the three people making the decision – and we succeeded. It was a bit of a watershed moment, getting artists, politicians, journalists, academics and others together to say, “This is going too far. We don’t want this to happen.” The problem is, even though Fabric was reopened, nightclubs are still subject to many pernicious conditions.”

“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

“It is only a step from boredom to disillusionment, which leads naturally to self-pity, which in turn ends in chaos.”

“To be fully alive, fully human and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.”

“I must have done something good in a past life to get so lucky. Angie and Sistilia are doing great and we are having a blast being new parents. I never ever thought I’d say that but it’s an amazing feeling. As far as advice for young artists coming to New York? “Don’t give up.” It’s a tough town but it’s music that’s the tough part. You have to learn your craft and the business of it. The idea of making it can also be a little misguiding. Once you have a little bit of success you have to keep going even harder to stay where you wanna be and get better too!”

“I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.”

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

“Everyone – regardless of their background, wealth, race, faith, gender, sexual orientation or age – should be able to fulfil their potential and succeed.”

“My projects come from nowhere. I strongly believe that the best of what we can do is not on our road map but it’s about knowing your intentions: what you want to create, what you want to bring into this world, and then being able to act from this inspiration. So I can’t tell you what I’ll be doing next but I’m sure it’ll be interesting.”

“Most mystics are simple, uneducated people.”

“My childhood was chaotic. Mother had an affair with the milkman, who later became my stepdad and my father left. My stepdad was an angry guy and Mother was a hysterical narcissist. It was a toxic mixture and there was a lot of disruption and violent arguments in the house. I retreated into a fantasy world to protect myself.”

“Get to know that part of you that compells you to make things, listen to and nurture that voice and make stuff from there only.”

Read our chat with Stuart

“It seems half the world is killing each other while the other half are watching singing competitions on TV, which I find an odd juxtaposition. My artwork is just my way of mirroring this. It’s not meant to preach or take a standard liberal leftist view…but just tries to present my interpretation of what’s going on out there.”

“I’m comfortable with the unknown — that’s the point of science. There are places out there, billions of places out there, that we know nothing about. And the fact that we know nothing about them excites me, and I want to go out and find out about them.

And that’s what science is.

So I think if you’re not comfortable with the unknown, then it’s difficult to be a scientist… I don’t need an answer. I don’t need answers to everything. I want to have answers to find.”

“When Nike says, just do it, that’s a message of empowerment. Why aren’t the rest of us speaking to young people in a voice of inspiration?”

“Transcendental meditation is an ancient mental technique that allows any human being to dive within, transcend and experience the source of everything. It’s such a blessing for the human being because that eternal field is a field of unbounded intelligence, creativity, happiness, love, energy and peace.”

“Creativity is mistakes.”

“Economists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost.”

“Tic-tac-toe sign, no lines matter
Ice-cold cocaine and, yeah, that’s my liver
7UP on the rocks, we duck and we no faced, yeah
We get racks, yeah, we get, we get racks, yeah
When push come to shove
I will glide over love
Levitate before the freefall
Set sail everyday, everyday, everyday, oh”

“I think visually first with everything I do, and also I have synesthesia, so everything that I make I’m already thinking of what color it is, and what texture it is, and what day of the week it is, and what number it is, and what shape,” she divulges. “We both have it [she and brother Finneas], so we think about everything this way.”

“I draw as much from music as I do from visual art. I’m deeply versed and involved in those worlds. That’s the language I’m comfortable with, it’s the language that gives me great inspiration. I always ask how a conceptual photograph or abstract painting would be sonified, what would it be musically? That’s given me a lot of food for thought over the years, and still does. I had this vision the other day of future music and I imagine these weird, shifting, overlaid translucent layers, and the music was kind of obvious, based on a vision that was primarily visual.”

“What works on a page doesn’t work on a stage and what works on a stage doesn’t work on a page,”

“My community raised me. Now that I’m in a blessed position, there are hella things I can do to help. I went to college to do my A levels and I remember how hard it was. So now that I’m in this position, I call [academic success] a special kind of gangster. Because being a university student and a college student? That takes a different level of gangster! These Cambridge students who are getting A*A*A*, I’ve always admired that. I’ve admired academic brilliance. Any time I meet someone who goes to Cambridge and it’s a young black man or woman, I say, ‘Bruv, that’s gangster!’ People think rappers, footballers and actors are sick, but I think uni students are just as sick. So I thought it would be nice to do something that celebrated black academic brilliance.”

“To be an artist you need courage, and most people don’t think that,” says Ono. “It’s an age where people are only interested in entertainment. People are just entertained every day, like crazy, and that’s all they’re doing. And they say: ‘This is boring – let’s see something else.’ We are all kings and queens now, asking others to entertain us. It’s a very sad situation, because there are many things that we have to do if we want to survive.”

“We are dependent vulnerable creatures. People act like they are little gods: invulnerable, powerful in control of their destinies. We are not. We are the weakest reeds in nature as pascal said. A vapor a droplet can wipe out millions of us. But maybe it teaches us that this weakness is our strength. We are undone by each other dependent on each other in need of each other. And that is wonderful.”
Read our interview with Simon.

“You also have to be incredibly strong and incredibly focused and very determined, there’s so much competition. You can’t just say that you think you want to be a designer.”

Read our conversation with Anna