Milanese, who headlines room two of Chew the Fat! The Arches tonight, sent us this footage of him performing live at the BBC Electric Proms.  If all the licence fee was spent like this, we might actually pay it.

Hyp!Hyp!Hpy! then sent us this interview with him which reveals the following facts: 1) he used to build his own instruments 2) there’s a band called the Waikiki Beach Boys and 3) Milanese doesn’t appear to use a capital I when typing.

So ‘Milanese’. What affinity do you have with the city of Milan, if any, and where does your moniker come from?

i’ve never been to Milan, i just used to work at an italian restuarant and somehow it became a nickname that stuck.  I’m from London originally, born and bred in Archway, but i do love Italy, great approach to eating.

For them that don’t know, what would you say you do?

i write music, most would probably say its a mixture of dubstep and grime with other influences thrown in.

You make instruments your own instruments. What form do these take and what is it you enjoy about creating them? Are you intersted in a DIY aesthetic?

when i was at university i experimented with instruments a bit, like taking apart a piano so you can thread fish wire around the strings and bow them.  it makes an amazing sound.  wasn’t my idea originally though i was inspired by something we were learning about at the time and thought i could do something with it, i ended up doing a piece for bowed piano and electronics.  Other than that i did try making some other stuff, percussion and weird stringed instruments, none of them particularly amazing but fun to do, got a few samples out of them.  I did a lot of modifying old keyboards and drum machines to make mental noises, those sounds are on a lot of my early Warp and Planet Mu stuff.  Pictures of most of them are on the blog on my myspace page but i’ve sold them all now.

Do they ever get a look in on your recordings?

Boss Eye was 100% jamming with a modified Boss DR550 drum machine, just edited the good sections, added a little reverb and mastered.  That thing was such a pedestrian drum machine, but i connected the lcd screen controller chip to the pcm wave chip by chance and it turned into this immense, horrifying noise machine haha.  I don’t know anything about electronics by the way, you just get something battery powered so you don’t kill yourself, open it up and start crossing wires until something fun happens.

What can we expect to hear you playing at Hyp!Hyp!Hyp! on Friday?

i’ll be playing a lot of stuff from the new album, it’ll be all kinds of bass and rap music, all dancefloor stuff.  some new versions of old tunes too.  i’m quite excited about seeing some of the other artists, some fresh stuff there.

What do you remember from your experiences raving – were there any nights you felt you had to be at when you were younger?

i went to a lot of raves in the 90s, started around 93 i think.  i went to all kinds of stuff, techno nights, house, hardcore, jungle, trance, dub, all kinds of different clubs in London.  quite a few nights at bagleys haha, megatripolis, 4 aces, heart & soul, rocket, and countless free parties/squat nights.

Your sound is affiliated with the grime and dubstep genre’s. How do you feel about the progressions of these two scenes, and if you had to pigeonhole yourself, what would you call your music?

There is some amazing instrumental stuff coming out at the moment but i would just like it to move along a little faster, guess i’m impatient!  as for vocal stuff, grime etc, i still think that it hasn’t quite fulfilled the massive potential it has.  I think fresh blood is what we need, maybe i’ve missed something?  As for my own stuff, it sits inbetween dubstep, grime and hip hop and i don’t know what to call it.  At the moment i’m either saying its bass music or rap.

How would you say your music has progressed from your early releases in the mid-noughties?

i’m a lot less angry haha, seriously i’m much more chilled now and so my recent stuff is more dancefloor friendly.  still has that leftfield experimentation with sound design though.

What have you been making recently, and are there any plans for another album?

New album ‘Lockout’ comes out on Planet Mu records on June 15th, samples are up on the Planet Mu website and on my myspace page.  I have rough plans for what i’d like to do next but its totally up in the air.

What’s been floating your boat recently, both musically and otherwise?

i’ve recently been listening to a lot of the Waikiki Beach Boys and Roberto Delgado’s Caramba Orchestra, and my mate Untold just forwarded me some fantastic tunes by a guy he’s just signed but i probably shouldn’t mention the name.

Finally, where do you want to be in 15 years?

Milan, with vinyard.