Take It Apart

Will Knighton, aka Dismantle, is having a few quiet days off, chilling out at home in Brighton, watching the History Channel. He hasn't had much downtime over the last 12 months and things are really just beginning. When he discovered his breakthrough track, Computation, started showing up in the sets of some of the biggest names in the game like Oliver 'Skream' Jones, he knew things were gonna change. “I come from a drum and bass background really,” he explains. “I started listening to drum and bass when I was about ten. Then I moved onto dubstep and about three years ago I got really into all styles of house, but I was really into Dutch house at that time – I still am, like the early Afrojack stuff.”

It's hard to stand out in the ridiculously overcrowded world of electronic music, even in the narrow sub-genres that continue to evolve, but Dismantle is proof that you will if you do something interesting and stop following the implied (or explicit in some cases) rules of the genres. “About two years ago I was making dubstep and I started getting a bit bored with the whole half-time, steppy stuff. I just infused a bit of what I was listening to at the time, which was the Dutch house and a lot of four-four kick-driven music. I just made it at 140bpm and I didn't really know it would go the way it did.

“I just enjoyed making it at the time,” he continues. “There was no formula to it, I just started making it. There was a lot of stuff around like Skream and Benga and Casper doing the four-four clappy stuff for a while, but I just found it hard to keep producing dubstep – I was getting bored. I wanted to do something that I enjoyed doing so I just started churning out all this stuff in a few weeks. There was no formula; nothing to tell me what I shouldn't be doing, which I think was really important and the key to doing something I hadn't done before.”

He has nothing but kind things to say about Skream, who he says has helped him with everything from gigs to agents, and it sounds like he's just generally being a mentor. He still doesn't quite know how the producer originally discovered him. “Kutz played Computation on Kiss FM just under two years ago,” he recalls. “That was on Hatcha's show so Hatcha started playing it. I still don't know to this day how he [Skream] got hold of it. I saw a YouTube video of him and Benga playing it in America, and I couldn't believe it. Then they played it on Radio 1. After that we started linking up at a few festivals we were all playing at, and since then he's helped me a lot. He sort of took me under his wing I think. He's really cool man – everyone that's helped me has been – it's wicked!”

He says that hopefully a hotly tipped collaboration between the two will come off, saying it's all just about timing to try and make it happen. “It's just about getting the time man. We've been talking about getting something together; it's just that he's working with a lot of people at the moment. When we get the right time it will be something that happens. Well, at least I hope it happens! Know what I mean?”