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Artificial Arm Biography
Musically, I go by the name of The Artificial Arm, as simply, I have one-arm and I do indeed wear an artificial arm. I believe this is something to focus on and not to hide, as I feel it is relevant to my music, as being disabled I have always had to approach things in a different way, including music, and maybe this shapes my sound to a certain extent.

Growing up in Deadworth Windsor, and like most kids from my age group, I grew up hearing all the usual types of music which shape our generation, such as funk, ska, new-wave, electro/hip-hop, House, the rare-groove revival and more, but the early electro/hip hop UK scene around 83, really got me hooked.

I had always loved music from as long as I can remember, but did not think I could possibly create it until later on, but from the beginning of the 90s, I became a little nostalgic with all things related to the old school hip-hop, and its from this point I got back into electro.

I started to listen to my old streetsounds electro tapes, they sounded fresh again. I set on a mission almost, to make this style of music, as it seemed at the time ‘electro’ did not even exist, in a more up to date form.

Electro was almost like a dirty word at this point, not at all fashionable like it has become now. I used to listen to radio shows, in particular ‘Coldcut Solid Steel’ on Kiss FM, where you would hear hints of new school electro. I was also very much into the whole funk and rare-groove scene as well, and it was more the idea behind electro, rather than the eighties revival side of things, which interested me, as futuristic synth funk.

I started collecting old equipment to try and get that sound, and enlarge on it for the modern generation, it was trial and error really, as it was hard to find out what equipment was used back in the day. I bought an 808 drum machine in the early 90s, and I had my first release in 2003 on Orson Records, so getting a finished sound and having a record out did not come easy.

I draw my influences from everywhere, I listen to Lots of kinds of music, but I'm particularly partial to funk music, obviously electro, film soundtracks, new-wave, the Chicago/Detroit house sound, 2-tone and much more.

I think the word electro means different things to different people, depending on your generation maybe, the generation before me see it as the European and nu-romantic type sound, my generation say it's the early hip hop sound of electro funk, and a new generation see it as something else again. I feel, the word electro is really a type of sound, characterised by the sound of analogue synthesisers and vintage drum machines etc, as apposed to a type of music these days, this is why I refer to my music as electro funk, as funk music is the basis of my sound.

If you were to ask me what I would like to achieve with my music, it would be to make soulful futuristic sounding funk music, with the accent on fun, as opposed to the darker colder type of sound, which is not really my thing.

Artificial Arm production details
all my tracks and sounds are produced from scractch entertilly by myself, even down to drum sounds sometimes. I almost never use sampling or samples, all sounds are made on hardware synthesizers and presets are never used. i choose to work like this as i feel this can add an individual sound, even if not a particularly original one.

Andrew Shaw