Probably best known for the Tik-Tok sensation “i like the way you kiss me”, Artemas is riding the wave of success, landing in Australia in November for his first tour here.
Artemas really is a diamond in the rough. In a world where everyone is trying to go viral, building a following, retain hype and maintain it all, the Oxfordshire-born artist is doing all of this, while managing to pen uniquely catchy music.
Probably best known for the Tik-Tok sensation “i like the way you kiss me”, Artemas is riding the wave of success, landing in Australia in November for his first tour here. While he waited to jump on stage at Frequency Festival in Vienna, we spoke to Artemas about his approach, style and songwriting process.
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“I’ve never been here before, it’s a very beautiful city.” he begins. “My actual tour starts in like three and a half weeks, but I’m doing two weeks of festivals. Having said that though, we did go and play a headline show in Latvia, and we’re going to do Dublin, ‘cause it just kinda coincides. So technically it’s started.”
“A bit of a warm up, I guess.” I say.
yustyna
Artemas is a prolific songwriter, churning out songs and mixtapes, his full-length yustyna being just a few months old to huge critical acclaim.
“Yeah! It’s been really nice, I’ve put out like 27 songs this year, and 14 very recently. So we kind of completely amped up the show, added a new player, made it much more live.”
Artemas has walked straight into my first question; he’s a solo artist and songwriter, but the way he keeps saying ‘we’ alludes to a band. So how is he performing?
“Yeah, it’s a four piece [band]. It’s a drummer, a guitarist, and then Toby, who’s my main collaborator, who’s on synths and he has a bass guitar. And then I play guitar on some songs.”
Artemas goes on to explain that he’s effectively the singer, playing guitar on two to three songs, and then the rest of the set he’s just singing. Prior to the unique fame of a few hit singles, Artemas had a totally different vibe for his set, and found that the vocal runs and high notes were difficult when focusing on guitar – so he’s alleviated his workload to focus on vocals.
“I feel like more myself, more in character when I’ve got my shades on and I’ve got just a mic in my hand,” he muses, smiling.
We turn to how important the vibe is, especially for music as vibe-y as his.
“100%, oh my God. The great shows we’ve done so far, I get the same feeling I get when I used to do GCSE drama, where you’re acting and in the moment. It’s this weird, nice pressure and you’re kind of in the flow.”
Artemas is band leader as well as songwriter, producer, singer and more. How does he define himself?
“I say, well… my dating profile says ‘recording artist’,” he laughs. “But obviously I’m trying to make it look as impressive as possible. But what would I tell a therapist? And I was being honest?” he pauses to think.
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“Probably ‘recording artist’, but I like to make it clear that I produce and I write my songs. I think ‘singer songwriter’ gives the wrong impression, I think about Westlife on a talent show. I don’t want to give off that vibe either.”
“Recording artist, maker-of-horny-music” he concludes confidently.
We turn to Artemas’ self-proclaimed ‘horny music’, and I speak a bit to the influences I’m hearing in his music: industrial, post-punk, but there’s a lot happening.
“I’m pretty fluid with how I make and record music, and since I’ve really been garnering a following, I would say there’s natural calculation, ‘cause I’m going on instinct and vibe in the moment, but I’m not sat there like ‘I’m going to add a little shade of grunge guitars’ or ‘I want this to sound like this Weeknd song.’”
“I have all these influences, but at the end of the day, when I’m at my best I’m not really thinking about it. The making of “i like the way you kiss me” was such a blasé moment, that week I’d kinda been doing this dumb impression of Robert Smith-era singing, and I’d done it on a few demos that week.”
“What I liked about it was you could say the most outrageous shit and it still felt quite powerful. I kept at it, and randomly in this freestyle I just said ‘I like the way you kiss me, I can tell you miss me.’ da na nah…”
Artemas speaks further to his wide swathe on influences, from Frank Ocean and the Weeknd to Nirvana, the Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck documentary specifically, as well as his high-school years being surrounded by driven peers forging a path into finance or other more ‘normal’ professions.
This attitude to success set Artemas up with a good work ethic, studying Max Martin and other pop songwriters, obviously an influence that comes out in his music whether he intends it or not.
“I’m trying to write stuff that is infectious, but I have this subversive, alt[ernative] thing. It’s a nice balance.”
The conversation turns to Artemas’ songwriting prowess, and while the virality of his music has helped, they wouldn’t have gone viral if they weren’t a good song at their core. Does he know they’ll be successful while he’s writing?
“I do think that the three big moments, I just had this funny feeling.” he begins. “But I will say, I’ve had that feeling about other songs and they haven’t connected in the same way.”
“It can be really difficult to fight the urge to write another ‘hit’ once you’ve had one, and Artemas needs to remind himself that the successful songs didn’t come from a place of calculated-ness. You can’t force them. It was only when I came with that, after my song “if u think i’m pretty”, that I got into a really good place writing wise again.”
Artemas and Toby, the synth player in his band, produce and write the music together, even mixing while they go.
“I’ve never paid for a mixer. I need the song to sound like the record while I’m making it, to really feel it. So we’re just making sure everything’s locked in as we go.”
Artemas‘ mixtape yustyna is available now , and his live show comes to Australia in November. Catch him live sand keep reading about tickets here.
