Welcome to the Urbanist Interview (Part two). To read the first part of the interview please visit: Urbanist Interview (Part one)
“Urbanist” by Urbanist – Tinkers Bridge, Milton Keynes, 2019.
To start the second part of the interview we are going to continue to document the opportunities that followed once establishing yourself as The Urbanist. In part one of the interview we covered your foundation years as well as the projects you worked on up until 2010. Could you elaborate on the projects that followed?
PXTN is a local artist that helped pioneer graffiti art during the early 1990s in and around his hometown of Buckingham located on the outskirts of Milton Keynes. Throughout the 1990s PXTN worked under several aliases to create a combination of local murals, flyers, posters, cassette covers and items of clothing that were all inspired by Hip Hop’s element of graffiti art. PXTN also experimented with other elements of Hip Hop culture including scratch DJing and Emceeing.
“PXTN logo” – PXTN, 2020.
PXTN discovered Hip Hop music and culture during the 1980s as a child and by 1990 at around age 14 began to create his first pieces of artwork using spray paint. Although PXTN created several murals previous to the “Risk” image shown below this photograph taken in 1990 is the first evidence we have of PXTN’s early work. The below “Risk” piece was painted along the old railway line in Buckingham when PXTN was using the alias Risk One.
Death Before Dishonour (DBD) were a Hip Hop crew that consisted of rappers The Atom, The Omen, Paraffin MC, TheHi-way Man, and Jack The Ripper(JTR). The crew formed in 1991 after performing at an open mic event with DJ Roughcut held in the point, Milton Keynes. Shortly after formation DJ Roughcut helped formulate the groups first demo recordings. During the early 1990s DBD regularly performed in and around Milton Keynes.
Death Before Dishonour “Drop the bass” – Demo recording, Early 1990s.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s DJ Roughcut worked as a lighting engineer and as a resident DJ at the point club which is how he became involved with several of the cities Hip Hop artists. In the early part of the 1990s DJ Roughcut helped formulate early recordings for Milton Keynes based Hip Hop crews W.I.Z.E, Death Before Dishonour, Klass Dismissed, and rapper Danny Cooly. In a previous Break to the beat interview DJ Roughcut recalls:
“Judge Wizely (Samuel Welbeck) the lead rapper and his mates used to go to The Club at The Point where I started my DJ career as lighting operator and warm-up DJ from 1989 to the closure of the club in 2004. This is where I met all of the groups that I produced, DBD, Klass Dismissed and Wize”.
