Insanity! Death threats! Trolls! Dick pics!

Who knew ShockOne’s life was so dramatic and chaotic? We certainly didn’t. We just wanted to find out what the hell the Australian artists has been up to since Universus… And what the hell we can expect next.

With two new uploads – both dubstep and D&B – on UKF lately, it’s clear he’s up to something. Read on to find out what…

Let’s start with In This Light. Judging by your social media chatter, you’re pretty proud of this one, right?

Absolutely! I spent ages on it. Ages. After finishing Universus I toured a bit, got lost in the wilderness of America and Mexico, built a studio and now I feel like I’m starting again. Like back to square one. It took me a while to work that out because as I finished the album I was like ‘great I’ve got these pre-made drum kits and patches, I can make tunes faster and more efficiently now!’ But the opposite happened, I wasn’t inspired by those sounds because I’d been listening to them for three years. So I had to go back and build up those sounds, textures and colours and start afresh. In This Light is the first product of that – the first time I found a vibe and direction I wanted to explore more. I spent a long time on the songwriting, I felt I’d developed with my songwriting with this one. The whole song feels snappier, more to the point.

Feels like a moment!

Yeah! That’s what I aim for with those type of tracks. Like my favourite standout tracks on Universus such as Light Cycles and Home are moments like that. I think that’s what I’m looking for when I’m writing. It’s what I’m always trying to achieve. And In This Light is the first song that I’ve written, ever, that I can sit back and say ‘yeah I like this, this is a good song’ I can’t listen to my own music usually but this I can. I don’t know what that says about me and how I’m developing but still…

But you still play your own tunes in your sets!

Of course. I have to. But given a choice I might not! I listen to my music differently to anyone else as it’s been rattling in my head for so long. By the time you finish a song you hate it because you listen to it so many times making it. I love the fact that people like my music at all and when my tracks are received in that way it does change my relationship with the song. I stop thinking about how long I laboured over it. All those hang-ups disappear and my perception changes. But it’s the constant battle and inner turmoil of being a producer!

I’m wondering if a Universus follow-up is en route?

My gut tells me its time but I don’t want to start saying the album word too soon. There will be another album without a doubt. It’s a very exciting and daunting prospect. But I refuse to take three years over the next one! I’ve got a stronger team around me now; label and management. So it’s not just me on my own in my studio going fucking mental. The last six months of Universus drove me crazy. I hated it. I made a pact with myself to have fun making music once it was done.

It felt more like work than it should do.

It felt more like a nervous fucking breakdown than it should do! I know anyone who’s written an album will identify with that too! But now I’m that little bit older, hopefully wiser, I will keep my life balance in check a little more. I don’t want to put myself through pain again. So I’m letting go, trying not to control the process and remembering to have fun again.

Fun… Like This Is Good Dubstep. A few reactionary comments on this one! Trolling much?

Of course I am! We’re not making fun of dubstep, by the way. I still play a load of it in my sets and I’m loving the 150BPM riddim-style stuff which was why I wanted to make this. It was refreshing to make after writing In This Light. I use a different part of my brain making those types of tunes.

What a lot of people don’t realise is that Phetsta is a massive MASSIVE troll on Facebook. Particularly on my page. He’d write ‘this is good dubstep’ on everything I’d post and it really wound people up. A lot of people just didn’t get the joke! So we made the tune and couldn’t think of a better title.

Gr8 b8 m8!

It’s amazing. Bless my fans, some of them think Phetsta is a dude laying into me because he uses his normal name so people don’t know it’s him… And they give him serious grief. Which he loves!

It amazes me, even now after years of living on the internet, people still have that urge to say they hate something on the internet. Aren’t we past that as a species? I had a dude on Twitter telling me I should be shot the other day.

Wow…

Yeah, people get pretty passionate about things, right? I’m never rude to anyone, I like to fire back with positivity, but it’s still pretty mental.

How many death threats do you get on an average week, then?

Thankfully they’re pretty rare. Maybe one a month, or two months. I’m lucky, most people who follow me have followed my journey and respect what I do. I don’t expect people to like everything I make. That’s the beauty of music, that’s the nature of humans and art.

Where do dick pics fit in with this nature and beauty?

Oh right at the top mate. I get them all day long on Snapchat. And snaps of people on the toilet, too. Good on them, though. That’s the internet… There’s no rules. I hope there never are!

Amen. So between the two uploads we’ve had you’ve pretty much told us exactly where you’re at and what we can expect… Which is anything!

Too right. And now I’m locking myself away in my studio and seeing what I come up with. It’s a brand new studio, and it’s fucking amazing. It’s my dream studio.

The light at the end of a painful album tunnel!

Yes. I was very lucky with how successful the album was. Particularly here in Australia. So I put everything I earned into it. It was either that or a deposit for a house, but who needs a house anyway?