End on a high: an essential adage for pretty much everything in life but none more so than a DJ set…. Leave the crowd on a high, leave them wanting more and leave the DJ after you thinking ‘bastard!’
A global bass operator, smashing clubs and festivals since his debut release on Shogun Audio 10 years ago, ShockOne knows a thing or two about happy endings. Currently spotted on Viper’s Summer Slammers with the evergreen Infinity’s Silence (and an entire mix if you’re copping it in Australia), he wanted to share his all time top five end-of-set finale fire-ups. We were happy to accept them.
I think this list makes it pretty obvious that I like to close my sets in a pretty heavy fashion…
Shockone – Chaos Theory
For obvious reasons, this has been the song that I have either started, or finished my sets with for quite a while now (sometimes both!) It’s the gnarliest sounding tune on Universus, and a lot of people’s favourite club-centric song on the album.
On the shows when I do finish with it, the majority of my night is spent reading messages on people’s phones that they hand to me saying ‘Chaos Theory!?!’ I nod and wink and tap my nose at them and then 15 minutes later they come back with a message saying ‘Come on man when are you playing Chaos Theory?!?!’ Then I’m sure half of them probably end up outside having a smoke and missing the end of my set and henceforth missing the song.
Konflict – Messiah (Noisia remix)
The original is an all time favourite drum & bass tune for me. It has stood the test of time and still sounds as epic as the first time I heard it at a rave a long time ago. Sometimes, depending on the age of the crowd I’m playing to, I’ll get some confused looks from kids who are too young to know it…. In which case I’m glad to be giving them a bit of a history lesson.
It’s crazy/scary that it was 10 years ago that this song came out. Depending on what I’m mixing it with, I will switch between the original and the brilliant Noisia remix, which kept the original energy and vibe of the track intact and, to me, sounds like an update of the original… Which was exactly what was needed on the remix. But yeah, that bone chilling chant and that reece synth in the intro still make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck when ever I play it!
Shockone – Big Bounce
I’ll finish a set with this song when I want to go a bit leftfield for the outro of my set. It’s written at 110 bpm, but is still very energetic, and the self indulgent 70s psych sci-fi super breakdown is a great hands in the air moment to close a show with. There is something about 110bpm; it seems to be the perfect tempo to get thousands of people bouncing in unison, so for that reason its a good closer too, it’s a great sight to behold from onstage thats for sure. I’ll often mix with with SKiSM’s remix of Lazerbeam. The two together have destroyed many a sound system.
Spor – Kingdom
Another older favourite of mine. Something about the mixdown and groove of this tune just makes people lose their shit every time. It’s definitely a tune for the heads. I always love teasing the intro over a couple of songs and watching the few crew who love the song kind of look up with that excited ‘Oh shit is he playing ‘Kingdom’!?!?’ look on their face. I think this list makes it pretty obvious that I like to close my sets in a pretty heavy fashion and this song does that perfectly. Again I will usually mix it with something else to ensure utter chaos, but that varies from night to night.”
Shockone – Lightcycles
I’ll be honest, I rarely finish a set with this song. In fact I rarely get to play it out at shows, even though it is my personal favourite off my album. However, there have been some special moments at shows where I have kind of encored with the full 6:54 version of this tune, one in particular being a crazy beach rave I played in Perth a few years ago. It was never written as a club tune, more a psychedelic inward journey for the listener, but when vibes are right at a show I’ll pull it out, again mainly for self indulgent reasons, and play it. Mainly just to hear it belt out on a club system!”
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