Exclusive Interview With The Only
Australian production/DJ duo THE ONLY is Shawn Naderi & Jeff Drake. Obsessed with making dance-floor rocking tracks, THE ONLY jumped into the world of EDM after their chance meeting in the infamous Sydney nightspot Chinese Laundry. In a few short years the duo has had their productions supported by artists as diverse as Tiesto, Steve Aoki, Bingo Players, TJR, Chuckie and The Bloody Beetroots and many more
Hello Shawn and Jeff!! A big welcome to
think IN electronic. Thank you for taking time out to do this interview with
us. It is a huge pleasure.
How
are you doing?
Fuckin Awesome thank you! Hi South Africa
and think IN electronic, how are you?
Firstly
we see you guys have a competition going to win a day doing cool things with
Tigerlily and you two. What do we have to do to be blessed with spending time
with you guys?
Go to the zoo, check out some crazy looking
animals, maybe some killer go karting, ping pong and beer, dying Shawn’s hair
blue like Tigerlily’s!
On
that note what does cool day in the life of Shawn and Jeff consist of doing?
[Shawn] My favourite days ever have been
when I've been in a city I've never been to before, eating food which I had never
tasted before and soaking in some really cool vibes and living life as a local
in that town.
This
is a staple TIE question, what is the first thing that comes to mind when you
hear South Africa?
[Jeff] Die Antwoord and Jack Parow! I went
to see a Die Antwoord show a few years ago and it was crazy inspiring seeing
two people create that much energy and presence. I was completely blown away
and immediately started looking into what it was all about, which when I
uncovered the performance art aspect of it I was even more impressed! In fact
the creative hub of music and art that is Afrikaans culture is crazy
impressive!
Can
you tell us a little more about who Shawn and Jeff are when they not making
music?
[Jeff] We are the opposite of each other.
Shawn is completely chaotic and follows his heart while I am borderline OCD
and need to be in control of and analyse everything. So we are much better
friends when we are not in the studio together haha!
The
story goes you met on a night out in a club. So who dropped their drink on who?
Jokes aside how did you two meet? And why the name The Only?
You know neither of can even recall who
introduced us or how we even got talking. It really was as simple and boring as
we talked about music nonstop and decided to meet up and show each other what
we were both writing. We did, we wrote a song that day, showed a friend who
worked at a record label the song, he wanted to sign it and so we had to pick a
name.
We chose the name because of its open-endedness
(if that’s even a word). THE ONLY… It can be anything and any time.
Unfortunately we didn’t think about searchability the time which sucks
because it’s possibly the dumbest name of all time when it comes to trying to
find it on google or soundcloud or facebook or anywhere for that matter.
So to help you they are:
We
grew up wanting to be doctors and look at where we are now, what was your dream
career when growing up?
[Shawn] I said when I was 11 years old I
want to be Axle Rose from Guns N Roses and a sound engineer.. I feel like this
life we now live is some kind of alternate reality version of that!
[Jeff] My Dads recently told me that as a
child I was fixated on becoming a standup comedian. There are many parallels
between performing music and performing standup so I guess it sort of makes
sense now.
What
attracted you both to dance music and how did you get into producing and DJ’n?
[Shawn] I used to play in bands and found
that there's just so much in terms of competing ego's. With dance music, even
if you collaborate with other people, I find most people have the sole focus on
trying to make the music the best thing instead of being a hero for 5 minutes.
I love the music and it's always been about that.
[Jeff] I got into dance music by complete
accident. My teens were spent as an unadulterated indie and brit pop fan and at
that point I only knew dance music to be drum beats under other people’s songs,
which I thought was completely lame. When a friend forced me to listen to the
Northern Exposure mix CD it all started making a lot more sense to me and I
recognized there was infact amazing dance music to be discovered. I started
buying vinyl right away and after a few years the collection was growing
massively and under immense pressure from everyone around me I reluctantly got
a mixer and a second deck and it was pretty much all over from there.
What
is a typical day like in The Only studio? How do you guys go from idea to
finished product?
Some of the best ideas happen in weird
situations, like an hour before a gig in a hotel or on the plane with just
shitty headphones and a laptop.. in this situation you're kind of limited to focusing
on making a killer idea instead of getting caught up in all the details.
Sometimes you make a cool new sound and that
inspires a vibe and track.
Other times inspiration comes from moment in
your set on the weekend.
Once the core idea is down, it’s a slog to
refine it and make it sound as good as you can and that's more of a technical
process.
The
industry is very cut throat. What are some of the challenges you guys are
facing in your career as artist?
One of the big challenges is make something
that puts you in a place amongst your peers but sounds unique and completely
different at the same time. There are 10's of thousands of new tracks coming
out every week from every corner of the world so you really need to come up
with something that is not just good but fucking great! And then once you have
that in the bag you then need to have the right imagery and marketing so people
get to actually hear what you've made.
When working with Tigerlily we asked her to
have a go at doing vocals on the track, which for Daylight is that X factor
element for the song because nobody has heard her sing on a track before!
Australia
is spilling with talent what makes The Only stand out from other OZ talent?
At
first it was our production, but now it's our hooks and melodies. A great idea
always beats great production. We share a twin studio with fellow Oz artist
Flume and if he hears something then is whistling it a few minutes later, we know
we're onto a killer melody.
You produce
Bigroom Bounce. Which beach in Oz would you guys use to describe your sound?
haha neither of us have any idea?! We both
have studio tans. But yes we do call our sound bigroom bounce because we try to
make stadium size sounds but without ever losing the ‘bounce’ because it’s such
an important part of what makes a dancefloor actually tick. Groove is an often
forgotten element in bigroom music and we use bounce to bring this into our
sound.
Your
latest release is with “Daylight”, we are totally loving the track. How did the
collaboration come to be?
When
collaborating we try and keep a really open mind and often seek out
collaborations which on paper may seem really strange. The crazier ideas or
combinations have a habit of creating the most exciting results!
We
met Dara at a festival we were playing together at and got along really well so
we just asked her to come to the studio one day. We first made a hard style
track but we both felt it wasn't quite right, then got back in the studio and
Daylight was born out of the hook melody. Once the melody was written it became
clear the song should have a female vocal. Shawn suggested we think about who
could sing it and then Dara mentioned she used to sing. That was it, we put her
in front of the mic there and then and two hours later Daylight as you know it
was written.
We're both really busy so it was challenging
to get time that we were both around to spend in the studio, but the writing
process was really fun and it's actually really refreshing having a female
perspective in the studio. We often talk between ourselves about avoiding
sounds and vibes that are ’too dude sounding’ as we put it and with Tigerlily
there is helped this so much! She helped capture the right feeling.
We
think her colourful hair and sexy voice makes her extra special what do you
guys think makes Tigerlily extra special?
One
of the things we think makes Tigerlily so great and why we were excited to work
with her is because away from the blue hair and her image, she is the real
fucking deal. She does this because she loves records and has good taste. She
is a DJ and an artist first, who happens to be a female in a male dominated
industry, not the other way round. It’s this authenticity which makes her
special.
Last
year you guys did a remix for Australian hero Flume's dance project What So Not
which was released on Skrillex's OWSLA label. That’s pretty huge how was the
remix received by the masses?
Harley (Flume) and Chris (from What So Not)
are close friends of ours and it was really cool for them to ask us to come on
board their remix package. We did a big EDM/club type remix cause that's what
we do and weren't sure on how it would go down with the OWSLA crowd, but it got
100,000 plays on their Soundcloud and we got a load of amazing feedback. It
really helped set us apart in terms of being a remix artist that can deliver
something big but not turn a track into cheese just because it's mainstream.
Do you
guys get in to any fights when working together, you know the male ego is
something else, who’s the brains and who’s the beauty?
Always haha! And it’s a really healthy part
of the process. We both only want the best out of ourselves and each other and
if that means fighting with the end goal being a better song we are all about
it. The important thing is to always leave it on the pitch so to speak. We have
zero problems disagreeing and arguing over a sound or melody one minute and
then walk out of the studio and having beer a second later.
Okay so
we have to ask this do you think bounce is just a trend and will fade out or is
it here to stay?
It still has lots of growth in it we think.
The sound in its infancy was ‘Melbourne Bounce’ but with forward thinking
artists evolving the sounds and songwriting it can still go a lot of new
places. Its only now just starting to reach a wide audience too. Tiesto just
made a bounce remix of Gold Skies!
Which
words or phrases do you guys overuse?
Jeff: Cool
Shawn: No
Name
one thing your fans don’t know about you each of you.
[Shawn] I used to be a special FX dude on
films and has helped out on The Matrix 2, Jet Li's HERO and a few other movies.
[Jeff] At 15 I was a state level basketball
player.
What can we expect in the coming months from
The Only Do you guys have any last message for you fans..
THANK YOU so much for helping us live out
our dream!
Look out for our upcoming releases including
our remix of MakJ & Lil Jon – Lets Get F*cked Up and also our remix of New
World Sound for Ultra Records. And our next single RAGE which is out late
October on Hussle.