Home Again Interview With The Only

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:

www.facebook.com/liketheonly

www.soundcloud.com/theonly

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. 

What was it like working with Tigerlily?

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.

www.facebook.com/liketheonly 

https://soundcloud.com/theonly 

https://twitter.com/wearetheonly