“In retrospect, really, the reason it took me three years to finish it is because when I started the album I didn’t really consider myself to be a good enough producer to attempt something like this,” Thomas says candidly. “I wouldn’t settle for anything less than what would make me totally proud of myself. If I was going to release something, I wanted it to have some kind of significant impact on the world. Altogether, I wrote something like 50 songs and I could have easily put out an album a year ago, but I didn’t feel that every single one of those tracks was something I would be completely proud of. I guess I just wanted to take my time and do the best job I could.”
And that he did. While Universus is set to be released on April 28, a number of the album tracks have already hijacked the drum and bas and dubstep charts around the world. The first single off the record, Crucify Me, hit number one on Beatport’s D&B Chart, number one on Drum & Bass Arena, and number one for both the drum and bass and dubstep mixes on their respective Trackitdown charts simultaneously (the first song to ever do so). Additionally, Relapse’s remix reached the second spot on the Beatport charts, its video gaining over one million views on YouTube, while Chaos Theory ranked number one on iTunes Dance Chart, with close to half a million views on YouTube. Destined for big things is ShockOne’s next single, Lazerbeam – a track already getting love from Zane Lowe on BBC Radio One as well as here at home on triple j.
“I couldn’t bring myself to listen to it for about a month after I finished it,” Thomas laughs now. “At the best of times I am not very good at listening to my own music; I am my own worst critic to the point of being completely dysfunctional. In my entire career, I’ve never had a moment where I’d written a song and gone, ‘Yep, this is it, I’ve got a number one on my hands’. Working on this album, one day I’d be like, ‘This could be alright’, then the next day I’d be like, ‘This is completely shit, I’m gonna start again’. I guess I had a weird moment where I just thought, ‘Okay, it’s been a while, I guess I’ll listen back to it…’ And it sounded different as I sat there listening to it with a friend and with a completely fresh mind and ears. At one point I actually thought, ‘Oh my god, this sounds pretty good’… There were even some moments where the hairs on the back of my neck stood up! It’s unbelievable that I still have an affection for it three years later. It’s unexpected. It’s refreshing.”
Thomas’s initial reaction once Universus was done and dusted was that he never wanted to undertake such a process again. Once the “final nail was in the coffin”, he was over the entire ordeal. But that kind of thinking didn’t last for very long.
“When I first finished it, all I knew was that I didn’t want to do this again for a long, long time!” he laughs. “A lot of the time while I worked on it, I felt like it would just never end. I finished writing it back in January so at this stage I’m already thinking about what I want to do next and how to follow it up… I’ve got this big thing out of the way so now I’m really excited about thinking how I can push it even further next time. There is no way I’m going to rest on my laurels and, to tell you the truth. I’m already sketching new stuff.”
At times, Thomas claims making an album was a scary process simply due to the people’s short attention spans. It could have been a nightmare, as the producer puts it, but instead it luckily turned out to be a dream come true.
“The electronic scene moves to fast that you just can’t predict where dance is going or where it’s going be in six months, let alone a whole year. All the time, you see new genres pop up, completely explode, and then just disappear – and then nobody wants to even touch it because it’s just not cool anymore. I did consider that, obviously, you have to, but I realised pretty much straight away that with my music it’s not about trends. I write songs, regardless of their genre. If it’s a good song, it doesn’t matter whether it’s dubstep or drum and bass – as long as it stands the test of time, that’s all that matters. That was the angle with which I approached this album. I had to have a good bunch of songs to work with, first and foremost, the rest would all fall into place.”
BY PEPPER SCOTT
