So working with Honey on the track take a picture, how did that come about and what was it like working with her?

I met her in, I’d say, the beginning of last year. I found her through Tik Tok when I saw a video of a really cool song she was teasing for the longest time, and I followed her and a little while later she followed me back and I was just like “hey I like your music!” and she was like “hey I like your music aswell!” and we became really great friends since then. A while later I told her like “hey I’m working on this song it would be great if you could lay some stuff down for it” and yeah, she got back to me pretty quickly actually.

Obviously the song take a picture went through so many different phases, I reworked the song like a kajillion times. I basically just rebuilt the song from scratch at one point. There was a point where she came to the UK and I was like “hey I’m doing a studio session soon, come through and lets work on the song together” and that was the final iteration of the song and yeah the production of the song went really smoothly and really well, that is for the final part at least.

You said how you wanted to create a more simplistic and fun dance style with a “less is more” feel. I feel like as listeners we are used to a more complex production from you so how was it trying to have the same level of impact with less?

It’s hard to explain but like, for me, I just went with my gut, if it sounds good to me then that’s fine. I would listen to my old music before NIGHTINGALE and I realised that there was a lot going on and while it’s nice to have a lot going on, I tend to think to myself would a normal consumer appreciate something like that. While I do make the music for myself not them, there are times when you have to consider there’s people out there who want less, including me sometimes. When I listen to the type of music that I create by other artists I often think “whoa there’s a lot going on here” and it’s a lot to process.

But yeah I did find it difficult because I am an artist, no doubt, but at the same time I am a producer so I’ve spent years making instrumental music where I have little things fill in the gaps where lyrics should be. I realised how difficult it was when I made Move Your Body with Lotus, I realised when she sent over her vocals that there was a lot going on in my song that I need to tone down. The same thing happened with Honey when she sent me the lyrics for the song take a picture, I was like, “ok I need to turn down a lot of stuff to make sure there’s enough space for the artist to breathe”. My previous vocal tracks are notoriously known for having the vocals drowned out by the weight of my production so yeah, I’d say it was a little bit hard to make more simplistic music especially with the mindset of “ah what are other producers going to think about this and that’, but when you let go of that you realise it doesn’t really matter at all.

I know that sometimes artists can let featuring artists have complete free reign over their verses and some artists will tell featuring artists exactly what they them want to say, how much influence did you guys have over her each other’s work?

We did have older lyrics for that song, the chorus  wasn’t touched at all, but the older version of take a picture (which will never see the light of day) had completely different lyrics. In my opinion… Would I say I was a huge fan?... I mean they were fine, but I think Honey wanted to change the lyrics. I was fine with that aswell honestly and when we went to the studio to work on the song… I can’t lie, I can’t write, I mean vocal melodies here and there, I can come up with that, but I can’t write lyrics at all, so she was the one who came up with them and I was just helping out with rhyming, you know, putting my little 2 cents here and there but she was mostly in charge of writing the lyrics and melody lines.

She was telling me that she kind of pushed herself with certain parts of the song and she thinks she outperformed herself with this song so that was cool, and it was a really nice time, yeah and she’s lovely in general to work with too.

Last time we spoke. you mentioned how Sonic music influenced your style a lot, this time you mention how car culture and racing games like Need for Speed and Midnight Club were major influences in this EP. I know that games like Gran Turismo are praised for the aesthetic of their soundtrack, would you say that these games have a different style and level of influence compared to that of sonic games?

I want to say it’s a mixture of both, but I still feel like Sonic music has an all-time influence on my music regardless; racing games no doubt because racing games are awesome and my favourite type of video games in general, like if it’s not sonic games then it’s racing games, if it’s not racing games then I will not be online.

Racing games did play a huge role on the influence of this EP, in fact I even named one of the songs after one of the games I took inspiration from, Midnight Club.

I have to say you captured the vibe well, I remember after listening to it a couple times I was like “damn I’ve got to have to re-download forza”.

Hahah yeah that’s how it is, the crazy thing with Midnight Club is that I will honestly admit that it’s one of my favourite songs on the EP because I think it perfectly captures the theme of the EP as a whole. I was working off the premise of, you know, driving and songs to drive to and the casual house music you hear on the radio when driving at night and all that stuff and then try and work that in with JDM’s, Tuner racing all that stuff, you know the stuff you see in the original Fast & Furious movies and Need for Speed games and stuff.

Speaking of which, I know you have the ASHFM playlist with all your personal favourite tracks in, after listening to that I can tell that car culture is a big inspiration for you.

Yeah it’s a shame that I didn’t push that as much. The description behind that ASHFM playlist is the secondary name for 365 aswell, songs to drive to; so it does play a big role in the production of the EP in terms of inspiration.

In your press release you mentioned you have a new video in the works, is there anything you can tell us about that?

So, I’ve been working on this music video since February actually, I’m going to say that honestly, it’s a bit different from the last 4 music videos, like the last the videos, they were all taking place in London. Papaya is a visualiser, get right! takes place in my hometown Hornchurch and move your body takes place in Hackney and me and you takes place in Hornchurch again. This one is a bit different as the theme for the last few music videos was all London based scene and like the London scene and my immediate circle, this one takes inspiration from the video for Cardboard Box by Flo. It’s like sort of minimal space type of vibe, it’s definitely more imaginative.

So, would you say that the first few videos are you building your aesthetic in a way and now you’ve got it, you’re going to try experiment and push yourself now?

Yeah 100%, I mean the first two visualiser videos I made were me just learning as I go with how to animate as I taught myself everything I know with my art, and with each animation I started to improve and with that I felt more comfortable being able to push myself. This is definitely going to be one where I push myself above and beyond my own limits.

Although, 356 is still very heavily lore based, it adds to the whole AshZone lore and worldbuilding and all that stuff. Yeah hopefully I’m going to be able to continue through this route still as a lot of people have said how they like the world that I’ve built with my music. It’s weird because to me I shape it off of real-life experiences, but it is still my own world, I like it that way though, like people could recognize me because of the clothes my purple character wears as I draw the same clothes that I wear in real life.

I think it’s because, I mean I could do photoshoots and I could use real life pictures of me but I’m not a huge camera guy… I mean yeah I’ll show my face here and there no doubt, but I feel like I would like to use my art to my advantage.

But yeah, bottom line is that while 365 is here, I’m not done; I still have lots of things coming soon, it’ll be in my own time but yeah its’s coming.