Following the release of his new lo-fi single me and you, Alex Walden caught up with East London producer and artist AshZone to talk about the story behind his most recent music video, some features you may have missed, and his influences as a producer as well as an artist.
AW: You posted in Instagram about how there’s a sort of storyline behind your latest music video.
AZ: Yeah, there’s a bit of lore behind the whole AshZone thingy.
How does that work then?
It’s more sort of like a personal thing, the storyline. Each song sort of tells a story of me as an artist. If you go all the way back to 2020, with my project called NIGHTINGALE, each song was telling a story. The whole story behind that EP was about finding myself as an artist and exploring myself – kind of like travelling. Although I didn’t actually go anywhere physically, it was about exploring different things and places as an artist so I kind of developed that a bit more in my recent songs.
My last four songs, papaya, get right!, move your body and me and you, all have some sort of connection in terms of my artistry, being obviously my purple self, but I’ve also allowed myself to create this world which is literally based off real life. Everything that happens in real life I draw or animate.
The way that you have your drawings blend in with the real world is dope in my opinion. I love how it shows you can blend your music with the real world.
Thank you. The way I went about it before was I used to draw everything, like literally everything, then I kind of realised from I think papaya onwards, the music video or visualiser or whatever, this blends really well. With papaya I used screenshots from this game called Forza so then I started trying to use more real-life stuff with the next music video get right! and I was like “you know what? I’m going to do a full-length music video,” and thenmove your body came and then with me and you I was like “move your body’s music video is good but I want do better” you know? “I want to do much more interactive stuff”. So, I went out several times and shot different things in Hornchurch, which is my hometown, just shooting different areas and stuff. I had to be careful so I brought the tripod so I could track the camera motion so that my animation would work really well with all that stuff.
When you draw, I notice that there’s often little pop culture references. When you posted the snippet of the character with the overall and rollerblades, I immediately clocked that’s got to be Tab from Jet Set Radio.
Yeah 100%
And I saw you had included a snippet of some Bomb Rush Cyberfunk in there as well. Would you say that those games have influenced the way that you make music as well as draw?
Oh 100%. It’s not even just Jet Set Radio and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. I think at the end of the day, it always boils down to my love for Sonic the Hedgehog. I’ve always heard people say to me “your music sounds like something I would hear in a sonic game” and I’m like “yeah thanks, this is perfect,” because again, it goes all the way back to when I was 12. Actually, I started making music at like 11-ish and I think Sonic Colors had just come out at around that time and the soundtrack was what had literally pushed me to like… I remember saying to myself at a very very young age “I want my music to sound like that”.
It is a killer soundtrack to be fair.
Literally, Sonic music is so good and that is what gave me the push to look a lot deeper into music, into composition and all that stuff and to this day I still try to put people onto Sonic music as crazy as it sounds like.
Bro so do I! There are so many hidden gems in Sonic games.
Literally!
The way they construct a whole world with their music is insane.
Literally, like I feel weird sometimes listening to Sonic music but these guys… these guys know what they’re doing you know?
For real, they’re good at what they do.
Yeah but in terms of art, I got into art through my older brother because he does graphic design and back then he used to design a lot of characters and stuff so that kind of pushed me to do the same thing as well. For me to this day, art is still a hobby but at the same time it’s like… you know it’s one of those things where I was like “I can use this a lot for my music”, and my art takes inspiration from many things from Scott Pilgrim to Jet Set Radio. There’s this artist on Instagram called Cassandra Calin. She played a huge role with my art style and everything, but the music video itself does take inspiration from Jet Set Radio and in the outfit I
designed – well not designed because I already own it in real life – but the outfit is based off of Tab or Corn’s outfit from Jet Set Radio to the roller skates and just putting stickers everywhere in my town centre. I would’ve done graffiti but I realised that it would’ve been a lot harder to animate plus I’m sure it’s illegal. You know I’m for inspiring kids to do the right thing these days.
Wow a true role model if I ever heard one.
Ha-ha, exactly!
Moving from the inspiration in your drawing back to your sound; when I first discovered you it was when you released get right! It brought back this garage sound that I hadn’t heard in a while and then, looking further into your discography, I can see you have so many different sounds. You have garage, house Splatoon remixes and even Vocaloid music. With you having such an extensive range of sounds, do you ever find it difficult producing and releasing different genres of music because the audience might not like it or is it just “I want to make this song. I’m just going to make it”?
I used to have a bit of anxiety a little while ago. This was back when I was working on NIGHTINGALE because I had two distinctive audiences at the time. I had my real life audience which was friends I know, my brothers and all that stuff and then there’s my online audience who are mostly from America and they used to like my EDM and my drum ‘n’ bass and all that stuff whereas my real life audience – they’re more used to my mellow kind of hip hop-ish sound and at the time I was thinking like “what do I make, what do I make?” but nowadays I kind of just want to make whatever I want to make, you know? If I want to make a full on EDM track like something you would hear in Rocket League or a Twitch streamer’s stream or whatever then I would make it. I mean maybe not now because I’m kind of in this era of lo-fi house and dance music and all that stuff but if I feel like it I feel like it. It’s that sort of artistic freedom in a way, if you get what I’m saying.
So then if you were to make a project in the future could we expect multiple genres or just the one?
It depends on how I’d want the project to go. It could be like a full on EDM sound or it could be straight up dance music/dance lo-fi or it could be a mixture of both. I’m definitely not new to that concept as I’ve done it before. In fact I think my very first EP that I put out when I was like… how old was I?… I was like 16, 17. It was like a full-on hip hop EP because it was more aimed at my real life audience. Although I was still heavily influenced by Sonic music, I kind of wanted to go back to my roots and then after going back and forth between genres I realised I just wanted to try loads of different genres at the time so I made a project that was strictly this genre and strictly that genre. So yeah, I would do it again if I felt like it.
To be fair, you’re good at that stuff. I mean with get right!, move your body and me and you, they all sound a little bit different; they aren’t exactly the same genre but the way you produce it kind of creates your own unique musical universe with all these characters. Focusing on the characters in move your body, I’m guessing that it’s you and Lotu5 in the video along with the other characters. Are these characters all based off of real people or are they people that you just draw?
For move your body, every single person in that video is based off of someone I know in real life. It’s essentially their cameo appearance in that video. I drew myself with Lotu5 alongside with friends whereas with me and you, yes there were loads of cameo appearances, but there were also people that I designed myself. I don’t know if they count as video vixens, but I did design and style them myself, some of them. For an example, if you look in the video there’s a girl wearing a red, black, and white Ferrari Jacket. I designed her by myself and it’s kind of based off not people that I know but people that I see in real life, like the different hairstyles and all that stuff – different black hairstyles might I add – and different fashion senses. You know, I had to like actually go outside, which is a crazy concept, but I had to go out and seek and study people’s different senses of fashion and all that stuff and I tried to apply it to these people that I’m creating for this specific music video.
I respect it man. One that caught my eye was the sticker of a man with a pink jacket and his dog in the art style of Bathing Ape’s Baby Milo, is that a real person?
Yeah that’s my friend, his name is Diore and his Instagram is @realeffingdee. He’s a very, very supportive friend. He’s one of my good friends in this scene. I only met him earlier this year but we found out we went to the same school and everything and he’s been so properly supportive with my music and stuff and he’s also just a really great guy so he asked me if he could have a little cameo appearance and I was like “yeah, not only am I going draw but I’m also going to give you your own little Brent [Faiyaz] sticker in different places here and there” and he was like “bro thank you so much!” and I was like “aye man it’s nothing, you’re so supportive of me, this is like me paying my respects back to you”.
Towards the end of the video, you put a little trailer for 365 which is coming soon. As well as that is there anything else we can expect from you in the foreseeable future?
About the 365 thing, I was hoping people would take more notice – I was sprinkling a little bit of 365 here and there throughout the whole music video. What’s so lucky about where I live is that there is a bus route with the number 365, so I thought I’d take advantage of that. But anyways, yes at the end of the video I do tease a little something with an artist called honey. She’s released music with an artist called 10tendo called Money and the song is really good but it’s big as well. Me and her have got a little something together. 365 is… I don’t want to say too much but it’s definitely something we can expect in the future at some point.