It's Always Been There

WHO ARE YOUR BIGGEST INFLUENCES?
PABLO I went and worked for a
guy named Jacob in a local South
London high street, doing ten pound
haircuts. I went there and realised
there’s more levels to this. He
taught me to shave, afro, and proper
fading. He was a big influence. There
are a few guys I look up to such
as MOKUM Barbers in Amsterdam,
Alan Beak from Manchester, but one
of my main influences stylewise
is Klipper Kem who I’m lucky
enough to work with now. We have
a strong team at Cuts & Bruises.
ONEMAN The biggest one for me is
DJ EZ because he didn’t go down one
route of UK underground music. He
went everywhere and found all the
little pockets. He’d have DJ Zinc,
breakbeat, garage tracks, Oxide
and Neutrino, garage crew tracks,
Sweet Female Attitude. It was all
mixed together but made sense.
Another DJ from around the same
time was Fonti from Heartless Crew.
The whole Crisp Biscuit thing he
used to do, which was basically
find a track with that BPM from
any genre, so a 130BPM RnB track
he’d mixed with a garage track.
No one had done that before and
that’s something I still do now.
PABLO That’s what I notice when I
watch you play. Even though I like
to listen to a lot of underground
music, when I watch Oneman play
it doesn’t matter if he’s playing
the baitest track out of the
charts. The ways he brings it in
is sick. It works, it gets the
crowd going off fully every time.
ONEMAN It’s all about taking the
risk though. I’m all about risks. I
hate playing it safe, it’s boring.
There’s no bollocks to it. One of
my favourite things when I’m DJing
is when everyone stops dancing. I
love it. Everyone’s like, what’s
going on? Half of them will be
like, fuck this, we’re off. Then the
other half is thinking, actually,
let’s wait and listen. I love that
confusion and having that position
of power when you’re controlling
a room full of people [Laughter].
28 / DEEP CUTS