With the forthcoming 8th Birthday of leading Welsh Hardstyle/Hard Dance event Bionic and their imminent return to Cardiff featuring HardTrance legend Shokk alongside many others we took time to ask Shokk where has has been, what he has been upto and what his future plans are

1.Do you intend producing any Old Skool sounding tracks?
In the new stuff you will always hear some influences from old skool Hard-Trance.

2.Can you grab Reverb from what ever it he is doing, chain him up, and lock him in the studio full time with ur self, and also with Natron and get some Flutlicht and SHOKK tunes (to go with ur forthcoming new bits) on the go, permanently!!
No, I fully respect Marcos decision he made 5 years ago.

3.What have you got planned for the future?
First of all establish shokk in the market again and mix up the hard-trance scene a bit and see what happens ;)

4.What have you been up to last couple years?
On a certain point back in 2005 I took the decision to invest my time in other things then music. I suffered a kind of an over kill. I think I was in need of that break. But it was absolutely worth it as I re-discovered my main driver for making music – passion!

5.With the upcoming releases u got coming out does it mean ur gonna be back making the hard trance of old which is missed today? With reverb or with anyone else? As already mentioned there will be influences from the classic shokk style. We have a wide range of tracks in the pipe… both trancey and evil stuff but always HT flavored.
When Reverb decided to stop he left it to Dani and me to make the decisions how to go on with Flutlicht / shokk. Since the beginning of 2008 the new heads behind shokk are Nicolas Perrottey (known as DJ Space Raven) and Claudio Pettannice.

6.There is a perception out there today that the hard trance scene is not what it used to be especially 2002-2004 era. Why do you think that is?
Is any scene how it was 2002-2004? I don’t like this kind of comparisons. Our whole life is full of changes all the time and it’s up to every single individual to decide if they like it or not. Yes, 2002 – 2004 was a fantastic time and we cannot bring it back – but we can at least try to influence 2009, 2010, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15…

7.Why do you think hard trance producers of old like Wag and Scott Project are doing tech trance?
I can tell you why we add some techy elements to the tracks. You have a wide range of possibilities to do crazy things around the beats. Tech-Trance is a bit more decent and sometimes you just want to do something crunchy and groovy. I like both, crunchy and euphoric tracks. This is how shokk sounded in the past and will also do in the future.

8.What your views on tech trance do u think its killing the hard trance scene because everyone is now copying the yoji and scott project sound?
Well when new-style trance and Hardstyle became popular it was difficult for the hard-trance guys as we were too hard for the ASOT people and too soft for Hardstylers. This is what happened in my opinion. Tech-Trance isn’t killing Hard-Trance at all. Of course if everyone copies Scot Project or Yoji it get’s boring. But that can happen to every style. I think Tech and Hard-Trance fit well together and there is great stuff out on the market – Joop, Marcel Woods or Leon Bolier to name just a few. Nowadays I would even put shokk in the tech-trance edge – of course as an exponent with heavy hard-trance influences…. However, you can discuss these things over and over again – if there is something which kills off music then it’s the fact that people spend more time discussing around who does what and which style is better instead of partying, producing, djing or whatever.

9.Why did you stop making hard trance? Were you bored of the scene or Wanted to explore different sounds?
After Marco left I wanted to explore different sounds as there is pretty cool stuff beside of trance / hard-trance. Then came the over kill. But lucky me I found out hard-tech-trance still being my true love… I would never have taken the decision to bring shokk back in 2008 without being 100% sure that this is what I want.

10.what software / hardware / vst's do you prefer?
Guess what, it’s still Fruity Loops ;o)

11.where does ‘crazy cow’ come from, is that your nickname ?
haha, this was a name I used in online chats ages ago.
But of some reasons I never got rid of it.

12.Where have you been playing last?
I played some gigs in Switzerland recently. I will invest more time and energy again in djing. I’m really excited about coming back to a fantastic party crowd at the place where my international dj career begun – Bionic!

You can catch S.H.O.K.K alongside Davide Sonar, Mark EG, Cally & Juice, Brian M Vs McBunn, Vandall Vs Jon the Baptist & Chuck-e & Many More @ Bionic's 8th Birthday on Friday 4th July for full details click here Bionic 8th Birthday

Thanks to S.H.O.K.K for taking time out to answer our questions