Artist of the Month: sim0ne

For sim0ne, who injects her hard and fast rave anthems with playful pop peaks, it’s all about having fun on the dance floor. “I think everyone's quite open now,” the Scottish London-based artist begins, “but there definitely was a time – pre-pandemic – where it felt like you could only wear black if you liked techno”.

Incorporating unashamed sing-alongs into her own bangers like "Number One Lover," "space cadet" and "freaky" has always felt natural for a “very-online digger” who spent her early teenage years searching for music on Limewire and Tumblr. Alongside becoming a fan of “really niche sub-genres” such as J-Pop because of her love of video games, she equally loved the era-defining ‘Clubland Classics’ CDs; the primary genres within those formative compilations were hard house, trance and happy hardcore, three styles that sim0ne effortlessly weaves together in her high-energy productions. “It’s about pulling all the different things I like together,” the Edinburgh-born artist says, struggling to quantify her sound before landing on a rhetorical question: “seven in one track?” In an age of audio overload and constant releases, she’s confident that “people's ears can handle that”.

Despite only teaching herself how to DJ and produce during lockdown, sim0ne has rapidly become one of the hottest names in dance music. “I was really late to the game,” she admits, “but because I have ADHD I'm not great at getting myself to sit down, especially if it's at the start of learning to do something.” Thankfully, everything clicked relatively quickly: “I remember thinking ‘wow, I can't believe I just figured this out in my bedroom’,” she says of the achievement changing her neuro-plasticity: “I thought ‘if I apply myself for long enough, then I'll be able to do this’.”

Having worked the cash desk for FLY CLUB at Cabaret Voltaire – where she had partied with friends “religiously” since the age of 18 – and spent seasons in Ibiza during the deep house boom of Hot Since 82, Miguel Campbell and Dam Swindle – the connections she had made helped sim0ne to land her first bookings, including HöR Berlin’s London takeover in 2023. “I was shocked they asked me but, obviously, I wasn’t going to say no to a good opportunity,” she recalls of it being only her fourth ever show. In hindsight, she perhaps prioritised the wrong things. “I spent the day leading up to it on track selection, pulling vinyl rips of '90s rave tracks from YouTube. The sound quality is terrible,” she admits. “None of them were lined up on the grid, because I couldn't use Rekordbox properly,” she reflects… “I did what I could with the tools I had at the time.”

Nonetheless, her mistakes inadvertently resulted in sim0ne’s first viral moment. “There was this guy on TikTok who used to critique DJs and do timestamps explaining what went wrong,” she explains, adding that while she believes there was “an edge of misogyny to people liking to see women not able to do things”, the analysis ended up working in her favour. “Everyone went to see it, and then they were like ’wait, this song is really good, though’." Two weeks later, her pumping trance-techno bootleg of Lana Del Rey’s "Say Yes To Heaven" blew up on socials, with respected names like I Hate Models dropping it in their sets. 

The morning after the first edition of club zer0 – “it had always been a dream to have my own party” – she received the news that not only was it getting an official release, but Lana planned to re-record a decade-old demo for the new edit. “That was crazy,” she says of the juxtaposition of playing to just 70 people the night before. “I couldn't go out anywhere in central London without anyone that worked at a major label cornering me in a bathroom,” she laughs. “For someone who was brand new to the music industry, it was completely overwhelming.”

While the experience of online fame left her fearing being “made fun” of again, she reflects on it as a “blessing in disguise. That’s what kick-started my career and took it to a whole new level,” she considers, adding that it made her “obsessed” with getting technically better at DJing. “I made most of my mistakes in front of a fair amount of people, which teaches you not to do it again pretty quickly. It was a baptism of fire,” she concludes of that first chapter in her career.

Having since honed her skills and become a regular fixture on festival line-ups, club posters and the fashion circuit, sim0ne has built a community of her own. “Everyone is so locked in,” she says of her club zer0 events, including a particularly memorable sold-out party at Village Underground in London. “People weren't going out for cigarette breaks. They weren't moving again. There wasn't a crazy amount of phones in there. In all the pictures, everyone is dancing and having a good time,” she beams. This, sim0ne explains, has always been the goal: “I wanted it to be about people who really wanted to leave the outside world behind and lose themselves. There's something so cathartic about dancing and jumping up and down with your friends. I love that club zer0 is a place where people can do that.”

Getting to curate the line-ups feels incredibly fulfilling, too. “That’s one of the funnest parts,” she says. “When I’m booking it, I’ll look at flyers for the local scene, see who is coming up and who is trying really hard to get their name out there.” Aside from local acts, she’s enjoyed having free rein to hand-pick some of her favourite artists to join her, including hyperpop-star Hannah Diamond. “It was slightly different musically but I love PC Music because seeing and hearing them gave me the confidence to get into making music,” she recalls of their unconventional methods. “I didn't grow up being musically trained and that’s how they all got into music,” she shares. “They were breaking a lot of rules that didn't matter, and it still sounded great and they were so cool.” Hosting Diamond to play after her, then, felt like a full circle moment: “I was really fan-girling,” she laughs, adding that “everyone stayed right through to the end; it was incredible to see”. 

“Other than online?” she offers tentatively. “Being in the club really forces you into the present, and I think that's what's so nice about it.”

What can be done to stop, or at least prolong, this Black Mirror-esque prediction from becoming reality? Aside from Nadine Noor, founder of the queer club night Pxssy Palace, being appointed by Mayor Sadiq Khan to the independent London Nightlife Taskforce in February 2025, sim0ne says she “hasn’t seen anything like a huge interjection from the UK government. I’m aware it’s probably not their top priority… but I do think it's a really important space for young people to have”.

While they’re still open, then, you’ll continue to find sim0ne on the dance floor. “The only way to really see how a track feels is to be there yourself,” she suggests of the way raving informs her own BPM-building DJ sets; “you’ve got to keep getting involved!” A recent visit to Basement in New York springs to her mind: “my friends and I had been techno dancing for hours and then, out of nowhere, [Madison Avenue’s] ‘Don’t Call Me Baby’ dropped. I literally screamed and we were all grabbing each other… I think it's so great to have a moment of respite from the kick drums,” she continues. “People love a bit of melody, and I’m always incorporating that in my music.” 

All this is at the core of her first full project, ‘zer0’, the dopamine-releasing tasters of which she has been sprinkling into her recent DJ sets. “When people get really excited when you play your own track, that’s the best thing in the world,” she concludes of the reactions she’s been getting. “It feels amazing because it’s like, ‘oh, you guys came to see me, and to see me play this’.”