By: Anand Harsh

For half a decade no single artist has made us laugh, cringe, and bang our heads more than Wick-it The Instigator. No fans is safe from his trolling, shredding, or viral insanity. Behind all the social media rants, Flabongo shwilling, and infectious giggle is quite possibly the single most talented individual we've ever encountered in the electronic music world.

Andrew Owsley can not only produce beyond above-average competency in a variety of genres from dubstep to trap to future funk to hip-hop, he's an expert turntablist, a guitar wizard, and has crafted some of the sickest mash-ups in the history of the medium, as evidenced by Straight Outta Mashville and The Brothers of Chico Dusty.

If you've never attended a Wick-it show, it goes a little something like this: the main man drops a thunderous beat, switches things up about a hundred times in the first 90 seconds, and then cuts into TV theme song or 70's disco smash, before dropping right back into a knee-breakin' hit. That kind of craziness is exactly why we're so stoked to bring Wick-it The Instigator to The Untz Festival in northern California in June. You just never know what to expect. We crave the madness.

Wick-it is in the process of setting up a remix contest for his "Funk Hammer" masterpiece, amidst working on a bunch of new material. I recently had a chance to catch up with him and get the scoop on what's cooking in the Wick-it lab.

TURN DOWN THE BIRD CANNON LEVELS AND SHAKE THE CINEMA STORM PARTY ANIMALS made us LOL. What's the inspiration behind something like that? A combination of boredom and anger? Maybe hunger thrown in there?

It wasn't so much boredom or anger, but more like the occasional need to go into the studio and just act a fool, and have some fun. Here's a secret confession, I was originally gonna present it by saying "check out my original song" and make it a joke about some of these modern producers trying to jack other people's shit and claim it as their own, buuuut I decided to leave that negative element out of the equation and just let it be something for people to have a laugh at.

Where does your inspiration lie these days? Trap? Dubstep? Live guitar? We loved your future funk collab with Manic Focus, but it seems like straight up hip-hop is always steering your ship.

All of the above (laughs). I just do whatever I feel like doing. I love music on a lot of different levels, meaning sometimes I like to make something with more emotion and depth, and other times I like to make guilty pleasure party bangers. And ya know, sometimes I sit around and listen to Miles Davis, and sometimes I listen to Taylor Swift. There's a time and place for all music. I honestly don't understand why so many artists only stick to one vibe. I like to try and throw my hat in different rings, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but I gotta try.

Speaking of hip-hop, who are some of the rappers you're most interested in right now--or at least have a pretty consistently good flow, and make you want to remix or collab with them?

There's so many. I would love to do a song with Danny Brown, I think he's incredibly versatile, and even his interviews are highly entertaining. Killer Mike is another one, that dude knows how to rip a beat to shreds. One of my bucket list items as a producer is to make a classic hip hop album with an emcee. One day...

What's brewing in Wick-it's lab this fall? Any major plans on the horizon?

I've been in the studio for about 8-12 hours a day for about the last month. I've been trying a different approach to a lot of things. I normally release songs individually as soon as their finished, but lately I've been letting them stock pile. I have new an all original EP that I'm working on, and I'm trying a different approach to this as well. On my last EP, No Ragrets, I was trying to marry together all of the different styles I like into each song. On my new EP, I'm letting each song be a very specific thing. The funk song is the funk song, the trap song is the trap song, the dubstep song is the dubstep song, etc... So the new EP will still be versatile and multi-genre, but just in a different way.

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You can catch Wick-it The Instigator, along with some of the best in underground electronic music like ILLENIUM, Fractal, Bass Physics, and more at The Untz Festival at Mariposa County Fairgrounds in Mariposa, CA from June 2-4, 2016. You're gonna want to know what Wick-it's got up his sleeve next...