We had the honour of catching up with British DJ and producer OCULA, who recently unveiled his transcendent melodic house EP ‘Better Than This / Door Wide Open’ on Colorize.
OCULA is known for his visceral, emotionally-resonant sound which pulls at the listener’s heart strings, while simultaneously connecting with their core. Released on 5 November 2025, the two-track EP boldly showcases OCULA’s growth, artistic evolution and sublime technical ability. OCULA is no newcomer, as he boasts releases on labels like Armada, Anjunabeats, Spinnin’ Deep and mau5trap, while he’s also created official remixes for the likes of Gabriel & Dresden and Lane 8.
After focusing on producing for the majority of the year, and a highly successful US Summer tour, the release of this EP marks a profound milestone for this incredibly talented artist. In our exclusive interview with OCULA (Brad Littler), he discusses the EP’s production process, dealing with creative block, working with singer-songwriter ALLKNIGHT, his personal evolution and more.
Stream the magical EP while reading the interview below:
Congratulations on the release of your EP! Both tracks feel like two sides of the same coin, with ‘Door Open Wide’ being quite introspective and ‘Better Than This’ being vocal-led and energetic. Was this contrast intentional from the start?
Thank you! Absolutely, I love hearing an artists range within a release while still maintaining that ‘signature’ sound and feel, so that’s something I always keep in mind when piecing together releases. I think if you look at both tracks, they each make complete sense within an OCULA live set, but they’re played at different parts of the night to give a different level of energy and vibe – from a casual listening point of view, I agree with how you say ‘two sides of the same coin’, I think they go together really beautifully.
What inspired you to work with ALLKNIGHT on ‘Better Than This’ ?
We literally just wrapped up working on ‘The Edge’ together, so I was spending a lot of time listening to ALLKNIGHT’s incredible voice and then just sent her over the instrumental version of ‘Better Than This’ because I thought it would pair perfectly. Thankfully, she was feeling it and started working on this beautiful vocal that seemed to come together so quickly and just gave the track the missing piece.
The layers and textures with ‘Door Wide Open’ are incredibly atmospheric and serene. Can you tell us about the feeling or emotion you wanted to bring across in this track?
‘Door Wide Open’ has been a track that I’ve been building and reshaping over the last 2-3 years. I was aiming to build a really powerful track for my live shows, that also had those atmospheric moments, but after countless tests in my live sets I just kept going back and making changes to sound-design, structure; adding new elements, taking out elements, trying to get it delivering the power and energy I knew it could hold. After my last summer tour in the US, the response from the crowds told me it was time to put a bow on this one and lock it in.
You’ve said before that emotion drives your productions. Do you ever find it difficult to channel personal experiences into your music or is it something that happens organically?
A lot of the times it happens organically, but there is for sure times where I’m simply not in the headspace to produce my best work and that’s something that I think I’ve learned to accept after years of practice – it’s almost like some experiences or emotions aren’t ready to be poured out just yet, they need to simmer a little longer. For me, my attention span literally won’t allow me to write music that I’m not deeply, emotionally invested in, so there’s often times where I’ll go a week or two without getting any solid ideas down because I’m just not there emotionally.. it can be so annoying.
Did you have moments of creative block during the production process? If so, how did you work through them?
All the time. I think one of the most important lessons any producer can learn is to simply accept that you’re in a block rather than trying to fight it. For me, forcing myself through a creative block by just continuing to work on great ideas can spoil those tracks for me. I’ve built up a few different ways to get through blocks a little easier, like stepping away from ‘OCULA’ projects and working on a completely different genre for a day or two – on my last block I was working on some Wu-Tang, New York boom bap style beats that will simply never see the light of day but got the creative juices flowing again. Sometimes I struggle to get songs actually started, so that’s when I’ll dive into my folder of older projects that are maybe 8 bars long, or maybe half a track long, and just kind of use them as a free starting point rather than looking at a completely empty Ableton project.
How do you personally balance creativity with structure when producing a track?
I think that’s one of the hardest parts of creating music, especially music that’s going to be played both in someone’s car on their way to work and at 2am in a nightclub in Houston – it needs to work in both spaces. For me, structure is one of the most important aspects of creating great house music and it’s something I’m forever trying to improve, but from a balance perspective however, I think the creativity always comes first for me. I think a wild, creative track that has poor structure can still be great, but a nicely structured 9 minute song that is just lacking creativity simply isn’t getting me excited.
Looking back at your journey from early OCULA releases to now, what do you think has changed the most about how you approach making music?
To be honest, and this might sound like a typical artist thing to say, but I’ve worked a lot on being my genuine self, rather than trying to emulate other artists. I think when you first start out, it’s so easy to start sounding like the artists that inspire you but it takes a lot of time and work to really craft your own sound, and I feel like I’ve succeeded in creating my own little sound that people can recognize. A lot of my earlier work stemmed from hearing a new song and just kind of trying to copy it, almost treating it like a production exercise – whereas now I’m comfortable with my sound and my creativity to sit down at my desk and write what comes to me organically.
You embarked on a US Summer tour this year too. Can you tell us about some of the highlights of the tour and any personal or creative lessons you learnt from it?
Summer tour was incredibly fun, playing in some of my favourite US cities. My first couple of tours across the US were in winter months, so with this recent run starting later in the year it meant I could actually explore some of the cities without needing 20 layers of clothing on (Denver in June is a lot more enjoyable than Denver in February!). With that, it also meant open air events were doable and I am so glad we did them – playing on rooftops, boats and courtyards was such an awesome experience and I feel like it fit the music so well. Creatively, I’ve always struggled to write while travelling, so even though it’s a hell of a lot of flying, I fly back home to England after each weekend. I’ve gotten used to long-haul flights now so it just allows me to continue writing during the week at my home studio, and then not worry about needing to write while away on tour.
What inspires you outside of music?
I feel like over the last couple of years, I’ve started to draw inspiration from other forms of art and embrace it. I recently took a trip with my wife and we spent hours wandering around art galleries and it gave me such a buzz and really scratched a creative itch for me. Alongside that, I’ve developed a slight obsession with history and historical buildings and architecture in particular, so there’s countless times where I’ve just been staring at an old building and had to be dragged along.
What’s next for OCULA? Do you have any projects or collaborations your fans should keep an eye out for?
I’ve spent this year just grinding away, producing as much music as possible without any real big end project in mind and it’s been so freeing and fun. With that though, means I’m sat on a lot of unreleased music that is getting tested out in my live shows and teased on socials – so as for what’s to come, just so so much more new music.
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