Oscar Scheller is an easy conversationalist, but this laid-back demeanour belies the producer's status as one of contemporary music’s most in-demand studio collaborators.
A breakout viral collaboration with PinkPantheress on recent hit Stateside (with a feature from Zara Larsson on one of several remixes) has seen Oscar's music exposed to millions and become practically inescapable in our online universe.
“It’s the moment that all producers wait for, but I’m just really happy it happened with her, on music that I’m proud of too,” Oscar laughs. “It feels good. It’s a pretty oddball song to be a hit.”
Oddball is a modest description for the song’s irresistible groove, but Oscar’s course has been left-of-centre since the release of his Cut and Paste album, a debut put out under his own name in 2016. Sidestepping the limelight, Oscar has instead settled into a behind-the-scenes production role; one that has seen him grow in stature considerably since his career began.
Alongside PinkPantheress, past collaborations have been with Lily Allen and Natanya while future hook-ups are with Kelela on her forthcoming New Avatar project, alongside work with The Deep and La Goony. Now a resident in LA, he’s clearly confident in his abilities to make magic from ploughing his own furrow.
We need imperfection. It’s a retaliation to AI and this weird humanless vacuum of sound that people keep pushing down our throats
“There’s all this discourse online about how everything is out of tune on Stateside,” he says. “But I’ve been pleased with that – we need imperfection. It’s like a retaliation to AI and this weird humanless vacuum of sound that people keep pushing down our throats. We need the human touch.”
As a student at Central Saint Martins in London, Oscar’s early music-making ambitions were dictated by the size of his bedroom. Without the space for a drum kit, he could only use samples and software to shape his sound, but cites these limitations as the foundations for much of his early work.
“I had one Yamaha keyboard that I would use all the sounds from,” Oscar states. “The palette was very limited but working like this helped to fuel me creatively at the beginning. Having friends who were musicians but weren’t able to produce their own music helped me get into it too.”
While he helped childhood friend and artist Tyson orchestrate her R&B jams, Oscar also played in bands that would perform at many of the venues making up North London’s guitar-slinging scene. He was a regular at formative grassroots spots including Nambucca and the Good Ship in Kilburn.
“I also grew up near Alex Cook [Charli XCX producer AG Cook] – we were one road away from each other so he recorded my first band’s EP,” says Oscar. “We stayed in touch after that, we’d go to each other’s studios and play each other what we’d been making. My sound then was really chaotic, ramshackle indie rock, while he was making the future with PC Music.”
“Having that proximity to someone like him and sharing ideas like that was really important,” he continues. “I got into his crazy nights he’d put on, he’d come to my gigs, there was that exchange, then I would DJ a lot too – it was a typical London upbringing of being right in the middle of everything.”
You immediately know within the first ten minutes if it’s going to work, it’s a bit like dating - do we have a connection?
Oscar’s relationship with Tyson stretches back to their time at school together. She was also the first artist he worked with that elicited a desire to collaboratively enhance her music by taking on the role of producer.
“That was very early on in my music-making, I was still at Central St Martins when I was working with her for the first time, but we really synthesized a sound together,” he says. “We felt like a real dynamic duo and I hadn’t experienced that until then. Those experiences with Tyson were a real awakening for me.”
At the heart of Oscar’s process is the desire to establish a mutual emotional bond with whoever he works with. For a collaboration to be fruitful, he needs to understand his creative partner and be understood too.
“It’s not a fast-fashion approach, and I’m not a one-size fits all kind of guy,” he laughs. “It’s case by case and I definitely take a lot of pride in that in terms of giving the care and attention to each person who comes through the door.”
“Being intentional and knowing where things can be elevated – and also knowing where things might not match – is important. There have been a fair few times where people have wanted to work with me and I’ve politely declined, as I don’t know what I can offer them.”
Don’t Ask, a track released with Natanya earlier this year, fizzes and pops sonically, pointing to a colourful future R&B sound. The pair had never met until they collaborated in the studio.
“I was worried we might be able to connect, but it worked out,” he says. “You immediately know within the first ten minutes if it’s going to work, it’s a bit like dating - do we have a connection? But it gives me energy to learn about people and get to know them.”
The bedroom set-up is where Oscar feels most at home. In his LA apartment, alongside various basses and guitars is a collection of synths: the Roland V-Synth is a current favourite while the Minimoog Model D is a family heirloom he inherited from his musician father.
“I use it all the time, it’s a classic used by Kraftwerk, the Human League, Gary Numan... it’s my go-to for any bass or lead synth sound,” he explains. “I’m also really into the Akai AX60; it came out the same year as the Juno-106 but has much harsher sounds which you can bend in different ways. I use it all the time too.”
Oscar’s typical approach with gear is to keep things trim, a pragmatic ethos which he maintains when working on music too. “I like everything to be essential, I never over-produce so what’s there is supposed to be there for a reason,” he says. “I try to approach my set-up like this, so I have a good workflow and can really see what I use. I swap things out a lot – I recently sold a synth I didn’t use so everything there now has its function and purpose.”
Oscar’s connection with Victoria Walker, better known as PinkPantheress, began back in 2021. The energy between the pair has always been electric, leading to collaborations on To Hell With It (2021), Heaven Knows (2023), Fancy That (2025) and three cuts on the remix album Fancy Some More.
“I knew as soon as I heard PinkPantheress that we had similar musical DNA from the samples and interpolation, that we had a similar way of thinking,” Oscar says. “She’s insanely melodic, I reached out and we had a session just before I moved to the US. She seemed really shy but was quietly confident, and we hit it off straight away.”
I Must Apologise was their first joint track, and Noticed I Cried came next - so when Oscar did move, they continued to collaborate. Under the melodies, there’s an innate understanding of the bass of London nightlife, a vibe that has remained with Oscar throughout his career.
“Dance music is the UK to me when I think about the history, it’s always going to be there,” he says. “I lived next to an estate that had a grime pirate radio station, my sister was friends with the MC. I was exposed to a lot of grime and garage growing up, then DnB and jungle – she had all the tapes so this music was around.”
The Stateside remix originated via a text from PinkPantheress out of the blue, asking him for three remixes. Oscar produced them without knowing what they were for or how they would be used. “I thought they might be for a DJ set, then she came back to me and said she had features for some of them and they were coming out officially,” he says.
“I did Stateside, Girl Like Me and Tonight and was praying for the first one to come out. She wouldn’t tell me who the feature was, then she sent the version back with Zara - it was crazy.”
Oscar’s forthcoming record with Kelela, New Avatar, is due for release in July with the first single signposting a blend of shoegaze sonics with the American artist’s instantly recognizable vocals. Oscar has been a longtime fan, and found his way into the record by inviting Kelela to the studio to discuss their musical inspirations.
“We just had these conversations on the music we grew up on. I don’t think she realised I’d been an indie boy before all the dance stuff until she saw all the guitars in my studio,” he says.
“We both agreed we wanted to excavate this musical space between R&B and guitars. We talked a lot about Burial and his music too, how that felt – we were trying to find this inbetween world, that’s how we started and we just experimented.”
Linknb is the second track to emerge from the project, and came from a freestyle Kelela improvised at the end of a recording session. She jetted off and by the time the plane hit the runway, the finished track was ready.
“I’m always recording, it’s my number one rule. We did a lot of recording of ideas, jamming, it’s like sampling, I just love having source material to constantly work with,” he explains. “For that track, I had this guitar loop, these vocals and I cut up and made this song out of it – it was almost like a DJ approach, I found it a really exciting way to work.”
Lily Allen and her new record, West End Girl, has been one of the British artist’s most acclaimed projects. Originally part of her North London social circle, Oscar ended up working with Lily on an album back in 2018 that was eventually scrapped. He received a call from friend and fellow producer Blue May a few years later regarding another album project, this time in New York, but again it led nowhere. Then, in 2024, Blue reached out again.
“At this point, I had a few trust issues, but Blue was like, ‘we’re doing it now and you have to come and be a part of it,’” he says. “It was at his place in LA and I was working with Kelela at this point. But I went straight to the sessions with Lily, they’d done five or six tracks and I locked in.”
“Lily and I already had this rapport so it was easy to write together. When we scrapped the previous record, I was so heartbroken, but now it’s come full circle and this new album is so good.”
What’s striking from Oscar’s story is how many opportunities have been forged through working with artists he already knew personally, or those he reached out to himself. It’s a sense of community he urges aspiring producers to lean into when starting out.
“Even if it’s just you and your laptop, go online and build a network,” Oscar advises. “It's so important to have conversations and a sounding board in the form of people learning and making mistakes with you – then find your collaborators, that’s how you develop.”
“In this industry, it’s important to forge your own way and do your own thing,” he continues. “You can look up to people but you really have to find your own sound and your own way. Just be very singular about that – you have to have something you feel very strongly about and have the right intentions.”
With an array of new and forthcoming projects orbiting him, including tracks with Say Now, Natanya and a band called After, we assume that Oscar's phone must be constantly blowing up.
“The line is hot,” he says with a final smile. “But I’m picky, I’m looking to learn about music, and there’s always something to get from each project. This is why I love it so much: I’ve collected and gathered so much energy from each one.”
