Steve Angello spoke with Pete Tong at International Music Summit Asia Pacific in Singapore for a chat about his new album, Wild Youth out in April and life post Swedish House Mafia – check out the recap!
On the new album:
This is my first album. It’s a crossover it’s electronic music – it’s not dance music. It’s an attempt to create a hybrid of the music I love that I’ve been inspired by all these years and I’ve made it into songs. It’s different I’m not trying to do pop – a lot of dance producers are going into the whole pop direction the whole EDM pop clash this is different this is more indie melancholic darker but its still some big songs but it’s just different.
I could easily give away an album for free but I could actually if you want to talk financials is make ten times as much on the backend it’s just about being clever and being smart. We’ve been an indie label for so long and we’ve been able to navigate the digital world and transition from analogue to digital. We’re not afraid to make those moves again – it’s just about keeping a tight organization.
On predicting the future in EDM:
I think that what’s gonna happen is a lot of dance artists are moving to the pop spectrum and it’s gonna filter out. I see a lot of more people going towards the grooves. The fans on the surface have dug deeper and figured out what the subcultures are. Slowly but surely more people will figure out what dance music is all about and just hope for being innovative and try. You can never say you’ll do something 100% but I would like to at least contribute to it.
On Swedish House Mafia:
We had great success with it but sometimes stuff isn’t meant to work. It’s like a relationship if you ask two parents that are divorcing why they’re divorcing – it’s just not working out. If it was easy – we have emotions and feelings – it’s not working.
On Size Records in 2014:
We launched a decade of size this year where we brought in Google as a partner. We had over 600,000 people download the Size catalog which is 100 releases almost 60 million downloads in a week. We had a lot of fun take wise and we had a lot of fun with the shows Size In The Park. In May we did a Size Stockholm show – it’s always good to go back home with 70,000 people so yeah it’s been a great year.
(Below are our questions)
If there was one thing you could change about the EDM scene what would it be?
I would love to see some crazy stuff happen over the next 2 years – we’ll see. We need to think more, we need to talk more to people around us about future plans – I think that’s really important.
Are you sick of people trying to say there is a feud between you and your former group mates Axwell & Sebastien?
…Yeah people don’t understand that so they will tweet stuff. They have a different approach than me it’s great. I’ll always love them like brothers I’ve never really cared what people said online. I used to brush that off 10 years ago. If I would care I wouldn’t be doing music today I would probably sit at home miserable. I think it’s part of your growth as an artist. You just gotta grow thick skin and not care.
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