He might be winding down from Swedish House Mafia, but as his label Size celebrates its 10th anniversary, Steve Angello is helping to nurture the next generation. And with AN21 & Max Vangeli’s debut album nearly ready, big things are on the way…
Words: JOE ROBERTS Photos: CARL LINDSTRUM, TONY ‘TK’ SMITH T 016
he life of the high rolling DJ seems a glamorous affair, hanging out with beautiful (and often famous) women and wealthy men the world over, being given bottles of champagne solely to spray into the
crowd and having thousands hang over your every move while you play music that may, but may not, have been made by you. And that’s not even mentioning the number of zeros you can expect at the end of your fee if you find yourself in the upper echelons of the Top 100 DJs poll.
Yet speak to any gigging DJ, especially ones who have started a family, as the now LA-based Swede Steve Angello has, and you start to understand why so many say, “we’re not paid for the DJing, we’re paid for the travelling”.
“I have guys that I’ve known for 15 years, but I don’t really know them,” says Steve ruefully when we meet him in the confines of a spacious London studio stocked with every instrument and piece of analogue kit imaginable, a kind of metaphor for the wealth and freedom that EDM has brought the Swedish House Mafia star. “I bump into them 50 times a year but we’ve never sat down.”
FAMILY It’s not hard to imagine in this context why
taking to the road with two of his best buddies, Axwell and Sebastian Ingrosso (“we’ve always been boys”, says Steve when we ask about their link) turned into such a ride, taking them, as the song goes, from Miami to Ibiza and everywhere in-between, a journey documented in their movie Take One. It also explains why, since they’ve announced their end as a trio after their current tour (see the Coming Up section to read Steve talking about this), his label Size, and the young talent on it who tour together under the banner Size Matters, are so important to continuing this
sense of connectedness. In Steve’s own words, “We do extended touring together so I think it’s important that they get to know each other. Not just as part of a label, but as part of a family.”
What this has meant is the entire core roster — including actual family, brother AN21 (in real life the lengthy Antoine Gabriel Michel Haydamous Josefsson), Tim Mason, Third Party and Qulinez — hiring a studio for a few days, following a gig at London’s iconic Ministry Of Sound venue where Steve was filmed mixing on seven CDJs, to shoot the breeze, make music together and generally enjoy some downtime.
“I think it’s important to remember that experiencing something alone is very boring,” continues Steve. “I’d rather ask two friends of mine to learn how the music business works so they can come and work with me, so we can do this together. It’s not about profits or figures. I’ve been asked by every major label in the world if they can buy me, but I’ve said no because when you sell your passion, what’s left? I’d rather break even on a label, or even lose money, as long as we keep what we have going. Because I think this is very special and it’s important. No one is bigger than anybody. We’re all here in the same boat, let’s just do this together.”
AN21 AND MAX VANGELI Which means there’s no easy ride, even if you’re
his flesh and blood, as we find out when we meet AN21. Having become one of the label’s biggest acts, alongside Moldova-born, San Francisco- based production partner Max Vangeli, thanks to recent hits such as ‘H8RS’, their hyperactive electro-tinged production with Steve himself, and the festival-flavored title track of their forthcoming album ‘People Of The Night’, which they wrote with tireless trance re-inventor Tiësto, the pair’s initial submissions for Size weren’t met with enthusiasm. And this was despite Steve being the person who’d initially given AN21 a Macbook, Logic and a pair of headphones, after
he’d dropped out of school to produce full-time. “We did two or three tracks and thought they were unbelievable, so we sent them to Steve and said, ‘Yeah, they should go on Size. They’re really dope, I swear they’re amazing,” and he was like, “Yeah, er…,” laughs AN21 when we meet in another of the studio complex’s many rooms, where he’s working on a track for UK chart-topping rapper Example, who came to record a vocal earlier in the day for the second jam that they’re producing for his album. “So nothing ever happened! Then a couple of months later we’d learnt a lot as producers and went back to listen to the tracks and thought, ‘Fuck, what was that? They’re absolutely crap’.”
“It’s crazy, when we listen back to some of the records, some of the stuff we did initially, some of the remixes and stuff… to think that it got us to where we are now is incredible, because we listen to our new productions and it’s night and day,” agrees Max, equally animated, as he passes us a Diet Coke.
Instead, it was an unsolicited bootleg of Steve’s 2009 track ‘Monday’, done without any of the original parts, which caught the Size boss’ ear. “It’s crazy how much exposure we got from that remix,” recalls Max. “It’s insane. Everybody was like, ‘Oh my god, who are these new kids?’ And all of a sudden we were like, ‘Fuck, now we’ve got to make an original or something.’”
“We were sat, refreshing Beatport, even though nothing would happen,” relays AN21 on their eagerness to measure this sudden popularity via the world’s most widely acknowledged barometer. “Now we know it only does it once a day, but we were still there, every 10 minutes, refreshing!”
What followed were releases for Size (‘Gamma’ and ‘Flonko’) and Sebastian Ingrosso’s Refune (‘Swedish Beauty’), as well as high profile remixes for Ellie Goulding, Erick Morillo & Eddie Thoneick and Switchfoot. But it was getting together in
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82