“I had my first very big show in America in 2004 at the LA Coliseum. It was about 60,000, 70,000 people, me, Erick Morillo, and a couple of other guys, I don’t remember who. So it’s not that it just happened, but the media just picked it up,” he says, conceding that the scale has expanded. “I agree that things have become very commercial, but I don’t see it as a bad thing,” he continues on those wringing their hands at the two-tiered world that has developed with this. “Those kids who are like, ‘Oh wow, dance music’, when they tire of the commercial stuff, they’re going to dig deeper and become real fans of dance music. And they can dig into whatever they want.”
While Angello himself is stepping back from big gig this summer to spend more time with his daughters, AN21 and Max are diving in headlong. “We have a residency in Vegas at The Wynn, so we do XS, Encore Beach, Surrender and Tryst,” says AN21 on their frequent US visits.
When we start talking about the recent spate of DJ sets being cut short because of their failure to live up to the expectation of the crowd though, it becomes clear that there’s still a mismatch between how hot EDM is and how much people, especially those doing the booking, understand it.
“What I was saying is that there are DJs playing certain styles of music that don’t necessarily fit certain clubs and a lot of promoters are like, ‘Play what they wanna hear’, but I respect DJs for saying ‘fuck you’,” says Max. “But once again, it’s going back and forth. What the fuck was the DJ and his management thinking when they took those gigs?”
CRITICISM With this level of success, criticism is inevitable
and not long before they called it a day, Swedish House Mafia were the target of DJ Sneak, long-standing Chicago DJ and producer, who announced on Twitter: “It’s a sad thing when the Swedish House Mafia is being paid big money to come to the US to play house music. For the record, they do not play house music”.
www.djmag.com
“He doesn’t remember, but we played together in 2000 or something,” says Steve when we bring this up, its essence the schism between those who believe house music should stay true to its underground roots and those pushing its modern, stadium-filling mutation and becoming hugely paid megastars in the process. “I just don’t see it necessary to talk shit about people,” he counters. “For me that’s bullying. I’m not a bully. I make music to express myself, not to make money. If I made music to make money, I would have done every pop record in the world, and I’ve had the chance.
“I did a set at Dance Valley a year ago where people were saying, ‘Steve’s faking it because he plays without headphones’”, he adds unsolicited on another recent controversy. “But there’s a mathematic solution for how you can play without headphones. 0.8 on the pitch is 1bpm, 1.6 is 2 and so on. My CD player says the left one is 128, so if the other is 125 I put it up to 2.4 and it’s the same bpm. The only thing I have to do is trigger it in time. If you’re a drummer, or a pianist, or a guitar player, you play tight. So the only thing you have to do is trigger it on the beat and it plays tight. That’s it. It’s not rocket science.”
So there you have it. Where there’s Size, there’s tightness. And you can be assured that once it has his undivided attention, Steve Angello’s label will be growing to epic proportions.
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