THE GUESTLIST NETWORK | JULY 2010
HOUSE//ELECTRO//TECHNO 21
ADAM BEYER KEEPS IT MINIMAL
Head of the revered and prolific Drum Code label, Swedish Producer and DJ, Adam Beyer has cut deep into the European Techno scene, becoming one of the leading artists of the Stockholm sound.
Esther King
TGN: So how are you today? AB: I’m good, I’m in the middle of moving so I’m getting ready for the business of that, and doing 6000 things!
Where are you moving to? Me and my girlfriend just got a house, still in the city, but there are more woods. I’ve been living in a flat for quite some time so we decided to try this house for a year or so. Yeah it’s nice, she likes horse-back riding so there are stables next to it where she can keep her horse.
Wow, that’s beautiful! So where are you living now? I’m in Stockholm still.
So you’ve stayed true to your roots! Yeah, I’ve never managed to move out! Stockholm is really nice, I still enjoy it here, especially since I travel so much.
Yeah, you travel all over the world, you’ve been to so many countries and places; and seen so many different crowds. Can you describe the oddest place that you’ve ever played? Yeah, sometimes when you go to east-European countries they can
be quite rough. I mean, these days they’re all OK but before they were sort of Eastern, with weird hotels, but lately I don’t think so. There are more random places which aren’t really strange. I guess Japan is probably the most alien culture to what we know, there are a lot of brands and commercialism but the whole culture is so different.
Yeah I’ve heard that before. I’ve never been myself but maybe one day! Yeah it’s worth going to see it because it’s something else, it’s another dimension.
Do you have any gigs where you think, “Wow, I will never forget that!”? A lot of them are like that! A lot of the time you say, “Wow, that was the best gig ever!” And then you realise that’s what you said last Saturday!
So you used to play at your local youth club, what kind of music would you play to the people there? Well there were people who were my age, we used to arrange disco nights for them. I used to have a thing for more commercial stuff. In ’88-’89 it was Run DMC, Madtron-
ics, you know, I love Cool J, all that sort of hip hop. Also early hip- house and acid house, there was a lot of italo-house around that time. Then slowly the first rave music began to sweep around 1991 with all the early UK labels like Rising High and XL Recordings. In those days we used to play everything, Stone Roses and Break Thick, Belgian new beats, artist records and early European stuff, so it was just a big mish mash of everything, it wasn’t as specialised as today obviously.
So do you find it’s still as fun as it was 10 years ago, do you ever feel dragged down by the work, or are you still like a little kid in a candy shop? Yeah, right now, because you keep evolving and things change I think I’ve managed to steer through all the different ups and downs of the music, all the twists and turns, I just love it! And lately the past years have gone so well, especially with Drum Code, that we can start to release more artists from abroad so we’ve become more of an international brand rather than just representing Swedish artists like we did in the first 7, 8, 9, 10 years or whatever it was. So yeah, I’m really excited about it, I also have
managers and management so it’s becoming something big. When I first started I kept quantities limit- ed, I didn’t want to show my face, I was really underground, flying with the underground techno scene. Then it changed over the years, it’s not the same thing as I was doing 15 years ago, it’s very different but interesting and exciting.
Me and my boyfriend are both big fans, he wanted me to ask you why you keep on changing, because you’ve been doing it such a long time? Music has changed so much in the time that you’ve been out there that every decade or every five years is a progression. I think it’s a combination of be- ing inspired by what’s going on around, but also being tired of what you’ve been doing; the Drum Code and the Swedish Loop - we started doing them because it was something new, we made it our own from the very beginning, then within 5 years there were probably about 100 labels doing the same thing so that waters things out. Ev- erything’s been done and the par- ties start to be harder and harder, I started attending line-ups where I didn’t want to be and I felt it was going somewhere I didn’t want it to
go. So I chose to go back to some of the more minimal techno I was listening to, from people like Robin Hood and Vinci, so I went that sort of way to get away from that sweaty, mad techno.
Do you have any advice for new up and coming produc- ers or DJs that are finding it hard to break into the scene? It’s extremely competitive at the moment, especially living in London where everybody seems to want to be a DJ! Well I think that one is a sort of cliche but it’s probably true, the only thing you can say is that it’s hard work and if you’ve got it, you got it. It’s like any other artistic profession, if you’re good at some- thing and you have a talent for it, if you make music and your music is good enough it will get bigged up and people will start playing it. What I think a lot of the young pro- ducers do is they make one to ten tracks and they think it’s enough. They start sending it around because they need feedback but maybe work harder and wait a little longer until you know you have something which is really, really good and then go somewhere. There’s so many similar produc- tions right now from the smallest
thing so I think it’s important to put that extra effort in to make it some- thing special so you stand out from the crowd.
So you’ve never had to have an embarrassing job? No, never! I went straight from school to work in a record store called Plan Rhythm and we were selling techno so I was with a bunch of people, we all met around that time. We were working at the store, playing at parties, we had our studio. We made music!
That’s amazing! Yeah, I didn’t have any money with me, I wasn’t brought up with rich parents or anything so it was all self-made.
You’re playing in Ibiza tomor- row night, are you not? Yes, tomorrow!
Are you excited? Yes! It’s the first Ibiza gig for many years so yes, it’s going to be nice! It’s a nice room to play as well, it’s a great sound system, it should be a good night!
You can catch Adam at Global Gathering on 30th July and SW4 in late August.
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