On the song selection process for Moments, he said, “It all went quite naturally as over time I’ve gathered a big bunch of tracks and ideas, so beginning to compile the final selection for a couple of months I visited them one by one, worked on each a little and sort of felt the ones that automatically started to produce themselves. Some of the not-selected ones were great tracks, too, and I might work on them later again, but ended up not exciting me enough to finish this time.”
He listed his track “Sandstorm” as his personal favorite. Regarding his future plans, he said, “The near future will be dedicated to promoting the album. We’ve just announced the first bunch of ‘Moments’ album tour dates and the fall is going to be pretty packed, more dates to be added later. I’ve also got ideas for new songs and collaborations already, but we can talk about those some time in the future when I get those things going, now I’m concentrating on this ‘moment.'”
On the electronic music scene, within the next five years, he said, “I think it will continue to dominate and there will be more and more crossover hits and artists due to the heavy cross-pollination that is going on. Basic house music lends itself nicely to marrying it with all kinds of different sounds and trancey and bigroom sounds can be used in all kinds of other productions, so the sky is the limit and different and unexpected collaborations are going to become more and more common, says my crystal ball.”
While it is hard for his to select his favorite venues that he has performed in worldwide, he noted that he has always loved playing at Ruby Skye in San Francisco, U.S.A. and Foundation in Seattle, U.S.A. “Home in Sydney, Australia is a great one, too,” he added.
He also played in Greece back in 2001, at a big festival that was two or three hours from Athens. “That was a great experience and I had a great party,” he said.
Each day, Darude is motivated by music and sounds. “I love sitting in the studio and coming up with new sounds and melodies, it gives me great satisfaction. Outside of that, clearing my head playing ice hockey and most importantly hanging out with my family and friends, that puts me in a great mood to start again the next day,” he said.
For aspiring DJs and producers, he said, “You should know and understand the basics: DJs are not automatically producers, producers might not be DJs. Writers might not perform their own songs, singers might not write the songs they sing. But if you’re a producer, always have your music with you, you never know who you’ll meet and who you could give a CD or preferably these days a USB stick to. Do a lot of self promo, but don’t be an arrogant dick, let your music do most of the talking. Don’t spam anybody’s page without permission. Look for like-minded people and collaborate, combine talents and promo forces and learn from others. Don’t count failures, only successes, small or big. Don’t quit your studies or job until you know you’re secure financially, because any kind of stress, but especially financial kind, will kill your creativity.”
He concluded, “I’m calling my album ‘Moments’ because it was created in or from these precious moments during the last several years. Some of them were sort of less good times, some were amazing times, but they all inspired me to create music or inspired me to get in touch with people who I wanted to make music with. I hope they’ll give the album a fair listen, because if they do, they’ll hear similarities to my older music, whether trance or not, but at the same time I’ve moved on. The varying styles on the album come first of all from me working on some of the tracks over the last several years and not wanting to ‘EDM-ify’ the older ones for the album. I also chose to work with several different writers and producers and that brought in many different sounds and styles, too, but still my main goal is to move people on the dance-floor.”
For more information on Darude, check out his official website.
