I Can Give You Cazzette [Interview]

Posted on May 24, 2013 in Interview

Cazzette has been blowing up across the electronic music scene on the heels of “Beam Me Up” which was released last year exclusively on Spotify (and now available on iTunes). The Swedish duo consisting of Sebastian Furrer & Alexander Björklund has performed at several music festivals in the last couple years including Ultra and EDC and will be in Chicago this Saturday at 830pm on the Circuit Grounds stage. We were lucky enough to catch up with Sebastian to discuss his quick rise as part of Cazzette, from a small apartment in Sweden to massive festivals at enormous venues. Also, we get his take on todays music scene and what’s in store for the future.

I Can Give You House: You’ve performed at several festivals including EDC before, and are heading down to EDC Chicago this weekend. How do you think EDC compares to other festivals you’ve either been to or played at?

Sebastian: I would say EDC has a vibe with it, you know the whole production value, the crowd… If you compared it to Ultra, like Ultra’s really cool too, it’s like EDC’s a different version of [Ultra]. I like that [EDC] is in Chicago and Vegas. I think it’s a really cool concept and production is… yeah it’s insane.

ICGYH: You guys have risen really quickly in the electronic music scene, what’s been the most interesting part about becoming so popular so quickly?

S: Well everything is of course really interesting, you know. I think it’s more, you know, going from normal life in a small town to getting here, you know, in like a whole ‘nother country. You know, it’s a very different life. And I think it’s… I mean both me and Alex are really grateful about just having this opportunity that many people in life never get. We’re really grateful and humble about it. I don’t know, you know then again it’s different for us in the way that… we don’t really see the success like our family and friends for instance, because we just work. We’re not really thinking about how popular we’re getting. Of course the whole Star Trek thing is really cool for us because it’s a huge deal. We can understand that but other than that, you know it’s hard for us to grasp it still.

ICGYH: Being from a small town in Sweden, what did you listen to and how did you get into electronic music?

S: Personally for me, my dad always played music ever since I was a kid. In our apartment he always played Depeche Mode, Michael Jackson, Prince, and stuff like that. There was a lot of funk and a lot of groove in the music, so there was always electronic-ish music in my environment. Then when I became like eight or ten years old my dad always played Tiesto for me in the car on vacations to Italy because my dad was Italian so we’d always have vacations there. So I grew up on trance and funk music so that’s how I got into electronic music.

ICGYH: And how did that translate into producing?

S: Well I always wanted to try out drums, guitar, and stuff like that but I never had the chance to because I lived in a small apartment with my parents and they, you know… you can’t be loud with instruments (laughs). So then I got into making music when my dad got a new Apple computer with FL Studio software. And actually I still use that software today. So my dad introduced me to it like ‘Do you want to play around with it?’ and it sounded fun so I just started working my ass off (laughs)… to just become better and better and now five years later I’m here in the US.

ICGYH: Today there’s been a lot of talk about electronic music being formulaic and redundant. As a whole, how do you view the production value of most electronic music today?

S: I would say where we are right now… people have lost the ability to… you know if you go on Beatport it’s not about… you know the music’s not groovy anymore at all. It’s just about hard-drops into high energy all the time. Me and Alex aren’t really into that kind of music. Of course we like high energy music, but it’s too much like that now. I think if you are in the position that we are right now - playing at EDC, the big festivals - I think you have the responsibility as a producer and a DJ to educate and to get people in other places like the US to understand what this kind of music is all about. Then again it’s a different concept. And of course I’m not saying you should not produce high energy music, but then I think for me as a producer, I think there’s often a lack of quality and mixing in the industry today, and it’s all very quick. It sounds like people are making stuff just to make it, not because they love it, you know what I mean? I think that’s a huge problem but still I’m not worried about us because we’re really diverse in our sound.

ICGYH: Absolutely. So what’s the process behind coming up with your music?

S: We’re really perfectionists when it comes to sound. I would say 90% of all the stuff you hear from Cazzette is sounds we have made ourself. In every track, it’s our own presets that we’ve done ourselves, tweak it for hours, you know to get our own sound. Other than that, I mean, it just comes naturally. We start with a bassline and then we have a sound that we can maybe work with the melody on - there’s different parts to every track though. There’s really no rule (laughs), we just have an idea in our head and put it in the computer.

ICGYH: And of the singles you’ve released, they were initially exclusively available on Spotify which seemed to confuse some people. What was the idea behind this method?

S: We think streaming is the future. For us it was natural to work with them because we love the service. We think it’s very convenient - you can share the playlist with your friends, you know, get new songs. There’s a radio app in there too so, it’s very convenient software. So for us, it was just a really easy choice to do that. And that’s what we always wanted to do - something new.

ICGYH: What’s next for Cazzette?

S: We have a collaboration with Kryder that we’ve been working on. We’re still working on it but it’s in the final stages of production, but I can’t tell you the release date right now. Then we have some more touring. We’re going to release our album on Isle of Def Jam which is amazing, a really huge honor for us to work with them - it’s a really great label. We don’t have the release date for that yet either but we’ll hopefully have a date set really soon. It’ll be released worldwide so check that out, and yeah, I think that’s it.

ICGYH: Sebastian, it was great talking with you. Thanks a lot. We’ll see you at EDC Chicago tomorrow night.

S: Yep! Thanks so much.

 

 

 

 

 

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