Kat Mathesdorf talking with Seb from Son Kite about Progressive Trance, the swedish scene, the album „Colours“ and the Full On Hype...

What has happened to the progressive scene in general and specially with the Swedish one since your last album in your personal view?

Seb: The progressive scene really had its era and glorious time when artists just needed to do something minimal to get a release. I think many people lost the meaning and sense of the word progressive, witch for me is the music that always tries to keep on forward, changing and do something innovative and new. Like with all other dancemusic the “new sound” always gets very overdone and you get one million tracks that sounds the same and for the progressive music this really is a paradox, it looses it's point and the whole genre bite it's own tail.
Another thing that made the progressive trance scene loose a lot of power and stopped being developing music was that many extremely good trance producers converted into the progressive house scene and even tried hard to go away from the trance scene. Neither Marcus nor I can relate to this thing since we believe in a development and fusion with other music genres but without leaving what you have created and what you believed in. We love trance and have always done that and as far as I can see it we will always keep on doing dancemusic with very trancy elements. The new Son Kite album, Colours, is for us pure trance even thou you can hear a lot of influences from other dance styles like electro, house and techno … the big difference is that we haven't left the trance but developed within it.


What has happened to you? Describe the development of your style of music, please.

Seb: I think that I answered a little bit about this in the last question … will continue a little bit here. Generally we have been more and more “open” in our music listening. This is actually something that has been happening since we first started to make music. I think it's quite common that you somehow get “narrow minded” when you start to make music by yourself since there is so much just in the music process that takes place in your consciousness and just to be able to make it work you automatically selected a small musical area to work within. When you learn the musical tools and slowly think less and less about the production and technical parts of making the music it's easier to hold a wider musical spectrum in your head witch also means that you start to search for music that is more and more different compared to what you have produced yourself. At the moment we have really come to a point where we listen to everything and even if our new album is trance I think that you can notice elements and motions that come from a very diverse musical background.

Our first album, Minilogue, was released in the very beginning of our carrier and due to both musical reasons and the fact that we had quite a small studio this album is quite minimal and stripped down. The years after the first album we got more and more advanced in our way of producing and I think that we came to a point where we somehow lost the feeling for what is too much, when the amount of sounds and the production techniques hide the feeling of the music. Since the end of 2002, when we started to work with the album, we worked hard with keeping the music more simple and easy … stay and try to focus on what makes that specific track special and danceable. So even if the Colours album is the most melodic, atmospheric and variated piece of music that we have done so far it's still more easy and minimal … I think that we really got the feeling of “less is more” even thou this expression have been one of our standard quotes since the birth of Son Kite.

The last years we have also listened more and more to our old trance records, early 90th trance like Harthouse and EQ, witch also was the music that made us listen to trance from the very beginning. Both our personal nostalgic feeling about this music and the fact that this music really kept a simple and easy message fitted so well with our temporary view of music.

As many other progressive trance artists we've also been doing our small little carrier in the progressive house/club scene with our side project Minilogue. When you're actively making another style of music you always get very influenced by it and there are some typical signatures on the new album that are also progressive in an UK point of view.

A summary of this would be that we have open more doors than ever and have let everything around us inspire us, not only music but also movies, our endless travelling all the time and all the interesting people that we meet on the road.



The title of your new album is "Colours". What's the meaning of it?

Seb: We always try to do something interesting when we start the work with a new album, that's maybe the reason why it takes a while between our albums. You also want to do something more than you've done before, you want to climb the walls and search your yet unknown fields. Our intention from the beginning was to make a concept, something more than “just” an album but the final outfit and content slowly grew during the process of making the music.
The name of the album have a very symbolic value for us … the colours can be seen as our way of expressing our feelings in our music and listening to music is like getting coloured. I often say that a room with no music is like a white room with no wallpaper and when you put on the music the walls gets coloured and the wallpapers are starting to spread around you … and the most beautiful thing with this is that the colours aren't an objective thing but something that everyone creates by themselves while listening to the music … some people see blue, other green, some people have endless of structures and patterns while other people get more minimal and less complicated visions. Anyway the music creates feelings/”colours” to the listener and the listener is automatically forced into a creative process.

It was also important for us to have a name of the album/concept that could graphically work well with the four releases that are included in the concept. All the four pieces; album, DVD and the two singles are somehow different perspectives on the album and our music and once again the different colours on the four releases are a symbolic way to express this. As you can see on the covers of the releases all of them are one coloured and very plain but when you open up the uncoloured surface a much more complicated and multicoloured pattern can be seen … once again a symbolic way to express our thoughts about how the more minimal music can been viewed as something easy but after experience it you will, inside, experience the “coloured journey”, a coloured journey that is a fusion of the music and the listener.

So the meaning of Colours is in many ways our personal view and philosophy about music and dancemusic and who we want our music to reach the people.



We all have a psychedelic background in our trance history, I think. Your new music is as much club like as never heard before and a brilliant fusion of styles. What's up with your actual vision in music? What's about your concept and what kind of an audience do you like to produce and play for?

Seb: Once again I think that I have already answered parts of this question in the previous question since the name of the concept is so similar to our view about the music on the album.
We have got very many different and interesting reaction on the album from both artists and djs within and outside the trance scene and the funny thing is that there is no red line in what people think about it. Some think it's the most trancy thing that we've ever done while other think that we have melt the trance into a clubby package that will work perfect on the more housy and clubby dancefloor. Some people say that we have became much harder and punchier while other think that it's the softest and most atmospheric piece of music that we have done so far. I'm actually very happy about these diverse reactions of the album since I think interesting and not standardized music is the music that people get most different experiences from since they can't relate it to much to the music that they already have an opinion about.

I don't want to have a certain crowd; I want a crowd of the people that enjoy our music. We haven't made our music to please a specific kind of people but tried to make the dancemusic that we like the most, tried to capture our feeling in the moment of producing. Some people say, after listening to the album, that it has a big potential to reach far outside the trance scene … if this happens I'm just happy, not because I don't want do be in the trance scene but since I would like all kind of people to listen to our music. My dream crowd on a party is people from all different corners of the world, in all different ages and with completely different musical background and taste. A gig is always a fusion between the artist and the dancefloor and can you imagine something more unpredictable and wonderful than when the dancefloor is just a big meltdown of dancemusic lovers that suddenly forgot about what they're supposed to like or not and just got into the groove and music?



A big part of the global scene became more and more a scene of full on freaks. What are you doing if you have to play at the southern hemisphere? What's your trick to play for/with a full on crowd?

Seb: Yes the trend in the trance music have been going more and more towards the full on music but I don't think that this only means that people only enjoy that kind of trance. I think it's a typical sign that people can't find so much new, fresh and interesting progressive music today and I'm sure that they are appreciating and maybe even longing for good and well made progressive music.
Actually we're playing in all places in the world all the time, also in the southern hemisphere and I can't say that there is any big difference in the reaction of our liveset. I think that from the very beginning people have appreciate the Son Kite music and the Son Kite live gigs just because it's something different, something developing and something that will surprise them. Many artists in the scene have from the start got a very strong identity within a small folder of the scene and after that people don't want them to change … people just want them to do the same track over and over again. We're extremely happy that we're in the opposite position and that our listeners all the time are waiting for us to do something new, develop and give them a new experience … to maintain the happiness in making music this is one of the most important parts and we can just say thanks a lot for that.

Our live set is also quite different from other live sets and happily the word of the Son Kite live set has been spread over the world. When we enter the stage I think the audience accept more and let us show them why they should stay on the dancefloor.
For us there are three important things about playing live; presence, communication and show. You must be here and now when you're playing live since a really good dance experience is when people can leave all other thoughts and just get into the music … what you're doing on stage is always reflected on the dancefloor and if you can focus on the presence the dancefloor will most certainly not either. Here we also get into to the communication part … what you do on stage is, as said, reflected on the dancefloor but it's also very important the communication can go the other way around – the dancefloor must be able to have a reflection on the artist playing. When the people feel this interactive communication the live get a totally new meaning. Then we have the show … people want the live set to be something different from a normal dj set, they don't want to see two persons nodding on their heads without doing something drastic. We're all the time trying to add things so people can relate to a more live feeling … like the violin … people want to see something different, something that makes one liveset different from another not only on the musical aspect but also the visual.

taken from mushroom magazine and brought to you by liese