Date: 31.05.2007
Text: Sam



Sam: Hey Olli! How is it going down under?

Olli: Hi Sam! It’s all very good. It’s just getting to wintertime here.

Sam: All right.

Olli: I am coming to Europe in two weeks.

Sam: In two weeks! So you’re making a little bit of a tour?

Olli: Yeah, I am in Greece, in Sweden, Slovakia, France and Germany. I’m not playing in Germany; I’m just recording with Boris there.

Sam: All right, nice one. You are continuing your collaboration with Boris then, Electric Universe?

Olli: Yeah, it seems to be a ever expanding collaboration. We are also working live with a guitar player for the first time this summer. It should be interesting. It’s really a live band now.

Sam: All right, nice one. So you are three?

Olli: Yeah and it’s very interesting cause I usually get booked to play live shows these days, not as a dj any more. So I really want to develop the live show.

Sam: So that’s a new situation for you?

Olli: Well, it’s an ever-evolving situation I have to say. If I go back 20 years, I was a singer in bands and never dj. So in a way some of my past life is merging with what I’ve been doing more recently. Nothing is discounted, is being “no you cant do that”. So we have been doing something… Breaking a lot of the rules in the Trance scene recently, you know.
We’ve been using live vocals as well and we will be using live guitars and its actually working very well. I was a bit nervous to start with cause the audience reaction is the acid test. The dancefloor reaction tells you if it is working or not. And it’s a very simple test and it’s a very true response somehow. People don’t tell you it works if it doesn’t work, its quite clear on the dancefloor. So we’re getting great response for it so that’s been the answer and getting great response instills one with confidence to take it further somehow. So it’s good!

Sam: All right, interesting. So at one point of your career you were obviously deciding to like leave all the live instruments away and just do electronic music in its purest form and now you are deciding to go back or go ahead to use live instruments again. What made you decide to do that?

Olli: Well maybe, because it was time to just drop whatever… I mean to say: Oh we can’t use vocals, we cant use this, we cant use that… Its only a obstacle you’re putting up in front of yourself in the end. I mean anything can be fantastic its just how you use it … So for me it has constantly and consistently evolved. What I am doing has to evolve all the time otherwise I am bored with it. I don’t wanna do the same I was doing last year which is the same as the year before, I cant live my life like that, you know. So I also think it’s a certain maturity coming into the music for these big outdoor parties, with this new live show and really making it a LIVE show and really keeping the spirit underneath for that’s always been there somehow. It’s just \\ evolution.

Sam: Cool. Do you have a special target or idea where you wanna move towards with evolving your live sets and music at the moment?

Olli: Not particularly. There’s no plan, no ambition the whole point is to go and express ourselves and really see if we can bring something special to the events we get booked to perform at. And to enjoy it as much as possible and to spread that enjoyment as much as possible. That’s really the whole point of it, you know. And whatever success you have along the ways is the bonus… its not the point of it.

Sam: All right. When you are performing at parties there’s always the performance and there’s the music itself. How important is the performance?

Olli: Well, for me the performance has to have the music right in the first place to be the springboard for any performance. If you have only performance without the solid foundation of the music then it looks really fake somehow. It just doesn’t work & does not have enough substance. The music has got to be there first.

Sam: All right. And then you have started your label now probably two years ago or something?

Olli: Yes… Space Tribe Music

Sam: And you had a couple of releases now. How is your label doing?

Olli: Yeah, its just cruising. We’re up to our 6th release now. I don’t have a big ambition with the label to you know dominate this market. It’s fantastic just to have a vehicle for expression, to be able to release the music I make, & that I make with friends and to be able to make compilations. So its just to have complete control of the whole story, decide what artwork you wanna use… so we can use a nice digipack, so we have control over the whole digital download story. I mean of all the records I sold in my life - which must come to quite a lot by now- I didn’t get the money from them… so its just really nice at this point: You don’t have to sell so many but you get paid everything for what you sell and there is no middleman.

Sam: So earning money with selling records is getting more and more difficult these days.

Olli: Yeah, but the whole thing turned round on his head with the music business, didn’t it. I mean it used to be a band would make an album and then you’re going to a tour all over the place, 5 gigs a week to support the album and make their money selling records. Nowadays people release their records in order to be able to be booked.

Sam: That’s it- to support your tour.

Olli: Without releasing records you don’t get booked to a live shows. I mean for me the whole story with psychedelic trance, with releasing cds was never about making money anyway. That was a bonus, a by-product of what we were doing in this whole movement… the point was to make the music for the parties and it’s just the same now that hasn’t changed. We’re never gonna become millionaires of making this kind of music- If we want to be millionaires out of making music we better find a different kind of music to make.

Sam: What do you think, how are artists going to earn their money in the future?

Olli: Well, I think it’s just a rearrangement of how people buy music. In the end its all gonna be online, isn’t it? And I really watch the download stories getting stronger and stronger, you know. A lot of people are willing to go to iTunes and to go to Beatport and places like this and pay for my music. They can go and download it for free somewhere but when it is a reasonable price… People are happy that the artists get paid for it somehow. And of course a huge percentage will be copied for free but your fans will still buy your music and support you I think.

Sam: So you think that people will recognize that it is important to support your artists and buy once in a while some music?

Olli: Yeah, I think that all this piracy thing is also kind of a transition thing right now and they haven’t figured out how to really handle it but soon all music will have some sort of digital watermark on it and you aren’t able to play it on your computer unless you’ve got the code to unlock it. And I think that it’s not very long away before they actually got control over that stuff anyway, you know. And then it will be so cheap that people aren’t going to mind.

Sam: All right. And then last but not least you have a new compilation coming up now. Maybe some words for that?

Olli: That’s right… It a really fun compilation as well. I am very happy with it. Its Space Tribe and friends which means that I’ve been involved in 6 of 9 tracks and theother 3 are from friends of mine. But they are all collaboration tracks anyway, including one collaboration with Jon Klein, the guitarist I was in The Specimen with twenty years ago. So its our first collaboration track we’ve made for twenty years…. Very interesting!

Sam:. Ok cool. And what’s the name of the compilation?

Olli: Kaleidoscopic Vision.

Sam: Ok. And its gonna be out now, somehow in may?

Olli: Yeah, it will be out end of may.

Sam: Ok cool. So people watch out for this compilation! Olli, I asked my questions- I don’t know if you have anything else to add?

Olli: To fall in hell or soar angelic, you’ll need a pinch of psychedelic

Sam: Ok, perfect. So thank you very much for the interview then.

Links
•www.chaishop-media.com/release/stm006
•www.spacetribe.com