Stonebridge is a Swedish Club DJ who has had two ‘Top 10' singles in the UK charts in a year including ‘Put ‘em High' and ‘Take me away'. Music News.com interviewed him at Jazz FM to talk to him about his new single ‘Freak on' feat Ultra Nate.
Interview with Stonebridge 10/5/05
MN Great to meet you . I just thought I'd say that I think ‘Can't Get Enough' is a great album and my friends listened to it over and over last night. My particular favourite is ‘Once in a lifetime'. What do you believe sets this album apart from others that makes it so easy to listen to over and over?
SB: Err, well….. when I was asked if I would like to do an album I said yes straight away. I was thinking ‘what's wrong with DJ artists albums?'. I listened to a lot of Roger Sanchez, and what I think a lot of DJ's do is they try to reflect how they sound as DJ's and mix it with songs that don't really work. It may be fine playing them out in all of the excitement, but at home….it's still got to work. Because of this I decide through songs only. The bottom line is that it's all funky and it's kind of all pretty black and kind of 80's. Future Retro I like to call it. I've tried to do something that I've enjoyed doing myself over the past 20 years and so that was the idea, not to make a reflection of my DJ'ing. I think that's why it works as an album…. and it's also the different singers. You don't get tired of the different voices. After 7 or 8 songs with the same voice it does tend to get like that.
MN ‘Put ‘em High' has done the best from this album so far in the UK charts by reaching Number 6 and is pretty much known by everyone who enjoys clubbing. At what point did you realise that this song was going to be received so well ?
SB: Personally I didn't think that it was one of the strongest tracks…but then I'm useless at picking singles. I Can't. I always go for the wrong one. I always thought that this was a great single (points at ‘Freak on' single), but no-one thought so in the beginning. Now they do. They played it in Ibiza and I didn't even recognise that it was my track. I heard the intro and I thought ‘that's kind of cool'. I asked the DJ who it was and he looked at me as if I were mad. ‘It's you', he said. ‘Oh right!'. There were people singing and it just sounded totally different. Then I realised that this could go on. I played it in Summer 2003 and it was released in August 2004. I think that's why it got so big as it didn't get a lot of radio support. It was just around and never went away.
MN ‘Can't Get Enough' has produced 2 high flying singles so far? You have a 3rd single ‘Freak on' being released from it next week. How many more singles do you think you will release from this album and which do you think will follow next?
SB: I think that this one will be the last one. I don't know. It may go specialist in a vinyl quadruple pack… or something else really special. They may be another one but we always planned to release just these three.
MN ‘Freak on' is a great tune which is complimented by the vocals by Ultra Nate. How did this collaboration come about?
SB: It's an interesting one actually. I wrote the track for Kenny Thomas. I dug out the old 808 drum machine to recreate a similar vibe and then I actually sent the track to Kenny Thomas because I that it would be perfect for him,but he was really busy. I had done another track with him but he didn't come back to me and I had this track which I thought was fantastic. I had a friend who liked it who was in Sydney so I MP3'd him the track and then sent Ultra the track and then the singing was rolled over the phone. Next we had a recording session in Montreal because I had a gig there. She (Ultra Nate) insisted on starting with the backing vocals. I wanted her to go in there, sing the song and then stop. She was like ‘aarh, this is how I want to do it' backing vocals first. She started with a really weird harmony. Gradually I heard the chorus building up and I thought ‘great', and then she did the chorus. It was a very relaxed session, She was no ‘Diva', just very, very relaxed.
MN You re-invented yourself as a DJ and producer in 1997 after remixing solidly for 12 years. Do you prefer Writing and Producing songs now or do you still spend a lot of time remixing new stuff?
SB: Well, the reason that I had to re-invent myself is that I stopped DJ'ing. I did production, but not too much. I just did back to back remixes. I didn't realise that the whole business was going in that direction…and I was offered a gig at the Ministry of Sound in ‘96. I didn't want to do it, but I realised that I had to do it. I did it and it was in a big room. I played really soulful, nice stuff and people were sort of dancing politely, but I realised then that I needed to refreshen the whole thing. That's when I started the label and become a lot more clubby. In fact, I was a bit too clubby. I guess it was a really hard-mixed beat and people were saying ‘What's going on with Stone, he's changed his songs', but 2 years later I found a balance and since then it's been really nice. I couldn't have done the album then because it would have been too strange.
MN When choosing a song to remix, what are the main things you look for beforehand?
SB: Well, There's a few things that I always say no to and one's a rhythm we call a ‘shuffle' because it's impossible to make that into house. Another style I refuse is a really slow R&B track because, the ‘chipmunk' thing..it doesn't really work. I have done a few..in fact, I did a Curtis Mayfield one called ‘People Get Ready' and it came out really, really well…but it just took so long cutting the whole accapella into bits, syllables and breathes. It took a week to get the vocal to sit on a house groove. It's out now, on a Rhino Label. I've said no to a lot of fabricated acts like..you know…popstars. I don't believe that they belong in the club world. ‘Texas' I remixed, which was a big challenge with them being a rock band, and it came out as a number one club record.
MN You have produced ‘Can't get enough' yourself. How much did it affect how critical you were of it ?
SB: I kind of got into it and I thought ‘oh my God, this is going to be so much work', but after about 4 or 5 tracks I sort of got into the whole thing and also I could play. People ask ‘Oh, you've done an album' and were quite suspicious and thought it was a mix-out or something like that, but it was played on a few things. It became easier and easier to get people involved. The reason that I was flying about and recording in different places was because sometimes I had a gig in Montreal, so I'd do it there, and I also have a friend who has a studio elsewhere. Most of it was actually done in Sweden and some artists's vocals were done in their own studio.
MN Your previous remixes have include songs with Lenny Kravitz, Melanie C and Enrique Iglesias. Very different styles of music from rock to pop. What do you hear about them that makes you want to remix them ?(or do you tend to be asked to do it for them?)
SB: It's the labels. Their label contact the artist and their management and say ‘what do you think of these names' and they may say ‘er, don't like that, don't like that', and then you have to send your showreel. I send it to my manager, my manager sends it to the label and label to their manager…so on and so on. Very complicated. It is never the artist calling me. With Lenny, someone said to him ‘why don't you let that Swedish guy do it' and I had to call him up in Miami and play him the thing over the phone. My hand was shaking and it was really scary and there was silence. I said ‘So'…and he said "yeah, that's cool man'.
MN You have a quite a few DJ dates coming up over the next few months? Which are the favourite gigs you've ever played, and which particular ones that you are looking forward to most and why?
SB: Mmm, the favourite gig….there's so many. I think it would have to be one of the Hed Kandi 2003, Ibiza. They had El Divino. It was a crazy summer and every gig was just astonishing. The one I'm looking forward most to is ‘Dance Valley', that's a big one.
All the best with your Single ‘Freak On' Feat Ultra Nate which is released through Hed Kandi on May 16th 2005. Check out the video
here.
