Benjamin-Émile Le Hay: I’m a huge fan and this is my first time seeing you. You don’t come to New York that often. Why did you decide to come to Electric Zoo?

ATB: Well I think this will become one of the biggest US festivals in the future and so I know these guys [Made Events], they’re good friends, and they were asking me if maybe I was interested in playing and I said, “oh of course!” I’m sure I will have a great time here and I love New York, so why should I say no?

Amy: So what do you think of the crowd in NY compared to your hometown?

ATB: Well we will see what’s going on tonight… but I’m always playing here twice every year at Pacha New York, and I know these people are crazy and always in a really good mood. I don’t like to compare, I just know I love New York and I love the people here. There are amazing and really into their music, and this is what I love.

BL: Anything you’re going to sample tonight? You’ve got a lot of new projects lately, what about that?

ATB: Let me take a look– it’s always hard to talk about a set before because I never know what I’ll do. I try to give the best, to give everything and what I always try to put emotion and melodies into the set, so we’ll see!

BL: Fair enough, now you tour a lot, what’s the biggest difficulty for you when travelling so much?
ATB: The difficult thing is always waiting in the hotel… I really hate that! The thrilling thing is though that it’s not that bad. I’m really happy to have the opportunity to see so much of the planet. The time you land at the airport and get to the hotel to wait—I always hate this part of travelling. The rest is ok!

Amy: Do you go clubbing a lot yourself?

ATB: No. I’m touring so much that when I am at home, I really love to just be at home. Just going out with some friends, do the normal things. I am sometimes happier when I don’t see a club from the inside…

BL: I’ll agree with you on that one. Now when you’re trying to come up with new material and expand, do you find yourself struggling to find ways to recreate yourself or do you find that you’re in a quite comfortably creative moment right now in life?

ATB: Um, the first thing I always think about is not to think too much about where is everything coming from– You know? It’s just natural. I always just go into the studio and start to do something. If there is something happening that’s great, then it’s going on and if I notice, ok nothing is coming and I’m not feeling creative then I just stop it.

So I’m not a workaholic. It’s not that I always go into the studio and now I have to make a new hit or something like that. I don’t try to produce hits. I just want to get my own feelings into the music and create a track out of that… if I’m happy about that I don’t think is that a hit, is it right now good for the club, or is it good for the record company? I don’t care about these things. I just do what I want. I’m really happy that I have a record company that gives support for this type of working.

Amy: What do you listen to in your car?

ATB: Privately, I listen to a lot of ambience stuff – that is my favourite type. When you’re on the road and in the clubs you always have dance music. But on the other side I need to come-down and to relax and this is the reason why I really love this relaxing stuff.

BL: Where are you off to now?

ATB: I have another two weeks off next month and then I’m on an America tour: South America and then two weeks in the U.S.

Amy: And finally, if you had a dinner party and you could invite anyone dead or alive, who would you invite?

ATB: This is a really good question [long pause]… my friends.

Amy: Ahh if you could have ANYONE??

ATB: Really just a nice meal with my friends that I don’t get to see enough.

Amy: Well I’m sure we can arrange that. Thanks for your time!

International DJ Tiga photo at Electric Zoo Dance Festival

Benjamin-Émile Le Hay: Why have you chosen to perform at Electric Zoo this year?

Tiga: Well, I wanted to play in New York; I had a lot of friends that were play. I wanted a good show in the States, ‘cuz I don’t find to many… It seems like a good line up. I’m actually donating all my fees to charity.

BL: What did you decided to do that? Not a lot of performers do that…

Tiga: I’ve wanted to do that for a while and I’ve been kind of lazy about it. There’s a Jay Hayes, originally from Philadelphia and he lives in Berlin. I’ve never met him, but I have his record and he seems like a cool guy. Well, I got an email basically saying that he was trying to unite a bunch of people to give to efforts in the Congo. It was something that triggered me and I just wrote him an email right away telling him I wanted to help out. He was a catalyst for me, but I’ve been very interested in that part of the world and the positive and negative of not all of Africa, but of certain countries. I’m really happy to get the ball rolling. We’re really lucky as DJs to travel—it’s good money to do something we love. We travel globally you know and I even feel sometimes that it’s an easy thing to do to give something back. I think I would like to make it much more regular of a thing with me– and some of my friends, to give something back.

BL: Where do your musical influences come from?

Tiga: I feel most of my musical ideas are rooted in my personality, than in a musical background. I mean I grew up around music: my father always had records, I saw a lot of parties when I was young, I use to go to India and I saw a lot of things… It was a very liberal upbringing. So I guess I’m very open-minded to things, I’m not too much of a purist.

BL: Where are you off to next, what are you up to next?

Tiga: I’d like to take a break from everything, clear my head. I want to start something new—I feel like I’m at the end of a cycle. I just want to start something fresh. I’ve been doing some remixes lately… Ya so I have a bit more touring to do for the rest of the year, I don’t know another ten shows. I’ve been doing a tour of Australia. I want to make a new CD, work on my DJ set and start getting new ideas for the next album.

BL: Tell me about “Sexor?” What does it mean to you and what do you hope to communicate with it?

Tiga: I kind of forgot about that one now…

BL: Oh no!

Tiga: Ya I know thank you! I sort of forget about my stuff, I sort of have to…  Well you know hen I look back on the album now it seems sort of naïve, but in a nice way. I was having fun, I was so excited to even be able to make an album, let alone what it sounded like. It was a life long dream to make an album and be in that position, so I was really happy. Ya I like the album, I’m proud of it. I mean, what I’m most proud of with Sexor is that there are moments on the record that are so weird, I can’t even believe I released that to the world. Like that “Ballad of Sexor” song…

BL: That’s my favorite song!

Tiga: That’s amazing! So thank you! It’s interesting as an artist sometimes the things that you think are really flawed or really weird, end up touching people more. Sometimes we work on things for weeks and nobody cares about it. It works both ways. So that’s an important lesson for me to remember. So always be true to yourself and you like something—I mean I loved that song—so just put it out there! All my friends were like, “You can’t! You can’t!”

BL: What’s up for the rest of the weekend?

Tiga: Toronto and Montréal!

BL: Lastly, what is one thing that really irks you when you’re traveling? That really bothers you?

Tiga: When there is no room service menu in my hotel room! Then that freaks me out.. I hate people who were sandals on an airplane. I hate people with giant heads… I don’t see any around…I hate waiting for people.

BL: Do you consider yourself to be punctual?

Tiga: I do, ya I do in general…

International DJ Tiga photo at Electric Zoo Dance Festival

Listen to full audio recording here: Kaskade-Interview-Electric-Zoo

The Music Street Team caught up with the Chicago-born Kaskade just after his set at Electric Zoo Dance Festival in New York. From Chicago to Ibiza, Kaskade gives us an overview of the past, present and future of electronic music.

See day one photos from the Electric Zoo festival Amy’s full review here.

Amy Van-Baaren: What do you think of the NY crowd?

Kaskade: New York is New York, this is the centre of the world, it doesn’t get any better than this. Man I was really surprised, I didn’t know, I was a bit apprehensive because electronic has had a hard time finding a place in this city as of late. So it is really exciting to come here and see people so anxious and excited to have this here.

Amy: You are from Chicago originally, the holy grail of house music..

Kaskade: Yes, the birth place.

Amy: How do you compare to this?

Kaskade: In Chicago, this stuff is in their blood.

Amy: Yeah in their soul.

Kaskade: They live it, breathe it, and eat it. The people that are into it, their history is so long. The city inspired me in the 80’s and here I am two generations later, and it’s still going strong there. I have had a residency at smart bar in Chicago for the last 5 years and that’s one of the clubs I used to go when i was a kid, an all ages teen club. And to go back there and be a part of this history is truly an honour – when they called me I was ‘oh shit I’ve made it’, such a cool moment for me.

Amy: What are your biggest musical influences?

Kaskade: Oh man, I was really influenced by a lot of Nu Rave and early electronic Kraftwerk work to Ministry Revolting Cocks stuff on the Wax Trax label in Chicago, but then also I was a really big Smiths and The Cure, more songs stuff, Echo and the Bunnymen all that stuff that was going on back then, New order was massive for me, Born Slippy, even the more electronic stuff, Erasure.

Even some more current stuff, I love the Killers, Coldplay, Sade, im a huge Sade fan.

I think all this influences you, I’m a music lover really, I have thousands of records and I mean I love it.

Amy: Do you plays records mainly or CD’s?

Kaskade: I play CDs – for the time being.

Amy: So you’re not against the whole movement?

Kaskade: You can’t stop it now

Amy: No you can’t, so what do you think the future for house music in particular, how do you see it changing?

Kaskade: The future is it’s not going to be classified as genres anymore, it’s just electronic music. What is Deadmou5 playing right now, what did I play, is it really house? You listen to my record and RnB producers are like, ‘hey man i love your RnB record’, down tempo guys are like, ‘you’re down tempo record is great’, house people are like, your house record is great’, trance people are like, ‘ah man you put a little trance in there’.

I mean whatever man, we are beyond this now, its music, its independent electronic underground music. That’s where its heading, people are doing all sorts of stuff they are mashing the worlds. It’s cool that’s where dance music started; it was this weird stuff that nobody knew what to call it. So I think it’s just going back to what it was.

Amy: How have you seen yourself change, did you know what direction you heading? I know you worked for Ohm Records; do you think that shaped what future you were heading in to?

Kaskade: Yeah I was signed to Ohm for a few years and I switched to Ultra three or four years ago, not for a stylistic reason. I mean, stylistically I am not sure that I really totally fit in Ohm, I mean it was a good home for sure. I mean, do I fit into Ultra? You listen to my album and it sounds like elevator music compared to some of the stuff they put out. Or really heartfelt compared to the stuff they put out, it’s a bit out of the box.

Amy: Do you enjoy DJing more than producing?

Kaskade: I love them equally.

Amy: Is there anywhere else in world you would like a residency, like in the UK?

Kaskade: London recently has actually started coming around to my sounds, which I never thought you know, but it seems like they are finally coming around. My music’s a bit sunny for them I think, you know, it’s a bit west coast.

(Imitating the London attitude) ‘I mean who is this guy, he’s smiling and playing all these happy songs, like what the fuck, what is it?’

Amy: Who do you wanna see today, do you get into the crowd and get into the moment?

Kaskade: I haven’t yet today but that’s because I’m running on no sleep. I was going to check Steve Aoki out, but I think I might have just missed him.

Amy: Who is your music idol, like one DJ who you love to see, that never lets you down during a set?

Kaskade: I played with David Morales last year in Ibiza.

Amy: How do you like Ibiza?

Kaskade: I love it. I mean, it’s a very very cool atmosphere and environment. It’s a vacation destination; people go there to rest, relax and have a good time. So it’s like this perfect combination of Beauty, vacation, relaxation and people just wanting to have a good time. I mean I love it; I spent almost three weeks out there this year. I kinda placed myself out there. I played a bunch of gigs around Europe. I played two shows, one with Pete Tong at Wonderland in Eden and one with Robbie Riviera at Privilege – lots of fun.

Amy: Do you think you’ll go back again next year?

Kaskade: Yeah sure, hopefully

Amy: Does your family travel with you?

Kaskade: Occasionally I just did a bunch of shows down in South America in brazil and if I’m going somewhere for two or three weeks, if I have a lot of shows, they have been with me to Australian and brazil and a few other ransom places that I go for a while.

Amy: Nice profession

Kaskade: Yes one of the perks, one of many!

Amy: Thanks for your time!