INTERVIEW: TRENTEMØLLER
WORDS: JEREMY KRESSMAN
IMAGES: ALEX ANTICH

A city as big as New York takes on all kinds. Club kids. The bridge and tunnel crowd. Hip indie rockers. Reggaeton aficionados. Goths. It’s a nightlife scene that feels at once diverse yet fractured, never easily mingling its different attitudes and atmospheres. It’s only those every-once-in-awhile events when you truly can appreciate the breadth and depth of New York’s scene. These events that cut across the lines of both taste and geography.

For all the extreme attitudes regarding dance music in the States – love it, hate it, whatever – sometimes it all falls together. You’re dancing next to a model on one side and two guys wearing full dress military uniforms on the other, and it somehow it all makes sense. The island of Manhattan feels a bit more expansive and just a little bigger, if only for those couple of hours. And it’s only the hype of a great big underground name, making his first live appearance in the Big Apple, than can bring about this type of atmosphere. That hype, whether deserved or not, brings everybody out for a great night. And sometimes, the hype delivers too: in this case, for up-and-coming Danish producer and DJ Anders Trentemøller.

Trentemøller originally started out as a musician in a rock band. After an experience with electronic music in the UK, Anders began exploring various genres and DJing locally in Denmark. Before long, he was producing his own tracks, which caught the attention of dance labels like Naked Music, Audiomatique, and current German heavyweight Poker Flat Recordings. His popularity grew, and before long he was collaborating and remixing for some of electronic music’s biggest stars, including The Knife, Matthew Herbert and Röyksopp.

Capitalizing on his growing fame, the producer began work on a more expansive project. The result is 2006’s The Last Resort, on Poker Flat, his first full-length artist album. It’s a work of considerable atmosphere and depth, full of dark moods and expansive sounds. In fact, the sonic environment is not unlike the ominous Nordic forest shrouded in mist on the album’s front cover. Perhaps fortunately, Trentemøller’s live performance follows a similar stylistic pattern to his studio work. His live work sounds at once dark and visceral, with an element that is reminiscent of the “echoing” sound associated with late ‘90s dub pioneers Basic Channel. ’SUP spoke to Anders after his recent DJ set in New York. When he popped into the ’SUP office for the photoshoot, he had some lunch, hung around, and even took a nap.

How was the tour? I know this was your first tour in North America, right?
Yeah, it was great, actually one of our best engagements in a long time. Especially the gig at Cielo [in New York] – that was really cool.

In Europe a lot of people know you as a household name, whereas in the US that’s probably not the case. Did you feel like you played differently for the crowd because of that?
No, actually, because I’m always playing what I want whether it’s Europe or Asia. I’m just trying to present my music and then it’s up to people to like it or not. I’m very glad that people seem to like it, so that was quite thrilling.

You’ve talked about the very strong rock influence on your music. I know you played in a band for quite a while, and you’ve talked about how you like The Cure and The Smiths. Do you ever mix things up when you DJ with more rock-oriented stuff?
Not so much when I’m playing as purely Trentemøller, but I’ve also started playing as a DJ a bit more just for fun. So now I’m beginning to have some DJ gigs and I’m trying to mix some more “rocky” stuff into the set so it’s not just techno and house. Sometimes I also do it when I play with my partner DJ Tom. You know, like electro rock that still has dance appeal.

Tell me about the album. I noticed you’ve talked about it as a very personal album, something not really meant for the dancefloor. At the same time, you released a bonus disc of singles that goes with it. How does that work with the full album? It seems very different.
The solo CD was created because there are two tracks on the album that I also did some vocals on, and while working on the album I realized that it wouldn’t fit the sound - suddenly having a human voice in the vibe. So I talked to my label Poker Flat about maybe having those two tracks on a bonus CD. They asked if they could put some of my old 12-inch tracks [on it] as a limited release. I think there have only been about 3,000 of those released. So this actually has nothing to do with the album, it’s purely a bonus thing.

There are a lot of different moods on The Last Resort. Songs like “Vamp” are much funkier, almost playful in a way, whereas other parts are much more contemplative. Did you have a distinct emotion in mind when you made it?
The whole album has a kind of melancholic atmosphere and I found that if you’re working with something beautiful and then underneath that, put some more danger to it. Those two constructs are interesting for me. So I wanted to make an album that had more to it. You hopefully can go back and listen to a track a third and fourth time and find new things, both in a musical technical way but also in the vibe. I also used a lot of time to find the right order in which to sequence the tracks, so you can hear the album from the first track to the last track and get some kind of nuance and a musical journey in a way.

How would you describe that musical journey? Is it a build-up to something?
I think there’s a build-up, but I’m also trying not to tell only one story, but to tell people stories that actually don’t lead to anything, they can stick out. One track can start in one point and end totally differently, and other tracks keep the same vibe. For me it was great to have the chance to let the music flow into some other place than it was expected to go.

Is the sequencing idea for The Last Resort different than what you might do during a DJ set?
When I’m DJing of course it’s much more about pleasing the dancefloor. It is a bit different – I think that it’s much more about one big build-up. Then sometimes if the club is really into it you can also take it down, so you have this dynamic in the DJ set that you can have buildups and breakdowns. But all in all, it is about building up to a climax. For this album, it’s building up [like a DJ set], but it ends with the last track “Miss You” that’s much more down again, sort of awkward in a way.

A lot of other electronic musicians like Booka Shade and Matthew Herbert are releasing full-length artist albums. But so much of dance music is about 12-inch singles and making people dance. What do you make of this trend?
For me it was actually quite natural because I’ve always been doing the kind of music that you can find on my album. So it was not something where I was now going to prove that I could do it. I’ve always been making this kind of music but never had the platform to release it. It’s much easier to release a 12-inch with a banging house beat or a techno track than it is to release a track like you find on this album because my work is a little bit more demanding. For me, I was actually just happy that I finally could get the chance to release some of my more listener-friendly stuff.

Everyone gives you a lot of credit for your production skills and you’ve done some really fantastic singles. But with everyone using similar software like Ableton Live, Reason, and Acid, how do you get your music to sound like it’s your own when so many people have the same tools?
It is not so much about which software you’re using, but much more about your use of it and the time you put into making a track, because you can make great music on very low-end gear. About five years ago everyone talked about Pro Tools and Mac and going to a studio, but now you can do it on a very simple PC laptop. You can make a whole album just on a laptop and that’s a really new thing. It also means there’s a lot of shitty music coming out too [laughs].

Many people don’t think of Denmark when they draw a map of European dance music. Do you think there’s a Danish style of dance music?
[Laughs] There’s not, because there aren’t many producers in Denmark. Most of the people here are DJing, and for the last two years DJing has been very influenced by the German sound of minimal techno. It’s a bit boring for me because I wish more people did their own music instead of only playing other people’s music. I think it’s important to get inspired by styles and other kinds of music, but to talk about a specific Danish sound is hard for me.

At the same time there seems to be a very fertile music scene in the rest of Scandinavia. You look at what’s going on with The Knife, Annie, Erlend Øye, or even Dungen. Do you find that Denmark draws any influence from that at all?
Maybe you can talk about a Nordic sound in a way. As you said, there’s The Knife from Sweden, and Röyksopp, who are from Norway. And of course this whole mess of German sound. So there’s probably a Northern Europe thing going on for the last two or three years. There’s more music coming out now that is mixing techno with some more rock-y stuff. There’s some great Swedish electro-rock that is quite interesting. This might be the next thing maybe – I don’t know.

What other producers do you think are doing good work right now?
There’s actually a Swedish band called Revl9n who are quite interesting because they are mixing this electro/techno/rock stuff. Also bands like The Rapture, who just released Pieces of the People We Love, which is not as good as their earlier album, I think.

You don’t like the new album?
To be honest, I haven’t heard all the tracks. I think I’ve heard five. I’m maybe a little more into the older stuff because I think it’s a bit too [pauses]…

It seems like they’ve gone in a direction more towards dance music.
Yeah, exactly. It’s the same thing with Peaches’ new album. It’s also good but I actually like the earlier stuff more because it had a more rock sound. It’s often like that: when an artist gets more fame and more money they go into a real studio. And then sometimes they can lose the bit that brought the energy they had. But I still think they are great artists and I really respect them a lot.

Website: myspace.com/trentemoller