Fuente: about.com
Gabriel & Dresden: The Final Interview
From DJ Ron Slomowicz
(dejo el link por si alguno quiere ir y leer la version traducida por google desde el navegador:
Gabriel and Dresden 2008 Interview)
As a team, Gabriel and Dresden have worked together for seven years producing, remixing, and DJing. Their list of accomplishments is quite impressive - producing the international club smash Motorcycle "As the Rush Comes," remixing the works of Paul Oakenfold, Way Out West, Depeche Mode, Madonna, and Tiesto, achieving #20 on the DJ Magazine list, and winning the International Dance Music Awards for Best DJ two years in a row. After WMC this year, the two have decided to take a break and work on solo projects. I caught up with Josh and Dave during Winter Music Conference to talk about their work together and their future plans apart.
Josh Gabriel Interview
DJ Ron Slomowicz: I've heard through the grapevine that there's going to be some changes in your professional life; would you care to elaborate?
Josh Gabriel: Yes, I can actually.As of March 30th, Dave and I are going to be taking a break and we're going to be doing some solo stuff. I'm going to be working on my artist album from which I've already released the first single "Summit." The next single will be "Crosstalk" and I'll just continue releasing music and then DJing to support the release of the artist album which will be sometime hopefully in 2008.
RS: What is the impetus for the break?
Josh Gabriel: It's something personal something between Dave and I and we just felt like right now is the right time to do this.
RS: Do you think you've accomplished everything that you wanted to do as a duo?
Josh Gabriel: I think we accomplished a lot. I mean you could always accomplish more, but I think that I feel very positive about what we've accomplished. I need to be doing some solo stuff and so for me this is going to come at a good time. Dave is working with other people and doing some collaborations. You need some spice in life every once in a while.
RS: When you started working with Dave did you have any idea that this relationship would last so long and it would be so fruitful?
Josh Gabriel: Absolutely not, no. From the beginning, it was something we tried and it just worked and we continued.
RS: How did you two meet up?
Josh Gabriel: Winter Music Conference in 2001.
RS: Wasn't there a Pete Tong relationship there?
Josh Gabriel: Dave was getting music for Pete Tong and I was passing out a white label of mine called Wave 3. Dave saw me hand it to somebody and he asked for it and I gave him a copy and he said Pete would like it. A couple of weeks later Pete played it on the radio and he ended up putting it on his Twisted Beats compilation.
RS: When the two of you collaborate in the studio together, what role do the two of you play? Or is there a defined role?
Josh Gabriel: Well I'm the one that's on the computer dealing with the more technical and musical stuff and Dave comes more from the DJ perspective. In our history, what really is happening is we're talking about things and technical ideas merge with DJing ideas merge with all sorts of things. It's the two of us just talking about what we want to do and the computer's just a way to accomplish that goal.
RS: What are you most proud of during this time period or what achievement are you most proud of?
Josh Gabriel: Having an artist album, for anyone that's done it knows how hard it is to not put anything out for a year and to just dedicate as much time to an album. So I'd say that is probably the biggest achievement.
RS: What's the difference between a Gabriel and Dresden track and a Josh Gabriel track?
Josh Gabriel: That's a little hard for me to understand, to be honest. Hopefully you'll be able to tell me that in a few months. In general, I'd say I'm too close to it and I don't really know. I mean when I'm making music with Dave I made music from the heart and Dave influences it and so it changes it. When I make music for myself there's nobody to change it so it's more from me so I guess that will maybe be seen.
RS: Dave Seaman is very well respected and seen as one of the legends in the history of dance music. How did you feel when one of your tracks was chosen for his recent Renaissance compilation?
Josh Gabriel: I was thrilled. I'm one of those people that respects him and anyone who's been in this business for that long, they've got something going and he's one of those people.
He's a great guy as well. I'd send him my demo tracks and when he liked "Azora" for his compilation, I was thrilled.
RS: Tell us a little bit about Organized Nature..
Josh Gabriel: Organized Nature is a label that David and I started together and it's been were we've released all of our material including the artist album.
RS: Going forward, are your future solo releases going to be on Organized Nature?
Josh Gabriel: I don't think so. What's going to be happening I don't know, but I don't think that it'll be on Organized Nature.
RS: With your future music, will you be touring as a DJ as solo?
Josh Gabriel: Yes, I start in April touring solo in thoroughout the US and Canada through the beginning part of June. Then the June 21st gig in Ireland kicks off our European tour.
RS: When you tour, what exactly do you do with the music? Are you using software, are you using CDs?
Josh Gabriel: I'm using Ableton Live and then a combination of music and parts.
RS: There is a bit of a backlash right now against the whole Ableton DJ, that it's mostly staged and preprogrammed. When you're playing live on Ableton how much of it is actually live, free from your thought and how much is preprogrammed?
Josh Gabriel: I haven't heard that backlash but I mean there used to be backlash in the beginning, but zero percent is preprogrammed. Its completely live and I don't decide what song to play until it's time to play a song. In that sense it's really no different than any other medium.
RS: What kind of controller are you using when you use Ableton?
Josh Gabriel: None, I need to get one though. Any recommendations? No, I haven't, I never did just because it seemed like a pain in the ass and it seemed like too much space, but I've just been realizing that if I want to go to the next level I need a controller.
RS: It's surprising with your name in the industry, that you don't have a sponsorship.
Josh Gabriel: Yes, it does.
RS: Are you sponsored by anyone?
Josh Gabriel: No.
RS: That's amazing. When you're in the studio working on music what do you use?
Josh Gabriel: Ableton Live, Logic, and a bunch of vintage synths.
RS: Such as?
Josh Gabriel: Korg Mono/poly, Jupiter-6, Moog Opus3, Solina String Ensemble, Korg Poly Ensemble and New Moog Voyager, and then a Fender bass and electric guitar.
RS: So you play guitar as well?
Josh Gabriel: And a Wurlitzer electric piano, yes.
RS: A question from the past, will there ever be an Andain artist album?
Josh Gabriel: We're working on it right now. We've been working the better part of a year on an artist album and that should be done hopefully by June.
RS: The tracks on your solo album, are they mostly instrumental or are they vocal tracks?
Josh Gabriel: On my album, it looks like they'll be about six instrumental tracks and four vocal tracks, but it could go either way at this point.
RS: The vocal tracks, do you have a top line writer or do you write the lyrics?
Josh Gabriel: No, I write everything.
RS: Are you singing on it or do you have guest singers?
Josh Gabriel: On two of them I'll be singing.
RS: What's it like working with your own vocals?
Josh Gabriel: Well I did it before with "Alive" and "Without You Near" and it's disconcerting, because I don't feel like I'm the best singer but I feel like my voice has some kind of feeling and some emotion.I spend all day deciding what sounds good out of somebody else's mouth but when I point that lens at myself it's scary.
RS: Will there ever be a time when your tour, DJ, and sing at the same time?
Josh Gabriel: No, there will never be a time.
RS: What's the significance of the date March 30th?
Josh Gabriel: This was our last gig as Gabriel and Dresden, that's our Beatport gig. So after that, my next gig was a solo gig.
RS: What effect do you think Beatport has on the distribution of your music?
Josh Gabriel: I think Beatport is the distribution of our music, so I'd say in that sense it has a lot to do with it. I mean we also sell stuff on iTunes and we do sell records that we actually press vinyl of, but Beatport definitely seems to be a hub and a finger in the wind as to what's working and what's not working for people, so I think it's a good thing.
RS: When you made the song Motorcycle did you have any idea it'd be as big as it was going to be?
Josh Gabriel: Well, no. We knew it was good but you never know. You think everything's good and you push it out of the studio and then you see what happens with it and that just, right time, right place, right song.
RS: What was your favorite remix of that track?
Josh Gabriel: Probably Markus Shultz.
RS: Who are some of your favorite producers right now?
Josh Gabriel: Steve Angelo, Eric Prydz, Oliver Hunteman. Francis Preve. Christopher Norman. There's a Swedish Guy, Style of Eye that I like now. There's just so much good music out there.
RS: Do you think Beatport with so much access to music distribution is watering down the quality of music that's out there?
Josh Gabriel: No, I think it's doing the reverse, I think it's bringing up the quality of music. Because there's a central place for people to go and it feeds.
RS: Do you think DJs need to produce and producers need to DJ?
Josh Gabriel: If you're going to make music for the dance floor you have to DJ otherwise you can't really know the dance floor. That's not to say that it's not possible, I would say it seems inevitable. In this day and age being a DJ is really just a live performance as an electronic artist, so I think it's further and fewer between that you'll see DJs succeed that don't make music. I can't think of anybody that's succeeded in the last five years that wasn't music-based.
RS: What would you like to say to all your fans out there?
Josh Gabriel: I'm looking forward to getting on the road and playing my music for people, so I'll see you soon.
Dave Dresden Interview
RS: I've heard through the grapevine that there's going to be some changes in your professional life; would you care to elaborate?
Dave Dresden: We both were growing apart as artists.Josh wanted to go in a more tech-ier direction where I'm into making the big vocal anthems with dramatic and emotional changes which we've become well known for. I think this can be best exemplified by Josh's recent solo single "Summit". We will most likely come together again one day and follow up our debut album, but until then, we're both going to exercise our musical musings and enjoy the time apart as much as we can.
RS: Do you think you've accomplished everything that you wanted to do as a duo?
Dave Dresden: Yes and no. I feel that we could have moved into the world of producing bands and working on the artists we found as a duo, but you cannot force great art, and if we're both not 100% happy with the direction we're taking, why force it?
RS: When you started working with Josh did you have any idea that this relationship would last so long and it would be so fruitful?
Dave Dresden: From the moment I started working with Josh, I felt a magic spark that I had never felt before in the studio. The studio bored me and the process was too long. He made it fun and the results made me proud and happy to work with him.
RS: How did you two meet up?
Dave Dresden: We met at the WMC 2001 when I was working for grooveradio.com and also as a scout for Pete Tong, giving him a good ear to the bountiful talent that exists in the USA. During my tenure with him, I found many tracks that did well for him both on his radio show, "Essential Selection," and the label he was head of at the time, ffrr.
RS: When the two of you collaborate in the studio together, what role do the two of you play? Or is there a defined role?
Dave Dresden: Josh and I wore many hats in the studio. Whatever he did I made better and vice versa. It was one of those relationships that just worked and neither of us questioned it.
RS: What are you most proud of during this time period or what achievement are you most proud of?
Dave Dresden: There were many, but in the summer of 2003, having the two biggest anthems in the trance scene, Motorcycle's "As the Rush Comes" and Andain's "Beautiful Things" - then watching Motorcycle go from club anthem to #11 in the UK pop charts and a performance on "Top of the Pops." Going in higher on the chart than the current Beyonce' single really said big things to us and our potential for the future as producers and writers.
RS: What are you working on right now?
Dave Dresden: I finished a single with Chris Cox recently that got played on Pete Tong's essential selection on April 4th 2008. I'm also working on a remix of Serge Devant's cover of The Beloved's "Sweet Harmony" with Trent Cantrelle. In addition, lots of doodles in Ableton and Logic that I plan to expound on once I recover from the shoulder surgery I just had.
RS: Who else are you working with?
Dave Dresden: In addition to the above-mentioned names, I've got some other collaborations in the works for the near future. I'd love to work with as many producers as I can, to soak up new influences and maybe find someone whom I have a chemistry with like I did with Josh. I also have a goal of starting and finishing an original song myself within the next year that rocks the floor. That would be really awesome to me.
RS: What's the difference between a Gabriel and Dresden track and a Dave Dresden track?
Dave Dresden: That's hard to say really, since the bulk of my work has been done with Josh. I'd say the biggest thing that separates us is my desire for a bassline that eventually changes notes. Josh and I would normally argue about this part of the creative process, but we usually made compromises to make each other happy. Fans may remember my "Attention Deficit" guise from a few years ago. It was a collaboration with myself and LA-based Ryeland Allison. These tracks I did with him are a good indication of what my own tracks would sound like. I love live drums and interesting sounds that you don't hear every day in dance music. I think Rye and I did a good job of keeping the sounds and ideas fresh.
RS: I've always wondered if the name Attention Deficit was a inside joke of some sort.
Dave Dresden: The name Attention Defiicit really came about because Ryeland's last name is Allison and mine is Dresden (AD).Also, we both have attention deficit disorder.
RS: I've read on your blogs that you also struggle with Asperger's syndrome. Is this related to attention deficit disorder? How does it affect your DJing/producing?
Dave Dresden: Well I have a dual diagnosis. I have bipolar disorder and Asperger's syndrome. What those two things do is help me feel emotional music more easily and deeply than someone without them. It has helped me write lyrics and form songs that would help people with problems feel something because being a person with this problem, it helped me, and knowing that I was helping people with the music I helped create gave me a sense of purpose and that feeds itself in a lot of ways and gives me the courage to go and make more music and understand a lot of what people are feeling on the dance floor and elsewhere.
Sometimes when working with people who are not afflicted with these diseases it makes them question you, because they don't live with these problems. They don't quite understand what I and people with these afflictions are going through and can be mistaken for rudeness and selfishness, when in fact, all I want to do is just do better and help people through the best way I know how: music. It's been my driving force for many years. I didn't know I had these problems until 2006, but there's a thread to it all from the music I liked as a kid, how emotional songs would make me get chills and sometimes cry for both my condition, the feeling of being misunderstood and for those who would be on the receiving end of the music that was made. I am medicated for these conditions, but that still doesn't stop one from feeling these feelings, but also the memories I had going through life with these problems.
RS: Tell us a little bit about Organized Nature...
Dave Dresden: Originally it was a label Josh set up to promote his debut single "Wave 3" which is the song I heard at WMC 2001 and was able to turn Pete Tong onto. We agreed that we loved the name and set it up to release our own music and the music of artists we liked. We were very selective on our releases and only released 12 singles and our debut album on it. We were planning on releasing our one album signing, Christopher Norman on the label (we put out his debut single "Going Down" when he went under the alias "Retrobyte") and we also were planning on releasing any of our album output on it. With majors only interested in surefire mass appeal artists, we wanted to build our own stable of artists the way past luminaries like Berry Gordy did with Motown or Puff Daddy did with Bad Boy. We had big plans for the future.
RS: Going forward, are your future solo releases going to be on Organized Nature?
Dave Dresden: Not sure what will come of ON, we are presently discussing what the future holds for many things regarding us.
RS: When you tour, what exactly do you do with the music? Are you using software, are you using CDs?
Dave Dresden: I started spinning on CDs back in 1989 when Technics made the SL 1300 CD player, and have used Pioneer equipment since 1994. Josh and I have been using Ableton as a duo for the past 3 years and I really enjoyed working on it with him, but when I go back out as a solo DJ, I'm going to go back to using CDs - I really like the new Pioneer decks and I feel really comfortable DJing on them. Eventually, I may incorporate Ableton into my sets, but for the time being I want to go old school and mix on mylar with lasers.
RS: There is a bit of a backlash right now against the whole Ableton DJ, that it's mostly staged and preprogrammed. When you're playing live on Ableton, how much of it is actually live, free from your thought and how much is preprogrammed?
Dave Dresden: None of our sets were programmed. We added songs to the library before each gig and then at the shows we discussed the songs we were going to play based on what the reaction was to the song we were currently playing. We also discussed how we were going to do the segue and everything else involved in the show. everything was 100% live.
RS: What kind of controller are you using when you use Ableton?
Dave Dresden: None. Josh was on the computer sending me the song and then I would control the volume through the club mixer and along the way we would talk about when to cross over the mix.It was two heads and four hands and a whole lot of fun. People in dance music should not be afraid of new technology because technology is was pushes music forward, and in the end it's not what you play from it's what and how you play it.
RS: When you're in the studio working on music what do you use?
Dave Dresden: As a relative newcomer to the engineering side of things, I use Ableton 7 and Logic 8 for making music. Both programs have really evolved to helped musicians with less engineering experience do things that they never imagined they could do. As I said before, technology drives music and with just a little bit of time, someone with not that much engineering experience can make decent music. The future looks very bright for people with good ideas but not a lot of experience or a music school degree.
RS: What effect do you think Beatport has on the distribution of your music?
Dave Dresden: Beatport has revolutionized the distribution of dance music. Not only does it give you a wide variety of choices but with all the DJ charts and "customers who bought this also bought this" entries one can find whatever they are looking for and more. Beatport has even made its share of newcomer superstars like Nick Terranova and Deadmau5, who owe a lot of their success to Beatport. I remember when they came on the scene in 2002 and there were a lot of detractors, but they stuck by their guns and offered a quality service and that's the reason why they are the industry leader in dance music retail.
RS: Do you think Beatport, with so much access to music distribution, is watering down the quality of music that's out there?
Dave Dresden: Not at all. Every place is going to have its good and bad music. its just like life. you can't have bad without good and vice versa.
RS: When you made the song "As the Rush Comes" as Motorcycle with Jes and Josh, did you have any idea it'd be as big as it was going to be?
Dave Dresden: Josh used to gauge how good a song we were working on was based on how much I'd dance around the studio. "As The Rush Comes" had me raving 24/7 with glowsticks and whistles for the entire duration of its creation. But of course, you never know what will happen when something hits the marketplace. We gave the track to DJ Tiesto, Armin van Buuren, and Pete Tong and all three went wild for it. We knew then we had a hit, but we didn't have any idea that it would be one of the dance songs of that year, and live on to be a neo-classic, which it still is.
RS: What was your favorite remix of that track?
Dave Dresden: I think Markus Schulz did the best remix of ATRC. The music bed he created and the arrangement of the mix really had me in a tizzy, and it still gives me goosebumps to this day.
RS: Who are some of your favorite producers right now?
Dave Dresden: So many names... Steve Angello, Trentemoller, Steve Bug, Deadmau5, Tom Novy, Paul Harris... we could go on for days, really. Anyone who makes forward-thinking, soulful techno-trance-house whatchamacallit music that holds your interest and says something to the listener that doesn't have dollar signs written all over it.
RS: Do you think DJs need to produce and producers need to DJ?
Dave Dresden: They are, in a way, a symbiotic relationship where one part helps the other to understand what is needed. Of course there are people who make good dance music who don't DJ and vice versa, but making tracks is a surefire way of finding your way into the DJ booths of the finest clubs in the world.
RS: What would you like to say to all your fans out there?
Dave Dresden: I love all of them and their faces at the shows really inspire me to want to work harder and make better music and do better sets. I hope that they find interest in both Josh and I as solo artists as they did when we were a team.
Publicado en Abril de 2008
