Wolfgang Gartner on Medusa, disco, and why Ibiza is the Las Vegas of Europe

Wolfgang Gartner on Medusa, disco, and why Ibiza is the Las Vegas of Europe

30 September, 2011 | 8.32AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: interview, wolfgang gartner

I first met Wolfgang Gartner when we shared a van from Las Vegas’ Cosmopolitan hotel out to the site of the Electric Daisy Carnival, and I quickly got the sense that he didn’t want to talk to me. It was the little things that gave him away—like responding to my first questions with curtly monosyllabic answers, and then simply leaning his head down on his backpack, wedged against the van window, and making a visible display of power-napping. I got the hint: just hours away from show-time, he was in no mood to talk.

Turns out I had him all wrong, though. When I ran across him a few nights later, back by the artist trailers, he couldn’t have been more welcoming. (Note to self: remember not to bug the artists mere hours before they go on stage.) Read on for the full interview, and check out Gartner’s new album Weekend in America on Beatport here.

BEATPORTAL: You played the first night, and now you’re booked for a second set on the closing night. What are you going to do differently?

WOLFGANG GARTNER: The main difference is tonight Medusa, the live rig, is accompanying me out there. So for people that saw any of the shows on the North America tour in April and May, that was my stage, that was my live rig for that whole tour, and we haven’t used it since, but we’re bringing it out for this.

What does it incorporate?

It’s just a massive rig of LEDs and lights, I can’t really describe it. It takes a visuals guy to operate it, and then a lighting director. It was designed by the same people that did Daft Punk’s pyramid, Deadmau5’s cube, Kanye West’s production… Possible Productions is what they’re called. It’s basically just a giant piece of eye-candy that’s very expensive. But that’s the big difference. [Updated: A representative from Possible notified Beatportal that while the company is responsible for Gartner’s visuals, as well as those of the other artists cited, the production design itself is by a company called Bionic League.]

Tell me a little bit about your background…You’re from Texas, right?

No, I’m from California.

Why did I think it was Texas?

I had the unfortunate pleasure of living in Texas for the past seven years of my life, and I moved back to the wonderful f**kin’ state of California and got my ass out of there.

When did you start doing music, in Texas?

Before that, when I was about 11 or 12. At my parents’ house, in my bedroom.

What were you using? Trackers? FruityLoops?

No, that stuff wasn’t even around back then, people weren’t really making music with computers. It was a drum machine, keyboard, synced together with a MIDI chord, and then a four-track tape recorder. The computer didn’t even come into it until like ‘96, I think, and then it was just basic MIDI programming, and when you get into VSTs and Cubase, that didn’t come until like 2001, I think.

What kind of keyboards did you start with?

Some Yamaha generic keyboard and a Juno 106 and a Roland DR 660 drum machine and a Tascam 424 Portastudio 4-track. And a microphone, like some glasses with a different level of water in them, I’d like play with them, every different possible thing I could use to make sound.

And what were you being inspired by at that point?

Dance music, like early, early dance music. This was like 1993, ‘94, so like anything that I found, anything that I heard, I would just go to the record store every day, listen at the listening station, go through that whole section, just listen to music, and that was my life, basically.

To me, it’s all just f**kin’ dance music. As long as it has boom boom boom boom and it’s going about 130 beats per minute.

How did you get exposed that early?

It was kind of random, like I was on a vacation with my family, and one of my dad’s business partner’s nephew gave me a tape; he was older, he was from England, he gave me this tape called Dance ‘93 that had Inner City’s “Good Life” on it. That was the first track I ever heard, and from that second on, I just went and sought out dance music. I figured out what that was: it was called “house,” you know, just went out and found all of that that I could possibly find. I guess as far as more exposure than that, I started going to the raves and the warehouse parties in like ‘94, ‘95, to try and hear music out. But most of my inspiration was coming from just coming to the record store and listening to mixed compilations and CDs and stuff that were out.

When you started releasing music and playing, were you playing as a DJ?

I started DJing like two years after I started producing. It came a little bit later. But when I started playing out, you mean? I played my first gig when I was 16, my mom had to drive me to it, it was just at some local club in San Luis Obispo, where I grew up. And then obviously touring professionally, worldwide, making money from it, didn’t start until I was 22, 23, just like six years ago. So it took a long time to get from the starting point to the professional level.

What was the break?

Having a number of successful records out. There was a fundamental change in the dance-music industry at some point in the late ‘90s where, basically, in order to be a successful DJ, you no longer have to have DJ skills whatsoever, and your pay and your profile as a DJ is no longer based on your skills as a DJ whatsoever, it all has to do with the music and the records you produce. You can make good music, you can get great DJ gigs, even if you f**kin’ suck. I’m a good DJ, I don’t suck, I’m not gonna say that I suck, but it doesn’t matter how good of a DJ you are, you have to put out good music. And that’s when things started happening for me, was when I put out records.

What do you see happening with dance music in the States over the past couple years?

It’s at the biggest peak it’s ever been in, I think, and I’ve seen it go through a couple ups and downs. Like in the early ‘90s when I was getting into it, it was on its way up, I feel, and around probably ‘96, ‘97, it was hitting a peak. And then maybe 2000 there was this R.A.V.E. Act that happened and a lot of political things, and there was the September 11th attacks that hurt the economy, and people weren’t willing to pay so much for vinyl, digital downloads came along, it started going down again, and then within the past couple year’s were back up again.

The music is in the mainstream, Black Eyed Peas and other pop acts are getting dance producers to produce for them, and they’re doing it themselves, and this sound is all over the radio, which is just exposing more people to it. You go to the clubs and it’s sold out, the nights are packed for me and my friends and people that are doing this thing, so—in my opinion, and I feel like I’ve been pretty clued into it for almost 20 years now, dance music is at the biggest peak it’s been at since its inception in the United States.

That’s just for North America. Abroad, I could have different viewpoints, I don’t have as much knowledge abroad because I don’t tour quite as much over there, but in North America, that’s how it is.

Most of your fan base is North American?

I would say. I don’t know, that’s a really hard thing to gauge, but I would say it’s probably about 50%.

I feel like I’ve been pretty clued into it for almost 20 years now, and dance music is at the biggest peak it’s been.

Dance music fans to tend to be pretty tribal, or sceney.

Cliquey, cliquey by genres, yeah.

Do you feel aligned with a genre or a scene?

No, and I hate that cliqueyness and I hate, like, there is the techno world, and they don’t like the electro world, and there’s the deep house world, which I kind of used to be in, and they hate me now because I crossed over to the electro world. And to me, it’s all just f**kin’ dance music. As long as it has boom boom boom boom and it’s going about 130 beats per minute, it’s disco! It’s the same thing. That’s where it came from, it came from disco; it was all about that beat. And that’s what it morphed into. To me, anything that has that same—cheesy as it sounds, it’s a disco beat—anything that has that beat and that rhythm, that’s what I like. And there’s house and deep house and techno…

Now, you go into something like dubstep, and this is a whole ‘nother phenomenon that’s happening right now. That does not have this beat. And so, to me, I’m not into dubstep because it’s not dance music to me, it’s not disco, it’s not what I got into. I can appreciate it for what it is, there’s a lot of cool sounds going on. Skrillex, I guess, is kind of the poster boy for dubstep right now, and he does some amazing things, but for what hits me, it’s just that beat that’s been around since 1976 or whenever, that’s been chopped into all these different subgenres, that’s what I like that that’s what I will probably always like.

It’s funny, I feel very similarly. I’ve gone through my phases, I used to be more a techno guy, I used to say my heart beats at 128; now I say it’s more 118, but it’s still gotta have that oonce oonce disco beat.

Exactly!

But now things are getting so mixed up, so soupy.

They are. And a lot of house producers are putting a dubstep breakdown in the middle of their house track. And that’s cool! That’s good, to me I think that’s a good thing. Maybe I don’t do the soup thing as much as most people, I kind of stay inside what I like, but I am not opposed to soup, because it brings people together.

Your sonics, in some sense, I think, have something in common with some of the more electro-leaning dubstep—it’s the electro elements, squealy tones…

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

What are you doing after this?

I’m going the f**k home. After my set, I’m going back to the hotel. After the hotel, after I wake up, I’m going home. Then the next day, Tuesday, I have to fly out to Ibiza. That’s Amnesia. Then Portugal the next day, then Portugal the day after that, New York in the Hamptons the day after that, and then I come home. It’s pretty much nonstop. So I’m ready to get home and have my 24 hours at home before I have to go out and do it again.

What party are you playing at Amnesia?

It’s Cream at Amnesia, the terrace.

Do audiences abroad respond differently?

Yeah. Completely. I mean, the stuff that I play, my stuff, the music that I make goes over a lot better here. People just seem to understand it more. In Europe, it definitely has the potential to get there, but they just haven’t quite caught it yet. And they’re being bombed with this other stuff that they’re so used to, and that’s what they expect to hear. I don’t know what it is, kind of like the Swedish House Mafia, you know, the very high-energy trance/house blend—you know, I love Swedish House Mafia and I have nothing against that stuff, but that’s kind of the big sound over there right now, I think, and that’s kind of what they expect to hear from headliners. It’s not what I play. Generally, occasionally, I’ll play some weird place in Europe like Austria or Poland, where people go absolutely apeshit. But for, like, Ibiza, for that kind of crowd—to be honest, Ibiza is mostly English, French, Spanish tourists on vacation, tanned, kind of the Jersey Shore crowd of Europe—no disrespect. There are some cool people there too, but it’s, you know, kind of the Vegas of Europe.

Wolfgang Gartner, Weekend in America [Ultra]

Get the extended version of Wolfgang Gartner’s new album—featuring Eve, Jim Jones, Cam’ron, will.i.am, and Omarion—exclusively on Beatport here.

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