Airbase: “People didn’t fall in love with perfect production - they fell in love with the melodies”
Looking beyond trends and timelines, Airbase explains how patience and emotion continue to guide his work and why his latest release was worth waiting for.
Long before trance became a global formula, Airbase was already focused on feeling. Emerging from Sweden’s 1990s electronic underground, Jezper Söderlund came up on euro techno, hardcore, and early trance at a time when the genre was still finding its identity. While scenes evolved and formats changed, his focus stayed consistent: emotion first, melody second, and details that reveal themselves over time.
That instinct to slow down, and listen closely has shaped both his music and his path. From quietly defining trance classics to stepping away when life demanded something more important, Airbase has always moved at his own pace. His new release, Everything Else Could Wait on Black Hole Recordings, is a reflection of that choice: a deeply personal track born from absence, patience, and knowing when to press pause.
Q: You started making electronic music in the mid-1990s, before trance even knew what it wanted to be. What did that early scene teach you that still shapes your instincts today?
A: I do not know if my younger self was very receptive to being taught much. I was probably at the peak of the “I know everything” phase of youth. Full Dunning-Kruger territory.
Growing up on euro techno, happy hardcore, Thunderdome, and Mayday and similar, I eventually stumbled across a compilation called World of Trance. Hearing tracks by Marino Stephano and Bruno Sanchioni, I realized something new was forming, and it hit exactly the right spot for me. Those tracks became templates that I tried to recreate in order to learn music production.
When you dissect the music you love, you quickly learn that it is more than the sum of its parts, and that small details matter enormously. That has been both a blessing and a curse. In many ways my career can be summarized as “sweating the details,” which over time slowed me down as a producer. One important takeaway from those early years is knowing when to push that instinct a little, so I do not completely lose momentum.
Q: Airbase has lasted decades in a genre that constantly reinvents itself. What does the name Airbase stand for now, compared to when you first released music under it?
A: Since entering the scene, I have always carried slow-burning impostor syndrome. A lot of energy went into wondering whether I fit in, whether the music was good enough, and whether people actually liked it. That kind of thinking is perfect fuel for writer’s block.
With time, you learn to live with it, and age brings the benefit of caring slightly less about what others think. Earlier on, consistency mattered a lot to me. Even when experimenting, I always planned to return to a familiar core.
Today I am more interested in following whatever path genuinely inspires me and seeing where it leads. Right now, Airbase feels comfortable and grounded. The past is a strong source of inspiration, and it will continue to inform what I do, but it no longer dictates it.
Q: Melody has always been your signature. In a time obsessed with drops and instant impact, why does melody still win for you?
A: A melody lingers. It can come back to you in nature, before sleep, in special places, or in moments of silence. Drops rarely do that. That said, I am not always set to melody being the main driver. Sometimes you just want a proper drop that hits hard in the moment. Both have their places.
Q: You’ve never chased trends, yet your music never feels stuck in the past. How do you evolve without losing yourself?
A: Another way to describe that might be “timeless,” although I would not go that far.
The streaming era suits me well because I am constantly discovering music that is new to me. Having access to almost all recorded music creates an endless pool of inspiration. I keep a long playlist of tracks that spark ideas, something I can return to when I need perspective. It contains very little dance music. It is mostly classical, pop, jazz, folk, metal.
I am often impressed by other dance music, but inspiration for me tends to come from elsewhere, from life or from other genres. That distance helps me stay detached from trends. I have known for a long time that I am not pop star or EDM star material, and trying to force myself into that space would mean compromising the reasons I made music in the first place.
For me, recognition should be a result of my work, not a goal. Focusing on that keeps me grounded and naturally disconnected from trends. When similarities do appear, they are probably due to producers having access to the same tools at the same time.
Q: You’ve been working with Ableton Live and sharing tutorials for around 20 years. Has technology expanded your creativity or forced you to simplify?
A: I climbed Complication Mountain and came back down again. I started simply and produced a lot. Over time, things became more complex and my output slowed. Output itself is not the goal, but quality is, at least by my own standards.
Chasing every new piece of technology can easily lead to an overly complicated setup where you lose sight of what actually matters. These days I know I am an Ableton person. I know many features, probably the most, but it is far from all. I am not convinced that learning everything purely for the sake of it would make me write better music.
I prefer allowing myself to stumble across these new tools naturally and let them inspire me, rather than treating each one as a missing puzzle piece. That said, I will probably never be as creative as I was with a slow computer, an old version of Cubase, and a Yamaha CS2x. It sounded terrible, but limitations forced creativity in ways that are harder to access today.
Now I can run a 60-channel project with full mixing and mastering chains on a MacBook Air. That is impressive, slightly ridiculous, and often gives the illusion that things are easier than they really are.
Q: With experience comes perspective. What’s one production rule you’ve deliberately unlearned over the years?
A: That analog is automatically better than digital.
A large part of my old impostor syndrome came from being a software-only producer. The industry has a strong tendency to romanticize analog workflows, and while analog can be great, it is not inherently superior. Much of modern music production is still shaped by the structure of old analog studios, even the most advanced DAWs are essentially digital evolutions of that environment.
Over time, I let go of the idea that I needed analog gear to validate what I did. I probably would not even know how to use most of it properly. In the end, tools do not make good music.
Q: ‘Everything Else Could Wait’ is a bold title and the track lives up to it. What moment, emotion, or mindset set this record in motion?
A: After becoming a father, my time for music became extremely limited. I realized early on that reaching a proper creative flow state requires time, and that simply was not available. It was frustrating, and I had to make a clear choice.
There is no age limit to making music. I can do that for the rest of my life. But I only get one chance to experience my children’s early years. That made the decision easy. I put the music on pause so I could be present for my daughter, and later for my son as well. I never set a deadline for returning to production. I trusted that I would know when the time was right.
During a week when my family was away and I was home alone, that moment arrived. I knew exactly what track I wanted to write about. One that explains why everything else could wait. My kids will not remember how much time I spent with them during their first years, but I will, and that matters deeply to me. The track is both a personal statement and an explanation to listeners who may have wondered where I went.
Q: Do you see this track speaking more to long-time Airbase listeners or to a new generation discovering you for the first time?
A: That is a difficult one. Many long-time listeners would probably be happy to hear another Medusa, Escape, or Genie. At the same time, Denial became one of my more successful tracks, despite being very different from my usual uplifting sound. I might underestimate my audience at times.
New listeners might be surprised when they explore my back catalogue after hearing this track. Still, I believe it carries a clear Airbase signature. I produce and process music in largely the same way I have for decades. I do not think I could hide my sound even if I wanted to.
Q: You’ve seen the trance rise, fracture, and reassemble. Has its emotional core been diluted or just redistributed into new places?
A: I lost some interest in trance around the peak of the 138 era. I do not dislike faster trance, but a lot of it felt interchangeable to me at the time. Similar basslines, similar chords, similar effects, often without a clear point of view.
Lower barriers to entry are a good thing, but easier distribution also floods the landscape with releases, making it harder to find gems. That fragmentation likely contributed to listener fatigue. At least for me.
Recently, though, things have changed. The rise of melodic techno and broader cross-genre influence has injected new needed blood. I would not say that trance has been diluted but rather invigorated, finding emotion through new perspectives.
Q: What do younger producers often get wrong about the early trance era?
A: The focus was on emotion through melody. Tracks were journeys, often long ones, sometimes too long. They built the atmosphere slowly, surprised you harmonically, and were rarely centered around a single drop. People did not fall in love with these tracks because of their impeccable production, rolling bass lines or side-chained white noise. They fell in love with the melodies.
Q: Many of your 2000s tracks still connect today. What do you think gives electronic music real longevity?
A: When music conveys something deeply personal and emotional, it transcends time. Dance music is closely tied to technology, which makes it easily dated. But when a track is felt rather than just heard, it stands a much better chance of lasting.
Q: You helped build early online trance communities. In today’s algorithm-driven landscape, does community still matter as much as it did back then?
A: Probably more than ever, but algorithms are a powerful force. We have talked about reviving trance.nu, but it is hard to know whether there is a real appetite for that kind of thing these days. I would be very happy to be proven wrong.
