i really pushed him on this one every time i saw them individually when are you getting it back together let's be honest if you're a fan of this band we all did and then this year it finally happened [Music] swedish house mafia reunited new album
paradise again streaming now live show is official cello weekend one is done by the time you're watching this so we pulled up to batman's tech lair and talked about time where'd it all go and does it even matter
there's no beginning and there is no end only until now and paradise again and this is the thing about you i don't think you ever really gave us a time where it felt like it was time for any of it i mean i got obsessed like it's over but i don't i don't even know
if it ever was i don't know you know something was gonna happen right yeah i can't well i i hoped it would i mean i banged on about it enough i sort of felt there were times with each of you individually or together where i was
i'd walk away from our hangs and go man you got to stop really pushing that swedish housemate for your reunion bro you're going to piss one of them off one day but it has been such a fascinating story for me and for all of us as fans
watching you dance around this legacy of what you create and what you do together and so i guess to start officially welcome back with this album which is a triumph thank you and these shows which are going to be a triumph and you know here's to it up again
[Music] just kidding why not it's a beautiful thing it sort of brings me to the idea of timing in the way that you've been very deliberately leaning into information and it didn't feel like one big brain dump the whole thing felt like they're placed
very carefully in order to draw us and meaningfully into this experience but when did you start to form the architecture of what this would be i.e coming together making music dropping these songs doing coachella was
it all sort of part of a grand scheme no i don't say i don't think it was like a grand scheme it's like organic you know how we first of all decided to you know do the show at ultra together and then do a festival tour together and
then make music together and just like everything it's all stepping stones one thing leads to another so if ultra had been a disaster for one reason or another it may have affected the the potential to go back in and take the next step i guess yeah
yeah because we got you know like you were saying a lot of people were saying oh when you're coming back stop messing around you know come back come back and fans every year every show we did like individually me and sebastian you know
on instagram where swedish house my favorite swedish house mafia and it was like flattering and you know it didn't go away we thought it would go away after a few years but it just kept going and we were like you know there might be some legs to this swedish
asthma of your thing you know but it's funny because i speak to a lot of artists about who are beholden to some degree to their success and what they mean to us and it is flattering but sometimes they can feel like it's anchoring you in one place when you want
to try new things were there ever times it's not like you weren't moving i mean you guys did things together you also did things individually size and everything you did you made some incredible expansive progressive music
all of you were the times when kind of people like myself and feel free to be truthful and millions of other people on social media or otherwise saying yes you know shm shm where you got tyson where it was like guys
move on well in the beginning it was tiresome uh but then after a while it got cute you know it got cute yeah you know and then it got maybe a little bit inspiring yeah and we're like you know what that's exciting you know and then we started to
feel like it was exciting as well yeah what about for you steve yeah it was the same you know it's like you always remember that time right so for us as we grew up together we had an incredible journey you know from from playing little clubs
with 10 people to milton keynes bowl you know like the journey has been incredible so it's not like you wake up one day and you're like oh i didn't know that happened you know no but we woke up one day it's our dna we woke up one day and
was over i think that's what really hit people was people fell in love with the experience and you really exemplified the experience and i think when you guys said we're done it felt like the party was done so my question is did you feel like the
party was already done as in could it get any bigger what you represented and your friends represented in other areas of the field i feel like the narrative changed of our story by the end of it yeah i felt like it's like
you're pushing someone into a corner we didn't know what to do so i feel like the narrative changed and the reasoning like you know we create music because we love it then we have fun and all of us so i don't think we were ready you all come from the
underground too there's the other thing that people got to remember is that each of you individually were coming from making club records for those 10 people in the club yeah yeah 100 but i don't think to be honest like i don't think we
were ready for the next step at the time and i think this was the only way that outcome yeah i just think that was like destiny what are your memories of those shows that kind of drew it to a triumphant close you know um and they're different
memories right on the one hand you were having big shows of milton keynes everything just felt like it was spiraling a bit out of control did it feel like for you guys that it was spiraling a bit out of control as well
yeah because like swedish mafia became like this monster experience and we had to sort of feed it you know and like steve said i don't think we were ready to feed it because we had our own things also that we wanted to maintain and we were not ready
to just focus on swedish house mafia and continue to feed that monster yeah and there's the individual monsters as well that look when you're at the center of something that's as visceral and dynamic and once in a
lifetime is that era that became edm you know where you go from playing these underground clubs and next thing you know you're at a speedway it's like 300 000 people and it's like this isn't even a crowd anymore this is just a pointless painting yeah i don't even
know what those people who are 200 000 people back are experiencing right now right and we're going to we're going to swerve another album a lot to dissect but we're trying to get context around that time because how does a person
manage that level of attention at that pace i mean everything was new yeah right every day was a new day a meaning that the obstacles that we had things that we were challenged with you know going into an arena was a challenge
like nobody wanted to put dance music anywhere i remember when you guys put brixton on sale it was unheard of yeah but then madison's you know but brixton was a concert hall you know like but then like trying to we always had huge
ambitions and our goal was always like to push boundaries and like how do we go from from from brixton to madison square garden yeah like how do we we believed so much in ourselves that we never gave up with an idea of opening those doors for our
crowd put the rave in madison square garden just conversations with them to book the arena was like a whole movie you know because nobody wanted to put it in the put the show on so for us it's like you go like step by step by step but you
have you it's it's like fires you gotta put out everywhere um and i think like as much as it's fun we're just having fun but our ambitions have always been so big so that's the problem with ambition though is eventually it's going to start replacing
the fun yeah right there's only so much space for ambition there's so much space for faster they need to be aligned that's the most they have to be aligned right i feel like it was probably the least fun when the movie was kind of kicking
around like that movie was like whoa and i like you know i hold you in really high regard for releasing that film because it showed it warts and all what it was why pretend this is it's it's as ludicrous as it looks
at times right mixed with genuine joy and enthusiasm i've asked metallica this i'm going to ask you this do you regret making that documentary no no no it's a part of our history it's a part of our emotions it's a part of our you know we felt also like
why face the fans and do a lot of interviews and talk about it like here it is here you see for yourself this is silly charles mafia this is the life of swedish house mafia on tour and there was a lot of emotions involved
in the last tour obviously i mean the vibe wasn't the best every day but i mean it's normal when you become a family like we become you know our kids hang out our wives hang out we hang out we are typical band like the other bands you know it's
some day you will bump heads same with your siblings or cousins or whatever it is yeah i have one more question about the dog but you raised an interesting point seven i wanted to ask you i've never asked you outright because i just wanted
to hang on for dear life and hope that this this reunion happened and we'd get an album and we'd get a tour right that was more important than asking the question but we go back a long way and this is the time for me to ask the question
was there a moment when it was an acrimonious end did it did it come to a head at any point i mean i think like there was so much involved that like when we that tour was heartbreaking first and foremost you remember we were talking about it
during the tour like we're saying goodbye every day yeah for like the next five months it's like going on holiday during your divorce yeah but it's like it's basically it's a funeral every day right so like for us by the end of the tour we were just like
drained drained and emotionally like but also happy in a weird way yeah it was weird yeah it was it was a melancholy like vibe but at the same time we're like we ended it on a high note and we were like okay that was it who goes out with the
number one single and a tour like that it's just championship man championship right seven the question i was going to ask about the diet to get back to that was one of the things i always really respected was that it showed the dark
side of success and in particular what can happen when you're living on the other side of the day all the time and in order to work those hours i got something for you you should take this because then you're going to work
and i'm going to get paid and everyone's freaking happy you know and that works for a while when you're young maybe if you can handle it your constitution is up for it a life's an experience but it was backfiring even during the film and i respect you for
keeping that stuff in and i think what you showed was a prelude to some of the damage that we saw tragically unfold in the years that followed there was a lot of damage on display during that time wasn't it it was not all parties yeah listen
like we've gone through like people that were supposed to be promoters weren't real promoters artists weren't ready to tour like it's been a roller coaster but also like with anything when something grows so fast and so big and becomes like
a financial engine for so many around the scene you know like opportunity for us we were always like we grew up with nothing right so every step in our careers we had to fight for and all of a sudden like the war the world was open so
imagine like telling me when i when i'm in my you know most energetic time in life to go and be able to do 250 shows where's the adventures yeah yeah you see what i mean because i'm hungry i'm starving right so when you have those ambitions like
everything that's thrown at you you kind of just go with the flow and then you we don't have any practice in like oh it you know if you if you touch the camera you're going to burn your finger like nobody knows right so we're like at the forefront just running
this scene full force yeah you know so like everything that happened on the way it was like a first experience for everything you know first time we had a council show it was the first first time something you know whatever
it was good bad left right you were first through the wall and then you know they said about first through the war right bloodied and bruised and um the only other person i felt who could really probably relate at that level was tim was avicii yeah of course you
know yeah the boundaries that he pushed and broke you know modern mozart men yeah and um when he when he passed away i it resonated so deeply not just with his fans but i think we're just people like wow it was a devastating day
it really felt like the trade was over you know what are we willing to trade here to jump up and down and have an experience you're worth it though is it worth it and i feel like you know we've luckily like i can speak from my personal
we have each other right so like i'm not running through these walls alone i know that like they have my back right so regardless of what it is we can we can just play ball and ask and we can ask each other advice or question whatever it is
we have each other and i feel like that was part of us being sane today yeah you know because like if you would have gone through this whole thing alone i don't know if this would be the outcome and and you know and we are three it's
strong you know you are friends and that's what it's like i can you know if i have a problem with something i can i can lean on one of the guys and that's like that's the beauty of it right and when you're trying to do that on
your own you don't have that support and all of a sudden it affects you and just you you know which brings us to the reason why you're here which is paradise again but there's no paradise again without the friendship of course you ain't doing it for the check
no that there would have been times back then when one more show helped the bank balance because we're in it why not do it but i know for a fact that it's entirely pure this time around like it is about the chemistry the three
of you have so was that always kind of still there through the hiatus or did you have a coming together moment and sort of say hey look you know people want this what do we have to do to get ourselves together before we get
the music together yeah that's exactly how it was we met we talked and then steve dropped the bomb and said we have to do an album [Laughter] i freaked out because i know how hard it was to make four songs together so too much of a good thing or even a
remix could took a year you know so i was like an album i have to go home i went home to my couch and i slept for two hours because my brain exploded and uh because i couldn't really see how you know what i mean like but then
we started to have the conversations and we said like okay before we go into the studio and make something we have to be aligned on what it's going to going to be because we have three different tastes different ways of seeing making music sometimes
and um you know we started to feel you know feel it a little bit and then it just kind of like cracked and we're like wow okay we we all three of us kind of like this is this a thing now okay cool let's keep on you know and then we
felt like like you said like before like you know there's always a little um person here that says rave and there's also a little person here that says radio you know what i mean but we just had to kill those persons and be like
okay what's the where's the instinct taking what did we like because we forgot you know we forgot we've been into this storm of shows and festivals and just like back and forth you know djs especially can't travel twice as
much as a normal artist you know they sing their voice break they have to take five days rest we can just go on like twice a day if we want so we just had to take a breather and be like why did we even start making music in the in in the beginning who did we
like and why did we like them and what was tickling our emotions so i kind of like all of us we just like grab the vinyl collection that steve kept that's great and just be like every day like oh wow subliminal records okay so so who was
bringing in what let's go down the couch because i've been collected in quarantine it's been one of the most fulfilling things i've done in a long time is just getting back in literally in touch with music again yeah so
something about walking in the room with three or four things and so all right you know the discussion was important you know like seb was saying like we would like i had no idea what seb listened to in his free time i had no idea what axe was listening to
his free time so i was we were just like you know when you when you're kids right and you just go to the vinyl store and you pick something up or you discover something you just want to show it to your friends yeah regardless of what it is
and that was what it was we were just like playing and just like yo check this out check this and it's just becomes this like inspirational road what was a wow record where all three of you were like oh an old record yeah like when you brought
it human versus heartbreaker was one of them wow you are my high yeah yeah it sounds it just sounds like our youth you know what i mean it has melodies it has something melancholic but it also has something sexy and it's
dance and it's cool yeah that was something that was you're like wow okay we like the aesthetics the sonics everything that connects the three of us what about the ux was the one that really i mean it was like many different ones but
we came back a lot to uh stuart price's things you know all his remixes under different names yeah you know the gods do it probably he was on a tear man for a good decade an absolute tear changed it all yeah and like so every week you guys at radio one
would play a new yeah and we were all like we couldn't even keep up i mean i couldn't even keep up with who was what yeah i would come in sometimes and i'd go and see pete go into a studio and whenever and i'd say dude what the was that record you
just played an hour ago and he's like you're not gonna in that voice you're not gonna believe it it's stuart price i'm like get the out of here gonna stop like yeah yeah we've been listening to him a lot yeah that era had
a lot to offer i think when dance music was cool regardless like i remember i actually remember we used to have a lot of these discussions back in the day like what are you crazy this is cringe you can't play this you know there was a
there was a cool police yeah really serious cool police lady yeah hear me that was true i remember hearing that just being like oh is that on the line and then i would hear that a few years later i'd be like because i'm kidding that's a certified
smasher yeah correct no but like that that period of time dance music was so cool yeah but still catchy you know like yeah and that was really something that we thought everyone takes over yeah but i really feel when you're talking about dance
maker dance music is in a really good place right now it feels like it kind of reset somehow and all these young kids and all these new labels and producers and djs doing really impressive things like especially from uk two of the best
producers making music right now peggy and charlotte who are just coming in and smashing it you know what i mean and so that door is so wide open now and i mean dawn ricard right i mean talk about making an incredible
album from within the lgbtq community in new orleans about that community is really though i mean that second line record has blew my mind as a concept and everything else and i just feel like yeah it but it's always been a magpie environment dance
music it's always been able to draw and adapt and when someone does it right you know they become that that benchmark again do you know what i mean yeah yeah and it's also like like you were saying like the reset has been i think it's
really important for dance music you know for us it was it became so big you know like it became like it just tipped into like the mainstream and every festival tried it started to boost you were the biggest band in the world i honestly think that
in terms of like new band not like youtube or coldplay whatever yeah you were the biggest band in the world you were playing 80 000 people on your own ticket yeah not a festival yeah yeah heart tickets yeah that was kind of nice when you say it
like that i remember now at least we've been the biggest member but the whole thing back then was like it felt like the golden ticket we just did one event we're like okay let's go to new york and do madison square garden every agent in
the world was like are they joking or like what do you like i remember them this called moding it when you take yourself into a stadium way ahead of schedule and then after that yeah that's all anyone wants to see you and the
marketing the flyers said yeah if you don't know who we are don't come yeah that was our flyer if you remember when we announced milton keynes i don't know if you remember we announced milton keynes bowl and every newspaper in england had headlines
what a show it was going to be they were like they won't sell a ticket the only people that ever sold those tickets were metallica it was this crazy press about us not getting anywhere and all of a sudden we're standing there and
it's like full you know i remember fainting on that show that was crazy yeah you did yeah i faint because i was so nervous i never seen like 60 000 people in one floor like that uh or ground and i remember taking the microphone and i want to say something
to this wonderful kid standing there but i didn't take a you know yes before so i said something and then i didn't see anything i mean we had a couple of rough nights yeah there was some rough nights before but our tour manager back then
was such a pro because he i don't know how he might see that before coming i said i don't know how but he had like oxygen oxygen like that so he's like and i was like up again you know when you're two and then just walk around with an oxygen tank with an
arm's reach you've got to make some lifestyle changes well we didn't hate alcohol so yeah we had some fun but also i wonder whether or not to some degree and not to go backwards because i like where we're going but you know
there's i always think that when you get into that place where you've got a drink in your hand or something else nearby and you're climbing that ascent it's sort of a coping mechanism it's like how else can i process this to some degree do you
think looking back on it said there was an element of you just trying to kind of dull the anxiety of being where you're of course yeah all the time yeah i mean listen remember i remember like going like 45 shows deep on a run
like i couldn't even leave the green room without because we had this thing where well we we actually started swedish house mafia and were the first shows that we were booked on we said like can we have free drinks like sure that was the only thing yeah
that we wanted like we didn't really want money like tonight we forget free drinks we're happy and well we started to get this kind of like brand where oh swedish husband face coming they will drink straight from the bottle i was at the future music
festival on the same bill as you sign the stage with rob swyer and gareth knife partying sunny skrillex you had a bar yeah behind the dj you might not know this all you saw was the skills and the light show behind the dj booth was a fully
functioning bar yeah it's crazy all the stuff that happened and like how the scene evolved and like that just we spoke about that that night when we decided to come back but just like just a mem i can like i can live with
the memories of our past for the rest of my life and it's like i'm i'm happy the way it is i know why you want to do an album because you didn't hadn't done one it's like how do you have this legacy of what you represent and not have a body of work that truly
represents the three of you in one session 100 one you know what i mean like that's exactly how it is yeah it was a challenge uh to start making an album but like steve you know when he brought it up like we had to make an album i said of course
like in the end of the day we cannot die and not make an album it feels weird it was it was a quite long journey because of you know kobe then you know some of us went away and south of sweden and north and left and right and so on but
when we started making the album we just said okay let's start writing music like that let's not you know think about how would they sound now like let's just make chords let's just write music let's go down to the dashboard and just like
see what we want to say yeah so we started to throw in like you know this inspirational mood board kind of like with music pictures videos old stuff futuristic stuff i guess and we just started to kind of like soundscape those pictures yeah and
you know then we we started to kind of like realize that we're trying to recreate the paradise that we grew up in and for us paradise doesn't necessarily to be the apple tree with the snake and the heavens and the house for us paradise is
a small little club in germany for paradise for us it's like literally called paradise it's a sonical journey yeah that's what i mean i mean like we we had one of our best nights in a little club in stockholm for 99 people
or 95 or whatever it was that was paradise for us you know what i mean like when we started to talk about these memories and started to like yeah like i said we just started to make music for those pictures and memories and what we saw
you have 100 look you will play in front of tens of thousands of people this weekend but you in my opinion have made a love letter for the club yeah i mean the way it starts you've given us big bombastic smash hit songs you know save though it's called save the
world that's called save the world like crazy we're going to save the world one smasher at a time you know it's like it's a big statement yeah this time it's different takes time to heal yeah right takes time to heal you've gone somewhere
internal whereas everything just felt external like push it out it's this time like you say it just feels like you win like inside yeah yeah but it also like it it changed that like going into this period of time and coming together and
and with the pandemic going on and everything that happens like it was the first time we can sit down and think about making music that didn't have uh purposely a set time yeah for a show like you know otherwise like when we
when we made music before we're like we let we need to make the the song that we start to show well that's what the compilation to me was was it was a collection of songs that worked in the in the field and now all of a sudden we're like i was
driving home one night and we're like you know it should be dope to make a song for like me driving home at night and that one's called home yeah that was actually our kind of like i said something i remember we talked about like during lunch i'm like how the
would swedish housemate sound on a sunday morning yeah you know what i mean like i actually want to make a song on it for a sunday morning vibe can love that song oh thank you you know what's great is that you know four songs into
it you know we get through the first two beautiful uplifting energies rising jacob's note muscle flame mafia yeah like turn the lights off is crazy like that is like oh it's not going to be that album no so i i really want to at this point talk
because we'll get back to abel in a minute it's important we talk about martial flame and this great relationship you're developing with him but mafia to me is like that's how you know you're in trouble as a listener
yeah it has uh you know our idea with the song was actually like how would it sound if we made music for the actual drama that we've been through so the actual demo version called drama it was called drama yeah so we're like how would an
five minute or three minute anxiety attack a la swedish house is it amazing how anxiety sounds so exciting yeah i know right it's crazy exactly if you're not that person with anxiety so we just that's even more dramatic because anxiety needs
friends that's the point that was actually the record on the album that took least time to make yeah so we're like we all looked at each other but i think we know how it would sound with some anxiety and drama so we just went in and we just had fun we just made a
record and i just felt like because because we felt like should this have vocals or could we add something to it i'm like we should be all felt like no no we don't have to feel like it does have a vocal though that's the way you
think about it yeah what you're saying you're doing the vocals on that record i am actually saying something on swedish in the end era model that you can't really hear because of the distortion but um yeah we just wanted to because we we we
thought about like everybody know the swedish husband affair has a lot of drama internally sure and outside and you know with our history of our you know teams that we worked with and so on we've been messy you know what i mean so
so we're like let's go and make a song so it's ourselves tear it down it's basically a self-portrait right yeah yeah yeah it's nice to put yeah but from there like you stay in that zone and you start moving into different territory which you've
definitely already shown us with the songs that you've given you're not gonna stay in a four on the floor space but frankenstein's a whole other thing and i feel you know with asap on it where they set rocky on it um
who to me is one of the few voices that can cross lanes so effortlessly and still remain essentially the same rocky that we all in particular a whole generation of young kids can worship yeah yeah what is it about him i mean he was kind of like the first
uh guy we wanted to work with when we started the project because we said like we really love asap rocky first and foremost and like you just said like he is just mr culture himself yes he doesn't give a about anything he just makes what
he feels you feel that and we felt like we want to work with him i was you know we were in a layer we just felt like let's do it and he was up for it and we were like wow does he want to work with us okay like i guess the last thing he
heard from us was don't you worry child okay so let's do it and we started to make some songs he was actually co-wrote a co-writer on the lifetime that we did with jake and ty dolla sign yeah so we made that we made some stuff for him i'm
not sure what happened to that but then we started to making songs so we just felt like you know yeah he came to sweden because he had a show and we all know what happened in sweden same trip yeah the day after yeah so so we went into the studio and i
remember one of us like drinking on the piano he's like wait wait wait wait what did you do because we have like a piano there because the piano he's like wait wait what do you do like that sounded like frankenstein i'm like that's a dope name
for a song it's like let's do it now it's ring and we started to like and he had this guy with him um kevin crash and he's like with him and his team in the studio and he started to make like drums and we started to like throw stuff at each
other and the song came about by a couple of hours outstanding yeah we just had a moog cert that we started to you know crack we had a lot of fun in that session isn't it great you know when you meet people who are there's a kindred
creative spirituality there just you just all you have to do is get out of your own way yeah all you have to do is just look for the signs you know i can't believe that that all coincided with what went on there it's funny man i you know i just
went home to new zealand and i saw a side of new zealand i i'd only remembered as a kid you know and it was in contrast to the new zealand that everyone thinks of it as which exists too but there's also like anywhere a
conservative nature to the country that i'm from and i saw that on display and everything else and it just was like okay i need to be reminded what my country my home really represents that it's never just one thing you all chose to go back
home having lived abroad and done various different things did it surprise you the way sweden can flip like that and be so incredibly straight when we look at the music and the art that's come out of there as being so beautifully eccentric
and and wide open sweden's a tricky place man yeah you know like like my memory of sweden was much different from when i when i spent my ten years here i was like yes wheelan's this great place i go to and either like around christmas
or summer everybody's friendly and it's a vibe and you see it at its best at its best and everybody you meet kind of like oh sweet and great like everything is fantastic so you're kind of like yeah everything's fantastic and then i moved
back started to go back and i was like there's a lot of issues here you know and once you start digging like you start realizing like what the energy is like and what what what the conversations are and like poverty and whatever it could be you know we have
our our moments in sweden where we actually feel like sweden is really important to us especially when we go back to dig deep into what we feel and what we want to make it's important to be in the environment where we all started yeah um
i love making music in los angeles or in england or to be honest anywhere as long as it's good energy but i think that in sweden something happens to us we become young in a weird way you know what i mean like that's true
because we we go to our studios with our synthesizers with our thing there's not like five engineers or this bar that we were talking before or this you know runners running around it's just us and the machines and it just takes us to good places sweden's
a perfect place to be in a bubble if you stack up if you actually had a real eurovision yeah not like a his this year's really on the nose pop song versus another one but actually who has stacked up the most amount of sales and streams and hard tickets sold out of any of the countries in particular in europe sweden's number one i mean you abba and max martin alone yeah gone out of here yeah so what is it like how do you having grown up there and
then gone back with us i'll tell you we talked about this yesterday yeah it's because like sweden is such a small country and it's like this spirit of success abroad that is kind of built there you know in into us like some artists you know they have
a big domestic market that is fine for them to survive you know yeah but but sweden like with everything with music with entrepreneurs everything it's like this goal to get out you know i was thinking about what's up with swedes and our
melodies and stuff that we make and like it has something similar something in the dna and i was thinking about it so much and i started to like google old um kids tv shows and movies swedish movies and i realized realized how good the music was
wow sinking in so i think for me it started right there yeah so i started to check up who made all this music and there was this guy i can't pronounce the surname i think it's called gustavo alexander but he was actually from
budapest so he wasn't even from sweden he was i think that he plays a huge part of that's crazy my musical inspiration because i remember these songs because i remember watching those tv shows when i was a kid and it touched me yeah
if you watch some other tv shows from you know it's nothing like but this was like proper melancholic beautiful melodies strings piano and it touched me when i was like three to eight years old i think um so i think that i have a lot to thank you know
let's not forget like the past in sweden we had a really dark viking era yeah so like it's a pretty dark like all nordics are super dark yeah well this is the thing i think when i first sort of got to know you once you'd started to release music of
swedish house mafia there was this idea that there'd be this year very sort of wide-open european charm or whatever and then i realized really quickly that oh no you gotta get to know the swedes like you can't they're not just gonna be like
hey come on in like how do i put this i'm just going to hit on the nose there was always a bit of a darkness to the way that that the energy that surrounded the music was so up but you guys moved with the darkness to it like not in a
negative awful way just like what you're talking about like there's a hardness to it right yeah yeah but i think that's what the song mafia comes from that that energy that you're talking about but i also think you know growing up sweden's like
it's a tough place right so like everybody's super like protective of theirs it's like you know i i could live next to a neighbor of my whole life i'd never said hi to him you know like it's like super personal and private and for
us like growing up there but like also being like expressive and making music and and just coming out to the world like axe was saying earlier like growing up in sweden we never had anything there we always had to aim out you know like
our we our biggest dream was that our vinyl was going to be played in ibiza by a dj when we were 15 16. that was the biggest goal we had where it's like if i would have grown up in l.a maybe my biggest goal would be la radio station
you know you grew up in auckland all you want to do is play sydney yeah yeah and by the way that's still three hours flying time away so i can totally relate to that but what also tends to come with a small environment is that all of that ambition
has to have a counterpoint yeah and in new zealand that counterpoint is called tall poppy syndrome which is that no one will ever be harder on you than the people who live next door to you is that the case in sweden as well yeah
it's called yantelog yeah it has a swedish expression right we we've never heard another expression like this like poppy right chop it down yeah don't think that you're better than anybody else yeah and yet you chose to go home and
yeah but you have this love-hate relationship right where it's like when we grew up we never had support from sweden we made it abroad yeah to come home and play a stadium and call it quits you know what i mean so like like you never have people backing you
up and then vikings man what can i bring home yeah yeah i'm gonna go hit the season whenever i can what about bringing home you go out and raid and you come home you know wow that's why i think we've achieved something steep i
think we've achieved something here wow that's mind-blowing i've always wondered why yeah the coin just fell down yeah the whole viking legacy is the viking thing yeah yeah man what are you going to go and gather what you know we're now on on
another gathering hunt so you are you know you are and we might have to go home soon again then well but it's different this time right because that's one of the beautiful things about maturity yeah is it affords you perspective and a
chance to see what's really important you've all developed families and things that ultimately will be there for you whether you're sitting here or up there or not yeah right which makes this even more precious does it not yeah
you're absolutely right the beauty of being more mature is that you can say no more and it's okay like you said before when you were younger like yeah let's make 25 more shows yeah okay okay let's do that oh he has enough to party okay let's go play
there but now it's like it's coming down to the central is it worth it is it worth it what do we want to do why do we do it why are we away from our children yeah we have to do what we like to do and you know it's a tough one are your partners though your families
the people that are closest to you when you're not making music or on stage are they are they excited by this are they like yeah let's go let's see you in your element now they're starting to the most important thing is to have
um an artist's career is that your whole family is the artist together with you yes so for me it's was pretty easy like because my wife is a songwriter and was an artist a long time ago herself so i invited her into
my brand or our brand or my the whole artistic world so it's very important that it's our career not mime that's beautifully put and also even in the times when you have to go out and and be at the tip of that spear people fall in love with you because
they because they fall in love with who you are when you're at your best yeah and then they get to know you at your worst and if they can still stay with you that's called marriage yeah you're correct that's called a lifelong bond right
but they still ultimately want you to try to get to your best because and that by that just means not your most successful anything just your happiest so it must be nice to see this union through the eyes of the people who love you the most because
they see how happy of course it's we have a lot to thank our families especially our wives and our kids because in the you know it's not only glamorous life with swedish housemates or any artist's life you know there's a
backside of it that called the industry the business all of that managers agents um and they've been there you know when it's been tough they've been there you know and raising us up and giving us good energy but also you know it's not
on and off switch you know we're swedish husbands with 24 7. yeah so it's not like we come home and like leave the hat at the door take off your black jacket and all of a sudden you're like not in the band like this is like we work 24 7. so
it's like it's not like hey i'm gonna go do my job and i'm back it's this is like you know why we should tip our hats it's because they're going through that 24 7 and that's the only speed that you can operate on because i do know some
artists who've got to a point where they can close the door and go back to work the next day yeah which is great for them which is great i mean but the pace today also 2022 is insane you know the pace of everything is just crazy so i mean
it's like you say steve it's 24 7. but also like this that's the only bad thing sorry but that's the only bad thing with living in sweden because our team lives in l.a so when we come back from the studio midnight zooms this that i know your team
no but we we had uh we had we you and me had a little discussion yesterday about it and we were talking about like how you're so dedicated to something and i was saying my hobby is like everything we do which is work so that's my hobby as well so like it's
hard to like like if i see a book with a nice typography that's going to kick off something in my head and all of a sudden i'm like ta-da steve changed the chair last time of course he did for this interview because he didn't like the
chair i was going to sit on and so being a creative generous creative spirit opted to change the chair but it looks good it looks good yeah and it's comfy yes yeah no but what i'm saying is i can watch a movie i can't watch a movie i
gotta pause if there's a light that's nice on the left i gotta take a picture of it and i'm gonna start a conversation about it so what i'm saying is i can't relax and just like disconnect from being in the band or being an artist because
everything i see is affecting the way i think every single day so i'm gonna pick up on anything so it's like again hats off to our families first you know being there because it's not hard it's not hard to live with guys like us like
you know it's not it's not also really fun yeah of course but like you know the good times are amazing and the bad times are crap so like yeah it's a roller coaster it's not very normal you know so the says stand out for me ah oh yeah why well i just i love the fact
that it it develops a soulful feel it starts one way and where it ends up going is something very different but it never divorces itself from where it started nice interpretation you know yeah you constantly hint that you're gonna lead it
and you never do it and i love that you dance close to the edge of that on that song it just shows a real kind of like a knowing like we can but we like it to be a little up at the same time yeah and also beautifully mixed and it leads
me to a conversation about the dynamic in the studio and how you get the sound not enough conversation between us at least and what i've read about your sound yeah how you get things to sonically fit together making dance music is incredibly hard we pull our hero it is hard i mean mixing that when you're dealing with frequencies like that and bass is at the core of it all bass is the like wild horse of all things yeah so trying to like rain that
in and this is just from my experience is a maddening experience so it is how was it kind of getting so many different textures and feels and bpms and vibes on this record ad you know what we got mad like that's why it's called don't go mad
like because it really made us crazy because of that what you just said like because in dance music everything has to be the loudest all the all the sounds have to be the loudest and you know that does not work yeah and also this one is fast paced
and we have and we want full bass spectrum which is difficult in a fast-paced song yeah and all the chords playing all the time and the vocal is fully on so like all the instruments are playing the whole time and it's difficult and you have two
songs that you're mixing at the same time like i said you have one that's dying to break out and be this other one that's holding it back and saying no no you're still this yeah no it's yeah i mean sonically we challenge right so like we we're still
discovering stuff like what happens if you connect these three things like i think that the the core of it is yeah we have a like a song but then it's like we want every bass sound on every track to feel unique to it's so we like tweak and
twist and turn and change and yeah it's this like evol like we're evolving like that's one of the most refreshing things about the record is the fact that i don't feel like you dipped into any of the swedish house mafia files pre-2013
no but that's that's the thing i saw this i mean we all feel that way and i think that everybody can agree and i i saw i mean going back it's kind of like whack it's disgusting to go back like for an artist it's always nice to like you risk it all
obviously you're like well we just built a fan base for 10 years and now we're gonna go make some cool music well that's a big of a challenge for everyone for our fans and everything but we've just felt like we can't just live
life and not do what we actually want ourselves like and here if the fans don't if they don't come along on the journey to respect us for who we are and the time we put in to do something that we was a friendship based on false
chemistry yeah it wasn't real i mean we just felt like and make a it was a crazy like we like you said we never made an album before together and putting it together was interesting going back to your question about sonically sounds and
everything there was a lot of songs that didn't come into the album because when you put it together you're like what the f this sounds like someone else yeah oh this is crazy like wow what do you think about that like they might come out i
feel like 7 30 is only two and a half minutes long because it nearly danced its way off the track yeah and yeah it's one of my favorite moments on the record yeah steve came to the studio with this new analog drum machine that has it
looks like an old telephone i don't even know what it is and he's like check this out and he loves to distort that's his favorite thing every time it is to like give me the yeah and everybody like yeah so he started to play around with that drum
machine and put a kick drum and started to like around i'm like listen i like what it is now like don't touch it leave it like that and the same time that he pressed bounce it was and i think we actually i think we actually threw the arrangement
after yeah because we never thought we were going to use it yeah that's the only record on the album that we didn't really mix we're like it sounds great like which is funny because as soon as it started for me and then it ended i was like yes
i was like you gave me just enough for me to want to double that yeah yeah the space we're in now it's like we have this um you know uh body of work and a lot of like sonic journeys that we can like you know end up like taking making a
left or right yeah going out on this tour is like a whole new sonical experience because we can take it anywhere well i wonder and i don't mean to be cheeky but i wondered why in your festivals like there wasn't and maybe you will more of
an emphasis on the new record because you've had this time away and also we've all been away so much as we love those songs they're not going anywhere no they're still here right but i mean like the the stuff on the new album which is
just clawing if it's a treasure chest of music that has dying to get out and up people this thing is bouncing around the room trying to get out like it's like a tour it's like a haunted house of music right now that thing yeah that's the tour you know
that's it it all ties together the writing you talked about the beginning the inspiration the experience of making this music the courage to go and try new things and the ability now to be able to refine your sound better than you've ever found
ever been able to do that means that you're so equipped now to go and become a production house for anyone you want to go and produce i really feel that more than ever before you can do you turn your hand to any genre now and
you've shown that to some degree already your work with the weekend is weekend music yeah it never felt like the song that he does with you is yours but his song is his that was a really i mean that was that's skill involved in doing that how was
that experience working with abel who's a private guy in the studio and chooses his collaborators carefully he's just phenomenal you know he's his voice his artistic thinking about music he's really really zoned in to his music yeah
and we met in l.a we had a great night together we went to the studio we just listened to music he played his music we played our music we had a laugh had some drinks good times because the energy has to be there you know when you make music
because he's such a titan you know he's just had to feel it obviously and then the day after there was no studio session day after we were all kind of like hungover but uh the day after that yeah he came to the studio and he
started listening to some of your our ideas really early ideas and he just liked that chord progression that that we have made yeah and he started to make this make these melodies in the room and i was like wow yeah that was a surreal moment i go into the
room now and record it's like i just need to figure out the lyric can you just check out his phone and just looked at some text messages and like i got it and he just sang the song in almost one take one tastes like yeah it won't take like the song was once
when people get to that point where yeah life and art are not separate it's like watching something that's the magic that's my experience well it's actually like the human potential on display yeah and it's very few that can it's
very few that has that expression right so labels like perfect for that and for us sonically abel's lyrics and voice and melody structure is like heaven for us yeah so i think about a song like for you yeah ending the record
again showing a different feeling and a resonance to what has come before it and i i just feel it's it's connected to what we're talking about right now that it shows that like anything's possible for us now was that deliberate
yeah yeah i mean we just wanted to like if we would put out one offs like we would have you said it best yesterday we would check everything to fit into one song yeah one song has to contain everything if it's a one-off because it's like when
you do make an album like this it's like you surrender to the piece and the vision about for you was that we wanted to make the last song for our fans obviously and we had this idea that we want to make a song with 20
different vocalists that makes one vocal that makes sense for all for you and so it's kind of like oh it took a long time but it sounds like really like like one vocal but it's actually a lot of different personalities every word is from a different wow
that's crazy yeah and from different times also to different recordings yeah yeah throughout the uh throughout the history yeah paradise again relates to you wanting to capture that feeling that you that you felt when music became your north star
in those clubs and those moments when those djs who are not where you stand today were the most important thing to you in your lives they were your heroes right on the shoulders of giants as they say what is that for kids that don't know
that are going to go out and see you perform clubs will hopefully open things will start to regenerate what do you want that experience to be for this younger generation what do you hope comes along for the ride i feel
like a new chapter is important i feel like a feeling i don't think we should like put things in folders right i feel like an open mind open heart i want an experience to contain so many more things than just like go to the club get pissed and you bounce you know
i i want like that's why we were talking earlier about like the dance music thing that's happening now it's like the underground techno stuff that's blowing up and kids are starting to like listen to that they like they don't
start at the top anymore they start digging deep they start under and they start climbing their way you know but back in the day was always like you started at the top and then you start digging into the genre yeah yeah you listen to the smashes you know what i
mean and then you're just ready i like punk and then all of a sudden you like fall down there's so much music out there right now that's so inspirational it's crazy there's like 12 year old kids making music on their ipads that blows
me away you know what i mean it's like from that to you know the uk scene i just think it's a whole new chapter in life and in society and like it's like a whole musical revolution going on and we're spectators of this whole musical sonic
world that's building around us but equally are you ready to accept your place in the pantheon of what swedish house mafia represents like you say you're a spectator and it's beautiful because i know you're still deep in the culture
and searching for inspiration and respect the new god but have you finally come to terms with what are you at peace with what swedish house mafia is because i feel like to some degree you all walked away from it because you
didn't know yeah exactly we didn't really have a narrative before you know what i mean like when we did swedish house mafia before it kind of like i understood afterwards what actually happened i'm like okay people like loud music with electronic
sounds and our melody is sick let's go there and check what's up you know what i mean but this time we actually felt like okay we have a narrative we have experience and that's also bad sometimes to have too much experience you know what i mean
like okay uh but it's um yeah i think that this this journey that we started now this new era with swedish housewife right now we actually know this time what we want to do do you know yeah i think that you know like seb said
we didn't know you know and we just we it just happened and this time around it's more of a choice you know we we just went with it the second time this time it had to be an active choice to be swedish housemate again
touring more music you talk about these other songs that were too weird didn't make paradise again you got things always recording always making things there's always surprises always surprises how it works you know it's like tour is coming up you know we we
i think we're like we we're just in the peak of making music by the end of it yeah you're right i mean we we were hunting down some of the guys on the album that helped us out making this this album and we started to work with
this guy called fred again that actually steve sent me a song like a year ago or something two yes i don't remember but i was like who is this guy this is amazing like he makes music on the streets and like recording people i'm like wow this is yeah he he produces ed
sheeran bro i think people yeah yeah yeah yeah but but i i knew about fred yeah but i didn't know that yeah and fred again yeah it's so genius that he how he played that thing but so we reached out to him and we're like let's let's go let's have
he's like yeah you know guys i like you i love your stuff but you know how would you know because he's also been listening to maybe don't you worry i don't know what we sonically are in our journey but then he took a plane to sweden and we spent
three days with him in the studio and it was really really inspirational that guy is crazy yeah i love that you know you're coming back with all of these miles and these numbers and these tickets and this this audience and you still got to sit in a room and i
love this and say to a young cat we're not the don't you worry child band like don't get it twisted that's what a hit can do for you right it can it can tee up an appropriate response mechanism for people i mean we're not
ashamed about don't you worry so we love the songs but it's still i know what you mean it's like it was just you're too big what do i do with you you're so big like how do i fit into this i know him i know that's what he's thinking that that's
exactly what he said it's like i can't like i don't know because i play for like 250 people in the club in manchester and you just made a song with the week and i'm not like how do we but he came to sweden he was cooking for three days
we were like we did some crazy he also had this amazing way of working that he had he's like okay guys i'm not sure if you're gonna be stressed out about this but i have a timer so i make a song in 35 minutes so it needs to be finished recorded and
bounced which one of you was most excited by that i mean i guess it was me because i what do you mean like i can't even make coffee in 35 minutes no i would be like one kick drunk 35 minutes no but it was cool like yeah it was fun
it was fun everybody just connected like we were playing so loud yeah and like banging it out and like we made some really incredible yeah we made like six songs in two days and seriously like one made the album obviously one of the last was called
calling on and and um and then one is coming out for him he's making uh it's sick yeah that one is crazy actually that's a thread again single featuring us that's good yeah i don't know yet but you know we kind of like finishing it today yeah
but we made some interesting music because you know we kind of like he comes from his thing and we come from our thing but we kind of met in this island that we created and this type of songs doesn't sound like any yeah
when you created this well that's what you know swedish house mafia man i mean beastie boys were still the bestie boys when they weren't boys anymore and i and i still think your swedish house mafia when you won't be making house records
and it it's where it begins yeah it's it's it's at the center of who you are and what we love about you it's the dna dna yeah but house music has always been searching for new places and new things to go new places to go i mean channel trees is a
house artist to me but he's also a you know los angeles guy making rap records you know what i mean so yeah it's like that's what excites me most about it um it was a wonderful and rewarding experience for me i'm sure it will be
for fans all over the world and new fans too when you press play on this record and you realize that you know you guys are engaged i think more than anything we knew you might tour again money's great money's great but it needed to probably
spend it all on this you know what you've spent but but what you'll never ever be able to get rid of is the body of work no that's for life that's for life yeah it's for life that's why you do it yeah and that's like that's it [Music] you