Global trotting DJ, trained pianist, producer, songwriter, record label owner, and remixer to the stars. Sweden’s Rasmus Faber is a name many of you will have come across in the last 8 years and one look through his biography is like reading a who’s who and where’s where of the electronic music scene.

Undeniably one of the most energetic and captivating entertainers in House Music, Rasmus sets himself apart from his industry counterparts by incorporating not just three CDJs and an ever busy mix of key matched tracks; but also overlaying flawless live piano performances that leave crowds and critics amazed, and dancefloors in shambles.

Which makes you ask: Is there anything Rasmus Faber can’t do? Well, FHMDC decided to reach out and conduct this incredibly deep piece of dialogue to get a few steps closer to how this rising legend views not just electronic dance music, but the idea of music creation from a holistic perspective. We hope you enjoy this interview with an artist FHMDC views as one of the most talented musicians ever associated with house music.

FHMDC: Please describe how it all began – your love for music, instruments, and performance.

Rasmus Faber: Well, I’ve been into music for all my life really. Started playing piano around the age of 6-7, and never really stopped since. My Dad is a great jazz musician (saxophonist) so that obviously has had a great impact as well.

I’ve also always had some kind of computer to make music on, since I was quite young. Got my first Atari when I was 11! That really helped me feel comfortable in computer based studios later on.

FHMDC: What was it about house music that originally drew you to it? If it’s possible, provide the readers of FunkyHouseMusic.com who aren’t as familiar with your history with a short synopsis of how you became the multi-talented and prolific artist you represent today.

Rasmus Faber: I’m trained as a jazz pianist, and worked as a tour and studio musician and a live band arranger from about age 18. When I was about 22 I got into house music, as a studio pianist for other producers at first. Then I realised it was something I wanted to do by myself. Because I’m a musician, always played in various bands, and also worked as an arranger for orchestras and stuff, it was kind of natural to implement those elements in house music.

When my house music career took off I kind of stopped doing the tour musician thing, but luckily I still get to play a lot of piano, in the studio, and also because I bring a keyboard along to all my dj gigs.

FHMDC: Sweden and house music have enjoyed quite a high level of success in recent years. Names that emerged from that scene include the likes of Axwell, Steve Angello, Sebastian Ingrosso and many more. You represent (in our opinion) the polar opposite of that Swedish House Mafia sound with an organic, soulful production style that proves time and time again truly unique to your brand. It blows our mind that just 6-7 years ago, Axwell & yourself were producing and collaborating on projects such as the Mambana – Felicidad anthem on Soulfuric Trax, and these days, new school dance music fans would never associate the two of you. What has motivated you not to follow the trends of epic house/tech rhythms of your native colleagues, and respectfully stay true to your original style?

Rasmus Faber: I believe me and Axwell are still simply expressing ourselves in a way that we both did back then as well. Axwell was all about energy even then, whereas I was and still am a musician. Times and trends change, but I believe we both are examples of two artists who move with their times, but only as long as we dont sacrifice our original nature.

I still admire Axwell a lot as a producer. Lot of people get kind of surprised when I say this, but I’ve never really been into listening to soulful house music that much. I much more enjoy listening to an Axwell track, cause he does things I can’t!

Whats cool about Steve and Sebastian is that they’ve always been into what they’re doing. Even back when soulful house was the big thing, they did their tough things, and because they stayed true to what they loved, they became succesful. I believe that is important for any creator really.

I must say I personally don’t really feel the term “polar opposites” that much. It suggests a correlation within the dance scene, which in my opinion diminishes the artistic value of the music slightly.

To me, I’m no more a polar opposite to Steve Angello, than I am to, say, Coldplay or Britney Spears. We are just creators making different kinds of music. I have high respect for anyone who makes great music, thats why I enjoy to listen to a track produced by someone in the Swedish House Mafia a lot more than I would listening to a mediocre soulful house track for example.

FHMDC: Let’s go back in time to the year of 2003 and the first days of Farplane Records, your well-respected record label. Tracks that we will never forget and still drop in our DJ sets include “Ever After” featuring Emily Mcewan and the unstoppable “Get Over Here” featuring Melo. Talk to us about your artistic vision at the time, the motivation to start the label, and what you were trying to accomplish during this time period of dance music.

Rasmus Faber: To be honest, I didn’t have the motivation to start a label back then, I got helped into it by Simon Dunmore, who was my manager back then. I’m really happy I did it though, and very thankful to Simon for pushing me! It has given me lots of freedom over the years. As for those tracks, they are truly “children of their time” so to speak, the enviroment was good for that kind of music back then.

As for what I tried to accomplish, it is the same thing that I try to accomplish nowadays, when I’m making a house track. When I made those track some of my musician friends asked me: “Why do you have to put a loud beat to those nice tracks, why not make just a latin, jazz, or soul-tune?”

The reason is that I like the accessibility that is introduced when a track becomes a dance tune. It is true that many of my songs would have been good as latin tunes or soul tunes, but they wouldn’t have been so accessible. I believe music is about personal expression, but also about communication, and therefore, “accessibility” is a positive word.

However, I wouldn’t sacrifice my musical message for accessibility, and thats why I haven’t tried to make harder and tougher tunes, or electro, to adjust to the trends of dance music. Making house music for me is about finding the perfect balance between musical message, and dancefloor accessibility. It was back then, and it still is. Recent years, it has been a lot more difficult to do that, because the definition of “dancefloor accessibility” changed so much, so finding that middle ground was very difficult for me (god knows I tried!).

This kind of goes back to the discussion about Axwell, I think back then he was also reaching for the same thing, where his priority was more on the energy side, but he chose a frame for it that became his middle ground. As the trend moved, his energy message got even easier to express. Had the trends instead shifted towards a much more jazzy sound, he might have found himself in the slightly more difficult position I have been in for example. Thats just the way it is.

But I feel actually things are going the right way again (for me, that is); good, innovative songs are coming back, and I’m very excited about the near future of dance music!

FHMDC: The Rasmus Faber YouTube channel, in our opinion, is a fantastic marketing tool for your live performance artistry. We believe the visual awareness of what listeners receive when Rasmus Faber performs “live”, or through DJing, showcases something that educated house music fans should witness at least once in their life time. Have you found that utilizing social media has helped the amount of demand for your live gigs?

Rasmus Faber: I honestly don’t know how much an impact social networking really has. I don’t think anyone really knows that. I do get a good feeling from all the nice comments I get from those videos though, so its a good creative spark! I guess its also good for people so they can see what you do, in my case djing with a keyboard, for others maybe they’re doing crazy things in Ableton or something. Its good that people can see what you’re doing different, cause its not always so easy to notice just by hearing the sets.

FHMDC: There is a very distinct element to most of your original productions, which is the unbelievable energy that blooms and romances dance floors. It is an undeniable injection of positive vibes when Rasmus Faber performs live that we believe is a timeless quality rarely seen in the ever-trendy electronic dance music world. What motivates the to make the type of music you produce today as a solo artist or with a specifically chosen set of talented musicians?

Rasmus Faber: Even though some of my work is more known than others, I’ve been producing quite a broad range of material, even some quite techy stuff, or things that are very mellow and non-housey. I kind of think of it all as different types of communication with music really, and I don’t think too much about style, but more in terms of different expressions that form a sort of creative pallete. Different tracks can contain different amounts of each expression, but since all expressions are part of yourself, they all make sense to you creatively.

I’d say I have two main expressions that I utilize more than anything else. One is basically to use live instruments to create grooves, often kind of merging latin-type rhythms with some funk or soul-grooves, and other styles too. Trying to find sort of common things between the styles, where they can meet, and new mixtures can appear. I guess thats kind of apparent in my music.

The other one is a bit more abstract to explain. I have a harmony inside me that I really want to express in my music as much as possible. It has something to do with the feeling of hope. Also it can be described a bit like “goosebumps-harmony” (at least to me). A very positive vibe, but there’s also some melancholy to it. You can find it quite a lot in movie scores, but it can be found here and there in all different kinds of music. I sometimes feel like I have a purpose or even a duty to make music with this harmonic feeling, and also reaching deeper to find the essence of that emotion, like an alchemist searching for the Philosopher’s Stone. Like if there was some higher goal to be reached by doing so. Its a bit weird I guess…

FHMDC: FunkyHouseMusic.com recently interviewed an artist by the name of Jay-J from New York – USA who has spent the majority of his music production career focused on the organic, soulful side of house music. He claimed in the interview “there are many DJ’s and producers who used to be able to make a decent living in this niche industry of soulful house music and now find it hard to survive. I can’t tell the future but I it seems that soon the music will be relegated to hobby status for many of us as we ponder what’s next in our careers.” Do you feel soulful electronic music is facing a challenging period?

Rasmus Faber: Jay-J is a good friend and we’ve swapped remixes in the past, he’s a great producer. I can understand where he’s coming from saying that. However, I’ve never really felt like I’m a part of that soulful music scene from a creative standpoint.

I’m a musician making house music, and therefore being labelled as a soulful house artist comes pretty close to mind, but I’ve never felt that way myself, its simply not my taste. I personally don’t like the term “soulful house” too much, as it seems to suggest that the creators should stick to certain production methods that to me aren’t very relevant.

To me, a good song is what matters. Now, I’m a musician, and therefore I tend not to like to make songs that are much too simple, but I believe music is also about communication, and therefore there has to be a certain amount of relevance to what you do. Now I believe an artist can achieve this by being totally unique, or by being part of a scene, and sometimes somewhere in between. If you’re a part of a scene though, that scene has got to move with the times. If you’re aiming for unique, well, then you just have to do your shit and don’t care about what anyone thinks. But then you also have to completely stop relying on the scene itself to carry you.

Producers of dance music have a huge help from being part of a scene, compared to creators of other music, I think people often don’t realize that. What creators of dance music have to consider is that what we create if we are within a dance sub-scene, is driven largely by the club scene, and that introduces things that have very little to do with music as such. People wanting to get wasted and flirt on the weekends are the economic driving force behind the club scene, and therefore the artistic merits of any “scene” needs to be toned down in my opinion.

A great producer is a great producer, regardless of genre. I believe a lot of great, innovative music would be made if some producers would see themselves more as a rockband or a singer-songwriter, there by gaining a lot more creative self-dependance, more of a “me against the world” kind of attitude.

FHMDC: What is your goal with the “Platina Jazz” project? This seems to be a different direction from what we are used to seeing your brand associated with.

Rasmus Faber: I am doing a lot of things which goes outside of my brand, especially lately, such as producing albums for other artists, making new styles of music, etc. Since my background is very broad, I never really had the intention of branding myself.

The Platina Jazz project was initiated by my Japanese record label. In Japan, my career is a lot less branded, and my albums and singles are seen more as part of the music scene as a whole, rather than just the dance scene. Over there they are also not as sensitive to artists doing different styles as we are here in Europe. This particular project was so much fun to do! I got to be a producer in the classical sense of the word, overseeing the recording, arranging, and developing the concept, but not actually being a musician. I also got to mix a jazz record, which was so much fun, and a great learning experience!

FHMDC: Can you give our readers some insight on the major hardware and software components of your studio?

Rasmus Faber: I’m on Mac and Logic 9, with loads of plugins. I’m a bit of a gearhead, both with software and hardware, and I LOVE mics and acoustic recordings!

Right now some of the hardware stuff I got is an LA2A, Urei 1178, Thermionic Culture Rooster, AEA TRP, Neve 1073DPA. Got a lot of love for my patch bay as well. Mic wise I use a Flea-47, Brauner Phantom C, Royer SF12, Shure Sm7′s and SM57s, EV RE20, AKG 451s, and a bunch of other stuff.

I use a Genelec 8040 with a 7050 sub for monitoring, and 8020s for nearfield, plus a pair of Avantones, which are awesome. Instrument wise I got a Fender Rhodes, a couple of analog synths, a marimba, lots of percussion and other toys. Getting the sub to the genelecs, plus having the speakers and the room calibrated by a pro, is probably the single best investment I’ve made in the studio (and it wasn’t even nearly the most expensive either).

I recommend everyone to really look over their acoustics before starting to spend to much money on metal tubes and boxes.

FHMDC: If you could only name one artist (musical or non-musical) who is currently “inspiring” you, who would that be?

Rasmus Faber: Currently, I have a lot of love for the Japanese anime film score composer Yoko Kanno. Its rare to find other composers where you feel they are sort of reaching for the same emotions that you yourself are trying to reach, but Yoko Kanno is one such artist, and she does it so well!

FHMDC: When it comes to producing house music, do you have any recommendations on who we should be checking out in 2010?

Rasmus Faber: Actually I really don’t, but I’d love some recommendations myself! Though I do love that Full Intention are making music together again!

FHMDC: What’s in store for the future? Any details you can share about upcoming releases, tours, partnerships, artist/mix CD releases, and/or videos…

Rasmus Faber: At the moment I’m on a month-long tour in Japan, so hopefully there’ll be some new nice dj videos coming from there. I got a new album out here, with some pretty rare stuff, called “So Far 3″ so if anyone is into imported cds…

I just released a digital compilation which I’m pretty excited about, with remixes of my stuff thats been done over the years. I feel really humbled by all the great producers who’ve graced my songs with their production skills!

Other than that I will start on my next album this summer, and aiming to be finished by early next year. I have some plans for how its gonna sound, and I’m quite excited! There might also be occasional house singles coming out as well.

FHMDC: Thank you for taking the time to accept our interview, and for supporting the Funkyhousemusic.com mission. We truly appreciate your effort, and wish you the best of luck with your future endeavors. To learn more about Rasmus Faber, please visit http://www.rasmusfaber.com/

Interview By: Suneel

Related posts:

1. Exclusive Review: Rasmus Faber – Demanda
2. Rasmus Faber / Farplane Interview
3. Exclusive Review: Rasmus Faber – Get Over Here (Unreleased Mixes)
4. FHMDC Exclusive Interview: Jay-J
5. Exclusive Review: Rasmus Faber – Ever After (Christian Alvarez Remixes)