Darude Talks “Moments” at Urbane Manner

When I found out that Darude was coming to town, I cleared my calendar and made plans to go. I grabbed a few friends an we headed to Urbane Manner, a club I wasn’t familiar with. When I walked in I fell in love with the space, and can’t wait to go back. Relentless Beats has a lot of great shows coming to Urbane Manner, and the room just felt right. That, and they have craft beer on tap. Right?! Anyway, before his set, Darude did a meet and greet with fans. It was great to see the mix of people and after he signed several autographs and posed for photos, we headed into the kitchen for an exclusive interview to talk about his new album Moments. We also talked about his recent move back to Finland his constant support of other Finnish DJs. It was a pleasure to meet and chat with Rude Boy.

I couldn’t interview Darude and not mention “Sandstorm,” one of the most iconic dance music tracks ever produced. I told him how good the song was, and told him it was one of the most iconic dance music songs I’ve ever heard. “If you say so!” Ha! That song has been around forever. When did it come out? “It was about sixteen years ago now. It originally dropped in Finland in 1999 and 2000 elsewhere.”

Darude grew up in Finland and recently relocated there with his wife and son. “Moving back there was always the plan. My wife is American, but she has some Scandinavian roots,” he said. “We just built a house and I have a studio in my garage. My life really hasn’t changed much other than I am flying a little bit more.”

It must be nice having such an understanding wife. “I am not going to go into my wife life much more than that, but when we met she knew what I did and knew what she was getting into. A little after we met, she started tour managing me.” Needless to say, she likes to travel. “She knows exactly what this is and what I do. Now she sometimes craves being on the road!”

Moments is just unbelievable. I asked him to talk more about this new release. “It’s called Moments because these tracks came from certain moments in time. Some are 7 years old. I started soon after I made Label This! With the album I needed to decide if I wanted to make everything sound 2015 with songs that I had gathered over time. I decided I am not trying to copycat anything or to force it to sound 2015. I wanted to make good music and that is why there are sounds from 2009, old school Darude songs. Half of the tracks were done in the last year or so, and those are more modern sounds. I also collaborated with several people because I wanted their sounds. The track called “Moments” with Tom Fall. Because of label reasons, he is not on the title. But I am allowed to say who I produced it with. He is a brilliant producer from Finland.”

He went on to say, “I had a wide variety of dance music. Then I decided it is about the music, not the genre. Not fear, fear is too strong a word, but I was wondering if people would think it was a mixed bag of something or if they would realize it was different styles. That is a good explanation why I called the album Moments.”

Darude has his own label, but hasn’t dedicated much time to it while producing Moments. I asked him to tell me more about EnMass Music. “EnMass Music is Randy Boyer and myself. Randy and I are very like minded thinking promotions, thinking music and being down to earth. EnMass is a product of that. We want to find new talent and find stuff we would play in our set. It is a cool pet project, and now that the album is done, I hope that I can get back to fostering new tracks.”

As you know, in all of the interview I do, I always give the artist the last word. “If you want to hear someone at your favorite venue, don’t wait for the promoters to figure it out, go tell them. About me, I am what you see is what you get. I want you to go by and listen to my music, but even more so I want you come see me live. That way we can communicate and I love playing music.”

Connect with Darude:
Website: http://www.darude.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Darude
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Darudevil
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/darude