Hey Dave, really glad to be having you over for 2 gigs. Excited to be heading to Europe?
Definitley. It’s been years since I’ve done a longer tour like this. The last time I traveled out like this was with Jacob London, but its my first proper tour as “Pezzner” showcasing my solo material and doing live sets. I’m especially excited about making London my home base for the month of July. I’ve always had a great time in London.
The music’s obviously been well received. What more do you have lined up?
Thanks. I’m really happy with the support I’ve gotten over the last couple years, and extremely grateful that labels like Freerange, Om Records, Urbantorque, Strictly Rhythm, had given me the chance to share my music with the masses.
Aside from my album, which releases this week on the 14th of June, Freerange will be following up later in the month with my first single off the album “Blacklist” featuring remixes by Stimming and Lusine. Next month Om Records is putting out a remix I did off Groove Armada’s Blacklight album, the song “Paper Romance”. I also did some remixes of tracks by Michelle Owen on Lost My Dog and Shiny Objects on Smoke n’ Mirrors. I’m currently working on a remix for Ian Pooley’s classic hit from the late 90’s “The Allnighter” and Luke Solomons forthcoming single on Leftroom. Its going to be a busy summer for sure.
Some extremely revered labels have been picking up your work, any designs to begin your own imprint?
I’m not sure about that. Sometimes I think that perhaps that’s the next step in my career – to start my own label… but I think about all the work these labels do to make it happen, all the promotion, working with distributors, stores, manufacturing. Its more than a full time job, as is being an artist, what with all the touring, managing myself, and of course, producing. I’m just not sure I’m ready to pick up another full time project.
How is Seattle for house, are there any local producers that you think are making things work?
Absolutely. Seattle is bustling with talent, although I wish there were more artists making their careers in house music. Off the top of my head we’ve got Lusine, Lawnchair Generals, Chloe, Eva, Carlos Da Silva… as well as tons of local talent.
How extensive is your studio? Is hardware a mainstay?
Hardware used to be a mainstay back when Bob Hansen and I were starting out. We had a nice little array of rack effects, guitar pedals, a couple synths and an ASR-10. For the last 10 years however, I’ve been producing all in the box.
I’m a pretty devoted Windows user. Now I’m on Windows 7 and I do all my music in Image Line’s FL Studio DAW. Sometimes when tell people that I get some strange looks, but FL Studio, which only runs on Windows, is an extremely affordable program. $200 gets you the software and free upgrades for life. It also allows me to do some tricks and tackle some processes that I just can’t do easily in any other program. I also use Native Instrument’s Komplete Collection. The computer I use – thanks to the fine folks at Microsoft and Dell, they’ve recently given me a Dell Studio XPS1647 Core i5 with 8 gigs of ram, which is an amazing piece of machinery. ‘The Tracks Are Alive’ was produced on a more modest system, Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 gigs of ram, something most people have in their home.
For live shows, I perform using Ableton Live 8, 2 Behringer BCF 2000 midi controllers, Focusrite Sapphire 6 audio interface, and a novation Launchpad.
Away from music how is your downtime spent?
I spend most of my time with my wife Christina, and stepson Anthony, and we spend as much time as we can with our friends – mostly Bob Hansen (from Jacob London), his wife Betsy and their newborn girl Charlie. My wife also has a childrens clothing line called “Ricicli” http://www.riciclikids.com and on weekends we set up a booth at Seattle’s Fremont Market, and various other markets selling and promoting her kids clothes. Pretty domestic stuff really 🙂
Your partnership with Bob Hansen is well documented, do you have any collaborations forthcoming?
Yeah we keep meaning to finish these projects that we’ve had on the table for a while, but what with new babies, and traveling and the projects that I’ve had, its been difficult for us to get together on a more professional level. Its like, since our time has been cut short by the hustle of regular life, we find ourselves spending our time together just hanging out and being best friends. I’m sure anyone who has kids would understand.
However we’re seriously planning on some new projects as simply “Hanssen and Pezzner” and take a new approach to dance music that I think was difficult for us to take when we were the quirky Jacob London duo.
What is your favourite piece of studio kit?
I’d say Native Instruments Battery. I use it in every song, and have used it for the past 9 or so years. Its sold as a drum sampler but I use it for everything from sampling chunks of music, to creating strange midi effects that I can only think of doing easily in Battery. I’ll be doing some video tutorials later on in the summer so people can see what I’m talking about.
Do you play any instruments?
Nope. I have a key controller that I use to sketch out ideas but I dont actually “play” it. Any solos that you may have heard in my music were mainly written using the pencil tool in FL Studio, or just loosley playing the notes as best I can and then manipulating them after the fact.
Any good at cooking? What is you signature dish?
Good question and thank you for asking! I love to cook, and I can rock an omlette like no one else. Anyone who is lucky enough to eat my omlette will be floored.
