Through years of hard-work, talent, and knowledge of the industry, Dada Life finds themselves at the peak of the EDM. As global superstars, the Swedish duo travels the world in search of new crowds to captivate with their mesmerizing, high energy show. We were fortunate enough to sit down with them before the last day of EDC to discuss their crazy style, production, and future plans.
Maxfield: So first of all, what do you think of Vegas?
Dada Life: It's hard to say what you think of the city because you are surrounded by one hotel. You move in a circle [laughs]. We’ve never actually been to other parts of Vegas.
We just like try to get some rest, get something to eat, and then go play. I remember one time I went to get a t-shirt for 40 minutes and I think that was the most time I’ve spent out of the hotel [laughs]. One day we will plan one extra day and do all the stuff.
Maxfield: How do you think EDC compares to other US festivals?
Dada Life: It is the best in the world. This is the measurement for a good festival.
But the credit doesn’t only go to production. It goes to the crowd. The crowd is simply the best in the world.
Maxfield: That's really great to hear. Well, I am sure you guys have heard about what happened last night with the high-winds and festival closure. How do you think Insomniac handled the situation?
Dada Life: For them it must have been the hardest decision, to just say "no," but of course it's just like safety. I believe nothing happened, so then they did the right thing.
Maxfield: Have you guys ever experienced anything like that at a different festival?
Dada Life: Just two weeks ago we played a festival in Korea and we heard the day we got there that the mainstage fell together and that someone died. They wanted to cancel the whole festival, but ended up just rescheduling all the artists on other stages.
So yeah these things happen all the time and we can't have the LED’s and the speakers flying around because that hurts man [laughs].
Maxfield: So do you guys have any friends playing that you are going to see while you are here?
Dada Life: We are gonna go see Tiesto at the pool party right after this, have some fun with him, and then I don’t know, run around like kids [laughs]. Try and see as much as possible. We love it.
Maxfield: Are there any new artists that have been influencing your production?
Dada Life: Yeah, we get that question a lot, but it's hard to name one. It really varies from track to track. One week we’ll have a favorite track, and the next week it's a new favorite. We're always looking for music all the time.
We're always looking for the new track. New artists and new sounds. If you listen to the Dada Life show on Sirius you can always find out what music we’ve found.
Maxfield: How would you identify your sound?
Dada Life: hmm, ummm. High energy kiddy pop.
Maxfield: Tell us about your production setup. What does your home studio look like?
Dada Life: Well it's in the laptop, so the home studio is in the hotel room now. Everything is in the laptop now.
Maxfield: What is your software of choice? Plug-ins? All Native Instruments?
Dada Life: We use a little bit of everything. Well, to start we use Ableton. So we use almost 50% of all the plug-ins just in Ableton. And then we had a little extra. Maybe a synthesizer here and there. We don’t really have any favorites. Just use one here and another there.
We also use our own Sausage Fattener plug-in and for us it's really helpful because we feel that we don’t want a bunch of different plug-ins. It makes productions more simple.
We just bought two synths, Voyagers, so we can compress those if we wanted to, but in the end were too lazy to actually do it. We’ll play around with it a little, but mostly just for fun. Which is perfect because you can use a lot of different instruments for inspiration. Like a Ukulele. You always got to keep a Ukele around in case you lose inspiration. Seriously.
Dada Life: We try to use as much social media as possible. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and anything new that pops up. We always try to answer as many questions as possible, you can't answer all of them, but we try.
Facebook is perfect because we can ask our fans about what we are working on or what we have put out and we get feedback straight away. It's so good. We get instant feedback from the people who love the music. We also release all the stems for our tracks so that people can work with them almost right away.
Dada Life: We don’t really think of our fans as fans. We are all in this together. One big dysfunctional family. We are all going down together! [laughs]
Maxfield: What place do you think radio plays in this industry now and is it different in the US and Europe?
Dada Life: Yeah, we have talked about this before. I think it's going to change, especially in America where radio is so big. It's not as important in Europe. So it's definitely going to change and dance music is going to be played a lot more.
Maxfield: You guys have been in the industry for a long time. What kinds of changes have you seen musically and culturally?
Dada Life: It's more collaborations. More reaching out to people. Different people and different genres. Stefan is good with Twitter.
Before Twitter it was more separated. It was harder to get in touch with people because you couldn't just write them some text. But it's so easy to reach out to someone and find out about a track or an artist. It's almost too easy. More collaborations should happen honestly. I don’t want to name any names.
Maxfield: Speaking of which, do you guys see any collaborations in your future?
Dada Life: Well speaking of which, we don’t do collaborations [laughs]. Maybe we smell, or people don’t like us, but it just never happens. Maybe we don’t like them either. It's mutual.
Maxfield: You have worked with singers in the studio.
Dada Life: The thing with vocalists is that we treat them like instruments. And all vocalists don’t like this, so we can only work with a few. Mostly our friends.
Maxfield: What about when you guys are in the studio? Are you always on the same page? Any bickering in the studio?
Dada Life: No No, we can argue for three hours about a small little high-hat. [laughs]
Maxfield: How does this affect your production?
Dada Life: Definitely positively. We always push. In the end, if both of us are happy, then hopefully it's better than if it was just one.
Maxfield: Any long term plans that you can let us in on? Supporting other artists on your label?
Dada Life: We are definitely looking to sign someone else to the label, but we just haven’t found the right person yet. Just not the right sound and the music that is like so good. There is just so much shit being released right now, that it's just too much music.
Maxfield: Have you guys been the main driving force on that? You have all the creative say?
Dada Life: Yeah it's our little baby.
Maxfield: When do you think you will pick someone up for the label?
Dada Life: Well, we have to put something out before the end of the year. So definitely this year. If we don’t find someone we will just make it our own, and call it something else [laughs]. Just to please everyone.
Maxfield: Along those lines, could you guys talk about the design aspect of your brand? The art and the name?
Dada Life: It just comes from our crazy minds! I don’t know, we have a master plan, but we can’t really talk too much about it. We just like to work with the styles that we like.
Maxfield: Let’s talk about you live for a second. I know you guys are huge in crowd interaction. Your sets are crazy. Bananas everywhere. Everyone is going crazy. What role do you think this plays in a DJ set and how have you made it your own?
Dada Life: They give us energy and we give them energy and then it all spins and explodes and then it's just bananas and champagne everywhere. The main thing is that stuff is going to happen that we don’t know. We always say expect the unexpected with us. Stuff is gonna happen on the live side too, and you know it's not gonna be nice. You know if you listen to Dada Life or you're at a show, either you're on or you're off. It's not a choice. [laughs]
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