DJ Ron Slomowicz: I love this Live @ Roxy 2 CD.
Peter Rauhofer: Well thank you.
RS: You did a really great job on it. How do you think it's different than your first Live @ Roxy CD?
Peter: Very different. The "Live @ Roxy" CD's are like soundtracks for different periods at Roxy. Music is always changing and times change and you have to change also. I think Live @ Roxy 2 is more advanced musically. There's some Electrohouse and some more different styles than Live @ Roxy 1.
RS: Well, speaking about Roxy, it's one of the largest and most successful Gay parties in NY. What do you think it takes to achieve such great success in a night in NY?
Peter: The thing is, Roxy is one of the very last big clubs existing in New York. Basically, if you want to go to a big club you have no choice but to go to Roxy because there aren't any alternatives at the moment. Also because Roxy is such an institution and is so well known for so many years that anyone visiting NY automatically wants to see Roxy. The mixture of tourists and native New Yorkers makes it a cool meeting place for a lot of different types of people.
RS: Well, I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with the great music you play.
Peter: I hope so. <laughing>
RS: How would you describe your personal music style?
Peter: My personal style? I come from an underground background. My first releases were all on Tribal America, then Twisted America Records. I was always very tribal oriented. But playing for such a big club, especially when it's from 11 at night till 9 in the morning, you have to play a lot of different styles. I play tribal house, deep house, some vocals, some classics. I mean, you have to take people on a journey throughout the night. If you come to the club for only one hour you don't get the full effect of what I'm trying to do. If you come at 2am you might hear tribal, at 4am deep house or at 6am classics. Also it depends on where I'm spinning. I usually don't have just one style that I play. I've been spinning since the 80's and I've gone through a lot of different styles of music for each period in my career but I have maintained a kind of style that I like to work with in my sets.
RS: Well, speaking of different styles, this Cafeteria/Hear CD is really different - how did that come about?
Peter: My good friend Mark Thomas is one of the owners of the Cafeteria restaurant in NYC which is a kind of trendy 24 hour place. He asked me to record some CDs for him to play in the restaurant because he needed some cool background music to play there. I made a mix of some Chill/Lounge stuff and it sounded great in Cafeteria. People started to ask if the music they were hearing was available to purchase on CD so that's how we got the idea to do a Cafeteria CD release.
RS: So the Chill/Lounge sound. Is that something you ever spin in your live sets at clubs?
Peter: No, no. Maybe as the last song of the night but that's it. It depends on where you spin. If I'm spinning for let's say a release party for a magazine or something like that then maybe this sound would work but at a normal club I wouldn't play this.
RS: Speaking of releases, you've been doing a lot of great remixes lately by major artists like Seal, Annie Lennox, Madonna in addition to indie stuff. Do you ever think in your head about approaching things differently if it's a big major artist as opposed to a more underground artist?
Peter: Well, when a label hires me for a remix it's because they know what my sound is and that's what they want and they trust my instincts. I usually do more than one mix and let them decide what they prefer. Artists are much more flexible now than they were years ago also.
RS: Do you think there is more of an emphasis when you work on the bigger label remixes to do a cross-over mix like for radio of for mainstream audiences?
Peter: No, it's not really anymore like it was in the 80's and early 90's where they had one remix on a project. Today they have so many different remixes on every project that you can basically do what you want. As I said, when they hire me they know my sound and they know what they're going to get. Radio can choose which mix they want in the end. Sometimes it's my mix and other times it could be another mix. My Annie Lennox mix and my Seal mix both went to radio but usually I just try and do something that's playable for me at Roxy while also making it playable for other people at the same time.