RS: What do you think of the current state of Dance music - the artists, the music, the remixes that are out there now? Is there anyone that inspires you, that you're following?
Peter: Well, I'm an old school guy and yes, there are a couple of new artists out there which are great, but generally it seems like there's never anything new anymore. Back in the day there was always a new trend or a new sound and then everybody would jump on that and everybody would get excited about it. I always compare music with fashion. When you see a movie you can tell right away what era it was by the way the people are dressed. Again I go back to my school days, I went to school in the 70s and I remember the whole trend with designer jeans and how you had to have them. On one side, today it's great because you can wear almost anything and play almost anything but at that time it was great because you had new trends. Movies like Grease and Saturday Night Fever were based on both musical and fashion trends. Today, it's really anything goes so it makes it a little difficult when it's time to do a remix to decide what direction to go in. It's like "OK, I'm doing this new Madonna remix. Do I want it to be a trancey Oakenfold/Sasha & Digweed direction or a Deep Dish deep house direction? Or go in a more Johnny Vicious commercial direction?" I mean yes, I have my own style but I also want my mix to get played in as many clubs as possible. In the 90s there was one sound and it was played everywhere and this just doesn't happen anymore. Today you can go to five different clubs and you will hear five different sounds styles of music. I mean it's all dance music but there's a difference. I mean everybody wants to find a new sound but really the only thing you can do that's new is maybe combine styles to create one new sound. It's recycling old styles with new sounds. Electroclash for instance. What is Electroclash? It's the 80's It's a great sound but it's not really new. When I hear new records with the Electroclash sound, I have 500 records in my collection that sound like this.
RS: Yes.
Peter: I started DJing in the early 80's and I experienced a lot of sounds. I started spinning Disco, Funk, Soul, New Wave, Rap, House Hip House, Acid, German New Wave and the whole industrial Depeche Mode sound. Then I got influenced by New York House. Tribal, Underground. I mean I went through every period of music so today when someone says they are doing something new I can tell exactly where he took that from.
RS: You have a great musical vocabulary which I think is missing from in a lot of DJ's out there now.
Peter: I don't know, maybe.
RS: What is your vision of the future of music? Where do you see music going now?
Peter: I mean, if you go old school you can't go wrong because people always like what is familiar and people like to live in good memories. I always experienced that when I play something old school people react quicker than when I play them something new and they don't know where to put it. New York is always kind of trend-setting so people expect to be introduced to new music but where should music go...? That's a very, very difficult question to answer because everybody would like to know what the next trend is going to be. The problem now is that everything has been done already. The thing that always saves music is when there is some revolutionary new equipment. For instance when the 909 and 808 drum machines were new they created a new direction. The same for companies like Yamaha or Korg that do keyboards and sound modules. When they come out with something unique it could create a new musical direction.
RS: So why don't you call Logic and have them do some new soft synths you can use?
Peter: Exactly. That's possible but we'll see, I don't know.
RS: What's your favorite piece of studio equipment right now?
Peter: Right now, I still love, it's a keyboard, it's called the Virus.
RS: Virus, yes.
Peter: Yes the Virus and I still use a lot of vintage keyboards as well. I have almost every keyboard which you can imagine but there is always a keyboard of the moment and right now for me it's the Virus. 2 or 3 years ago it was the Nord Lead from Sweden or the JP8080 which was a great keyboard which was responsible for the whole Razor & Guido sound. there was the JP8080 and the CS1X. Razor and Guido were the first ones to use those. But it's a typical example of a piece of equipment starting a new sound or trend.
