RS: When you produce tracks together, how do you approach the music? Like when you go into the studio do you have like an idea and you sing it to him, or do you play keyboards and he plays keyboards, how do you all interact with each other?
Mario: It depends in the situation. When we do remixes it's very easy because I give him and idea where I want to go with it and then he follows it. I add this, he adds that, and then we come to a final recipe. Sometimes we shoot for something but at the end we get something different and it's a nice progression so we keep on going from there. When you remix musicf, you know where you're going but you don't hear it lone hundred percent finished before it's done. When you produce stuff it's the exact opposite, you know exactly how you want it to sound at the end because you did it from the beginning. For example, "Blackout" started when Joe came up with a crazy beat sort of like Benny Benassi sounds, though a bit harder and more aggressive. When I heard it, I said it kicked ass but I didn't know what we're going to put over it. It need to be something very simple to put over this, because we a melody wouldn't fit since it was so heavy. He agreed. Then the day after the blackout happened in New York, I called Joe and I said the only place that track would make sense is in a blackout and we had to do something with that. I came up with the words and he came up with the melody and that was it.
RS: Awesome. So what is your favorite piece of studio gear to use?
Mario: We go on Ebay and get German stuff for very cheap and and we have all kinds of new gear that we buy monthly. So we add stuff constantly and honestly I think that's the name of the game and I wouldn't go into details.
RS: Which do you use, Mac or PC?
Mario: We're PC and we're using five or six different programs, including Acid. It depends on what kind of tracks we want to work on, but I guess Vegas is the one we use the most.
RS: Is there anyone out there you would really like to remix more than anyone else?
Mario: An artist I would love to work on?
RS: And please don't say Madonna <laughing>.
Mario: No, not Madonna. When I first started at Sony, Celine Dion was my goal at the time and she still is. There's something magical about her voice and she could hit a home run at any time of the year. The remixes that have come out have been magical, there's only one Celine.
