Ron Slomowicz: I was kind of surprised when I saw the line-ups this year that you and Josh were DJing together. How did that come about?
Dave Dresden: Sometime last summer Josh and I, completely and independently of each other, reached out to each other. He sent me an eMail asking me a question, and I answered it. And then a week later, I had been thinking about him and just seeing so much positive feedback still on our music on the internet, on Facebook, Twitter and different message boards, it just dawned on me that the interest for both of us is Gabriel & Dresden; so I contacted him. I said, “Want to do New Year’s?” and he said, “Absolutely”. So the next thing we know, we talked to both of our agents, said we’d like to do New Year’s and they got something together with Dave Dean at GIANT LA. So I went over to Amsterdam during ADE and sat down with him because I hadn’t seen him in two years. We just talked for hours about music and life. We were boys; we were together everyday for six years. It was like a marriage. It was just really cool to just sit down with him and play music again. That was just always our happy place. It was when we got to sit down and either do music or play music. So from there we were talking about some of the things that have happened in the industry since we broke up, like the meteoric rise of Deadmau5, and where maybe we could take this. I said to him, ”This is a different game now. The stakes are higher. And where we were when we left off, if we were in that spotlight now, that means a lot more than it did three years ago.” I think Josh got kind of excited about the prospects of G&D. We then, again, talked to our agents and said that maybe we should do more shows after the New Year’s show. So after New Year’s went off and it was really good, our agents started lining up shows for us. We’re doing WMC 2011; we’re doing San Francisco and Washington DC.
RS: If you guys are touring together, are you back in the studio working on music together also?
Dave Dresden: We have started to work on a remix for the next Andain album, which was a project we had started to work on in 2007. It was a song called ‘Promises’; which I’ve always loved. I said to Josh when I met him in Amsterdam that if we remix ‘Promises’ it would be all over. We’d have our fanbase back and it would also blow up Andain; so we’ve been working with each other via Skype on parts for the remix. He’ll give me a bassline. I’ll mix some drums. He’ll give me a synth and I’ll chop it up into a really cool rhythmic thing. It’s a new and different way for us to work.
RS: How is working with him now different than it was say three or four years ago? Do you have more of a creative input?
Dave Dresden: Well, I’ve become much more proficient in the technical side of production. Now, I can lay down ideas that I want to do technically and give Josh direction based on those ideas; which is a completely new way for us to work. Before it was,” I think we should do this, dude, I think we should do that.” He’d be playing a synth and I’d suggest maybe you should go to the minor key. But now it is totally different. I’m not just barking orders; I’m technically participating.
RS: The time apart, how has your sound changed, how has his sound changed, and how has that affected the new Gabriel & Dresden sound?
Dave Dresden: In the time apart, my sound got a little House-y, his got more Techno, and the genre that we were really known for was Trance. I think that one of the things we brought to Trance is that we lowered the tempos. So now I think it is really cool that we can make Trance/ House hybrid songs and people can make sense of it. Before we were just weird guys floating out in the ionosphere of dance music. They’re not Tech-House. They’re not Trance. They’re not House. They’re not Breaks. What are they? Oh, they’re Gabriel & Dresden. Now there is a place for us.
RS: In the Beatport world, where everything is so gentrified, do you thing the Gabriel & Dresden sound is going to lend itself to one category, or are you going to have a more blending of the categories?
Dave Dresden: It’ll be interesting to see how they categorize the music that we make. Right now, sitting here, I can’t tell you what that’s going to be. I can tell you that the Andain’s music that we’re doing is kind of Tech-House, Electro House, maybe even a little bit of Trance. That’s just because Andain is a really well known Trance artist, so we have to go there somewhat. Remember the golden rule; don’t forget your fans.
RS: Speaking about your fans, one record that you’re really well known for in the commercial world is the Motorcycle track. I’ve always wanted to ask you, when you did that song did you have any idea that it would become the monster that it was?
Dave Dresden: Well, I’ll tell you what, when we were tracking the vocals, we wrote the song and tracked the vocals on the same day, and I don’t think that I’d have ever been more excited about any track. Josh and I, when we started working, every time we worked, I got excited, really excited. When we did Southern Sun, I was like, “Dude this is fantastic, this is amazing.” It was really just another day in the office, but there was something different about working on that song and it translated because it became such a global sensation.