RS: What kind of response are you getting from the crowds with the live tour?
Trentemoller: It is just unbelievable. We have just been gearing
up in the first fifteen gigs and people go totally crazy. We played
in Berlin last Friday and that was so loud and people just went crazy.
When I'm playing live, we start a bit slow and build up this
atmosphere that totally raves. Some people might expect the whole of
the performance to be very moody and mellow because we are only
playing tracks from The Last Resort and those elements are in our live
show, but we're also mixing more dance room stuff in to the show so it
is a great mixture of both actually.
RS: I want to ask more about your production. What sequencer or
digital audio workstation do you use?
Trentemoller: So far, I have used Acid by Sony and Sound Forge to
edit samples. About four months ago, I switched to Mac and am now I'm
using Ableton Live. Many other artists use it for performance but I'm
mostly using it to compose music. It is not about having a great
studio anymore. Buying this Mac, it was much more about having
software that is easy to use and then just using your ears.
RS: Are you using any soft synths?
Trentemoller: Yes, but not so many. I'm mainly using the Minimoog,
4 or 5 soft synths from Korg's legacy collection, the Ntron, and Oddity.
RS: Are you using any hardware?
Trentemoller: I'm also using an old Fender Rhodes and I have my
MicroKorg and also a small and handy keyboard. I also use from some
compressors and pre-amps. My setup is very simple and easy to use.
Actually I'm mostly making all my music on my laptop while I'm on the
road, so it is quite a very simple setup that I have.
RS: When you play out live, what do you use?
Trentemoller: I'm using Abelton Live a little bit and Acid on some
of the laptops and all our visuals because we also have great visuals
when we are playing live. The director and I sat together three or
four months before we were going on the road and made special visuals
to every single track that we're playing live. The visuals are
triggered from hard disks and then I'm just playing on top of that
with the keyboards. We have a live drummer, a bass player, and a
guitar player- so our whole live set up is a big mixture of hard
disks, sequencers and real instruments.
RS:. After this tour, what do you have coming next?
Trentemoller: I am supposed to work on my next album. I've been so
busy playing live, and since The Last Resort until now I have also
been making music for a Danish movie and a theater play. It has been
a little bit hard to find the time to sit down and just work on music.
From the middle of December up to March, I will take a big break and
just relax and start making new music. It is not easy to be inspired
when you are having like three or four hours each day to do it.
RS: In your biography it mentions that you like to create
antipodes. I looked it up and they appear to be geographical
opposites and I was wondering how that applies to your music?
Trentemoller: That was something that my record label has come up
with, but I think what they mean is that I really like to work with
contrasts – combining very electronic, pure and cold sounds mixed with
warm analogue, filthy, and distorted sounds. Working with moods and
atmospheres, having something very beautiful, and then having some
more dangerous and aggressive underneath, so there's always many
layers in the music. So that is maybe what they meant there.
RS: Looking around at your contemporaries, who are some of your
favorite producers and remixers out there?
Trentemoller: I am so badly not up to date with what is going on in
the electronic scene. One of the favorite albums of this year was
actually an album that came out from the lead singer of Radiohead,
Thom Yorke. His album was really great because he was blending many
music types together and his album also had this electronic feel all
over it. I'm actually quite into a new band I just discovered some
weeks ago called Bat For Lashes- it has a 50s pop music sound like
Phil Spector with some electronic beats. They are a band that we're
going to see much more of in the future.
RS: You've worked on tracks for Pet Shop Boys and for Moby, who
else would you dream of working with in that same way?
Trentemoller: That's one big wish for me and it is my absolute
favorite band of all time, Mazzy Star and the lead singer Hope
Sandoval. I think that the band split up ten years ago but Hope is
still doing music and she made a solo album about five years ago.
It's very hard to get in contact with her as I've tried through her
record company and management but she seems to be very hard to contact
and also very shy. She would definitely be my first choice because
she has such a dreamy, melodic, fragile, and sexy voice - I really
like it.
RS: You're name Trentemoller, does it have a definition in your
native language?
Trentemoller: No, it is actually just my last name. When I started
making electronic music, I thought about coming up with some very
generic English-sounding equivalent artist name. It was so difficult
for me and all the artists names that I came up with just sounded so
stupid and so bad, so I just used my real name – Trentemoller.
RS: What would you like to say to all of your fans out there?
Trentemoller: I would just say thank you for the big support. It was really amazing to see that people liked the album, The Last Resort, because it is not really dance music. I'm just very grateful that people are supporting my music.