Prior to their maiden India tour, The Sherp caught up with Sweden’s craziest electronic duo, and it was quite intense.
Stefan & Olle, the rulers of Dada Land, will be in the country this weekend, and they mean business. The Sherp had a quick chat with them recently, as they spoke about Sweden, Dada Land & Bananas.
Hey Stefan & Olle, Where did you meet? How did your musical relationship begin?
We didn’t know anything about each other before we met. We met at a chilli cook-off here in Sweden and we started talking music and suddenly we were like, “Oh you make dance music? I make dance music!” So we decided to meet up the next day, and we made a track, which was actually the first Dada Life release. It was called Big Time.
What’s the reason behind the name ‘Dada Life’, how did you come up with it?
It’s something you should live by, whatever it really means it’s up to you to decide. It’s really how to live your life – the “Dada Life”.
‘Kick out the epic’ is quite easily one of the top EDM anthems to ever be composed. How did you come up with the title for it? We’re really keen on knowing.
Kick Out The Epic Motherfucker was a great success and it really ties in the feeling of doing the Dada. For us is important to make music that we like and don’t jump on trends. We don’t speak English too well, we speak Swedelish, and we probably didn’t use the right words. When we named the track Kick Out The Epic Motherfucker, people couldn’t understand it. But then they heard the song and realized why we called it that.
Could you tell us more about ‘Dada Land’, and how it came about?
We need a place where we can be free and do what we want to do. You know, no rules but the rules of Dada. We’ve been sending out diplomatic letters to all major nations over the world. We’re 100 per cent serious about this. People often think that we’re joking, but we’re not. I mean, how fun do you think it was missing Ultra and Miami last year when Swedish authorities took away our passports?
Your world record breaking ‘Pillow Fight’. Could you explain how you guys thought that up.
Our shows are like one big children’s birthday party. We love having fun. What’s more fun than a pillow fight? Everyone loves a pillow fight. So we decided to have a pillow fight in the club. Then we tried to make the idea bigger and found out that there was a world record. The aim was to have 5,000 pillows at the venue – we actually emptied half of Ikea’s stock in the US. But there were so many rules to breaking the record – you had to fight for one whole minute to break the record – 3,818 people managed to fight for one minute to break the record. It was insane.
Okay, so why bananas and champagne? Also, our viewers would love to know details about the famous ‘Sausage Fattener’
It’s the bananas and Champagne as a combination. Bananas alone are just a yellow fruit that we don’t care about, but the combination with champagne is a lethal combination…in a good way. It started from us having bananas and champagne on our nights when we started playing. It works. It’s a good combination if you want to keep going all night. Champagne is the alcohol and the banana has the potassium and everything you need for a great workout because you jump up and down a lot. It’s also the perfect food for the club because of its protective seal. It doesn’t matter how sweaty it gets. You can always peel a banana and eat it.
The thing that made us create that plugin was because a lot of people asked us how we got that “fat sound”, those “greasy basslines”. Then we had the opportunity to work with Tailored Noise, and we thought that it would be so useful. We use the plugin in every track. People love sausages, and they want the tracks to sound fat like a sausage.
So it seems as though you guys have had a great 2013, playing a bunch of different festivals and shows, if you guys could pick out one highlight from the year, what would it be?
EDC Vegas is just so good.
Your latest tracks, like “Born to Rage,” and “This Machine Kills Ravers” are so high on energy. What inspires you guys? How do you guys come up with the ideas for these energetic tracks?
Music wise we try to capture that small moment when you have a pure adrenaline rush in your body and stretch that feeling in to a full length track. When we are in the DJ booth and we play a track and we look at someone and if we see pure happiness, joy in someone’s eyes, we try and capture that little moment and bring that back to the studio and make a whole track out of it. But Dada Life is more than just music, it’s a way of living. Don’t think too much and have fun! We want to prove to our fans that they’re born to rage!
What are you expecting on your Maiden India tour? Have you got any feedback from your fellow Swedes about the vibe here?
We’re incredibly excited for this India tour. It’s going to be amazing. It’s always interesting to come to parts of the world where we’ve never toured before… But from seeing the reactions on social media we’re sure that India is going to be crazy! We have heard from other DJs that Indian fans are the craziest, and that suits us just fine. We have been looking forward to this tour for so long now! We have a couple of aces up our sleeve. It will be insane!
Supposedly you goof up during your set, which is the one track that you think you would drop to camouflage it? In other words, your favorite contingent track.
We play live, we love it. Once at a show a fan threw a banana and it struck the power button on the mixer. We love moments like these.
The Dada Land India Tour kicks off this Friday, you can buy your tickets HERE.