Hi Peter, I know you were born in Hungary and now you live in Stockholm. How long have you been living in Sweden actually?
My family defected when I was two and we ended up in Sweden. So I’ve lived here practically all my life.
When did music enter into your life and how much your musician parents influenced you as a kid? Did you rebel against them music wise?
I’ve always been surrounded by music when growing up. My father being a touring musician – that’s how we ended up in Sweden – and my mother being a classically trained pianist. Music was never forced upon me, though they did try to get me to take piano lessons as a kid. Also tried to take lessons from my father – a total disaster. But I was always more into doing my own thing, playing my own little melodies or riffs so I never learned to read or write music, which I really regret today. But I guess it allowed me to develop my own musical language. I never rebelled against my parents music wise. Even though I was constantly surrounded by jazz and fusion and even some soul, they never force fed me. They let me discover music for myself. Though my father was probably contemplating putting me up for adoption when I came home with a cassette of
Black Sabbath at the age of seven.
I know you got a punk band too. What was the ‘evolution’ from the early punk band years to producing fusion of jazz funk electro sounds?
Early punk band years, haha! Well, we had this kind-of-a-band in the eighth grade. Punk was the rage and when you played as fast, hard and loud as possible it sounded like punk. And you didn’t need any real skills – perfect. But that was just a short period. When my music teacher played us some
Toto I discovered I wanted something more than just speed and noise. If you weren’t into punk back then you were probably into disco or synth pop. Early on I was hooked on the futuristic and electronic sound of the synthesizer. In -82 I saw a documentary on
Jean-Michel Jarre’s Concerts in China. I was totally fascinated by the sounds. At this time the jazz fusion sound was also getting more and more synthesized. I started to discover my fathers fusion records in the quest for “synthesizer music” and I started to get hooked on the harmonies and jazz elements as well. Eventually I dug deeper and deeper in my fathers collection and got hit by
Herbie, Bob James, George Duke… – all the usual suspects. That has been the foundation ever since.
Which tunes or albums brought you into the cosmic jazz or West-London sounds then?
Some of the first tracks that come to mind are
Ace of Clubs’ Tribal Knight in 1990 and
UFO’s United Future Airlines from 95. That was back when it was probably still called Acid Jazz. Then I was totally floored by the
Jazzanova stuff. Especially the remix of
Ian Pooley’s What’s Your Number blew me away.
Afronaught’s classic Transcend Me of course.
IG Culture's NSM album was huge for me as well. Feed the Cat by
Agent K (
Kaidi Tatham) is still one of my favourite albums.
NSM and Agent K albums are all time faves of mine too. So after starting to produce your own stuff, how did you find yourself getting a contract for a whole album at an Australian label back in 2003?
My publisher and the production company I was with had a bunch of my old tracks laying around. They sent it to a Japanese label to get me some production work and the label said –“Nice album, can we release it?” Uh well, sure… So those tracks were actually never meant to end up on an album together. Then the deal with the Japanese label never happened but the production company had an office in Australia and had been getting me production and remix work down under so there was already a connection, hence an Australian release.
What were the reactions to “Omnifarious” there or worldwide? The LP has many different colours and styles, from funk to house to jazz, full of nice vocals and positive vibes that sound still fresh. How do you feel about the album itself today?
I got some truly great reactions in Australia and the album was on heavy rotation on some of the club oriented radio stations. Glad you still think it sounds fresh. I was bit worried that it would be a bit too schizophrenic since some of the tracks were really old and others more recent. But in retrospect I think it summed up the different vibes and styles I’d been into up till that point. But of course, some tracks I would’ve done differently today …
After the debut album you kept on sharing your nice remixes and bootlegs of Michael Jackson, Beyonce, Erykah Badu or Diana Ross on your site or on various forums like here on Beyondjazz. What was your main goal with them and how do you actually choose the tunes you rework?
I just went for great voices that I felt would be interesting to put in a new context. It turned out to be quite controversial in some cases. Taking one of the most stigmatized and hated (by DJs at least) tracks, I Will Survive, and try turning it into a clubby syncopated fusion number was hard for some people to stomach. But the version I remixed had great vocals by Diana Ross and I just felt they would work beautifully with what I had in mind. But then again, some thanked me for making it possible to introduce the “broken” sound to a more mainstream audience. But all that was mostly about having fun and putting my stuff out there to get some reactions. I absolutely love doing remixes and would love doing more but right now I’m focusing on original material and doing remixes that could actually put some food on the table.
Your debut 12” 'Life is a Dance' on the japenese Especial Rec has received flattering feedback. A new EP 'Street Lights' is on the way and just heard the massive "All Systems Down" and “I do” joints. The Opolopo and Amalia duo is on fire, how did you find about each other?
Oh man, Amalia… I’m just so lucky to have hooked up with her! She hit me up on MySpace (where else) and when I checked out her and her band Sekoya I was totally floored. Apparently she felt what I was doing too and we totally clicked so we decided to try a collab and I sent her a bunch of instrumentals. She’s in Canada and I’m in Sweden so basically I send her instrumentals and she writes and records over there and then sends the raw vocal files back through the net. It’s just like Christmas every time I get those files. She just keeps blowing my mind. And I’ll often pick up on the stuff she does and change things around musically and production wise.
When I got the vocals for All Systems Down for example, I just knew I had to tweak the beats on some parts to be in sync with her crazy vocals. I also added a run at the end of the intro before I sent the track back to her. She then went and recorded new vocals in sync with the new run, haha! We just kept bouncing off each other. It all works beautifully but with a ridiculous talent like that I can’t wait for us to be there in the studio together and just try all kinds of crazy ideas and create the magic right then and there.
Could you describe your studio in sense of equipment?
Well, these days it’s mostly all software. The only hardware I occasionally use is the Rhodes, bass & guitar and the pots and pans in my kitchen. I’ve got some synths like the SE-1, Nord Modular and an Emu sampler but they are all sadly unattended. The convenience of having everything on the computer, to open up a project file and have everything there exactly as you left it is just so appealing to me. It allows me to be more creative and focus on the music. But hell, could I afford it, I would buy all the classic vintage gear. Just having those magical old boxes around would be a huge inspiration.
Do you produce fast or work on a tune a lot generally?
Totally depends. Some tracks just “happen” and others need some time to develop. I am a perfectionist though and probably tweak some tracks way too much and for too long but I can be pretty fast when I need to. I always deliver on time if there’s a deadline. Remixes typically I do pretty fast.
Tell me more about your live jazz project Expansions?
Expansions is initially the brainchild of percussionist and DJ
Thomas Wingren. A few years ago he was asked by the biggest (and only) jazz club in Stockholm to put together an act for a series of club nights featuring contemporary electronic jazz. We put together a group with me on a laptop controlling beats and doing some keys, pianist
Adam Forkelid, bassist
Putte Frick-Meijer and Thomas on percussion. We would then have a different guest soloist every night and were lucky to have some of Sweden’s finest jazz musicians on board. The idea was to fuse the beats, sounds and technology of dance music with the musicality and improvisational elements of jazz. Keeping it all loose, letting the beats, song structure and arrangements follow the mood and flow of the ensemble on stage. Adam wrote the music and I produced it and programmed the beats and controlled it all on the laptop. We recorded most of the material and have two releases coming up, one on Sick Trumpet and one on Staf Records. We have since converted Expansions to a scalable live project that can take on many shapes and also include some of the Opolopo stuff.
So what do you enjoy more: making beats in the studio or performing live with your band on stage in a club?
If I had to choose between the two the studio would win hands down. But nothing beats those rare perfect moments on stage…
How would you describe the jazz scene in Stockholm by the way?
Well, there is some mad talent when it comes to jazz musicians. There are some real heavyweight players as well as a constant flow of new talent. But as usual for a rather small town, there aren’t enough venues and for the clubbier types of jazz it’s even worse.
Talking of music scenes, do you think myspace could renew them by connecting and linking up artists with fans or new talents online like never before? Are you addicted to myspace?
I think it is already happening. Bands and artist rising to stardom solely through MySpace. Scenes, however small, becoming global through the possibility of like minded getting together and through networking turning others onto their sounds. It’ll be really interesting to see what happens now with the possibility to sell tracks directly on myspace. Even though there’s so much wrong with myspace - terrible usability, lousy design, all sorts of technical hiccups and being owned by Murdoch, it’s such a powerful tool. I’ve gotten so many amazing contacts and hook-ups through that place. An addict? Well, when myspace suddenly stopped sending notifications I found myself logging on too damn often just to check for comments or messages…
If you could travel in time which period of music would you go back and experience as a producer?
Hm, I’d rather travel forward in time to when the shunt in my head will let me plug directly into a computer and “think” music. Though there are so many interesting periods in the past that I’d love to experience. An obvious choice would be going back to the early seventies when all that electronic and groove infused music took shape and laid the grounds for everything we do today. And I wouldn’t mind peeping over
Tomita’s shoulder when he tamed and conducted those monster modular synths.
As for today, any dream collaborations you would love to take part? Who would they be: Herbie Hancock, Jeff Lorber or anyone from Mark de Clive-Lowe to Kaidi Tatham?
Oh, I’d of course love to be involved with any of those mentioned above. But being a producer foremost, what first comes to mind is vocalists like
Charlie Wilson from
GAP Band - man, what a voice! Or to fuse the seventies
Gino Vannelli with some future sci-fi epic soul.
Stephanie Mills and
Rachelle Farrel are some others that come to mind. Oh, and of course
CHAKA KHAN! Oh, and… actually there are too many to list.
Opolopo featuring Chaka Khan, sounds way too good! Hope you could work with some of these names in the future. How are you getting along with the new album? Which music styles do you want to highlight this time?
Oh, it’s that classic case of not wanting to be pigeonholed so I don’t know about any specific styles I wanna or even can specify. But whatever it’ll be called it’s sure to be jazzy, soulful and funky! Haven’t got any master plan for the album. I’m just recording tracks and when I’ve got enough I’ll select the ones I think should end up together. But a dream would be to also do an exclusively Opolopo-Amalia album. And we’re not that far from it I think…
Can not wait for that album with Amalia..So what do you really expect from 2007?
TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION! Nah, just hope to get more music out there. Things are definitely moving in the right direction.
I'm glad we could help the process. Thanks for your time and words!
My pleasure! Massive respect to you and the Beyondjazz crew for your dedication and support of real music!
New and forthcoming releases:
Opolopo feat.
Amalia – Life is Dance EP is out on Especial.
Opolopo – The Singularity EP is available on ClickGroove.
Opolopo feat.
Nadine Francios – Madness EP soon out on Swedish Brandy.
Opolopo feat.
Amalia – Street Lights is forthcoming.
Expansions EPs on Sick Trumpet and Staf Records
Opolopo – New LP – 2007
Read more on:
www.opolopo.com
www.myspace.com/opolopo
www.myspace.com/expansions
