Steve Angello interview - Trying it on for Size
Author: Mark Burton
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
The twenty-three year old, christened Steve Josefsson Fragogiannis, releases under a multitude of different guises including Who's Who, and in tandem with studio partner and best buddy, Sebastian Ingrosso they release as Buy Now, General Moders, Mode Hookers and Outfunk. So who better to unravel all the different aliases that Mr Angello himself- "Mode Hookers is more like a twisted kind of…we just try and combine everything" offers Steve. "Just more twisted, funky, electronic, banging house. Buy Now is more, it's like a concept Buy Now. It's like a concept album that we are doing. It's more like a concept name that we can be more experimental than just doing the usual thing that we do. Who's who for me is one I just put a mask on and go a bit crazy in the studio, you know change my name a bit and change the sound a bit but I just feel that I needed something extra to work on because when you work hard it's so easy to fall in the trap of doing the same thing over and over again and we just needed some extra names and other projects to be keeping it going as it's been going so far because it's hard work. We just needed to inspire ourselves basically."
This has been recognised by the bigwigs at Ministry of Sound. "The Ministry CD is under the new name Sessions which is gonna be released I think…today, or yesterday!" he reveals. "The residency is my Size parties basically, so it's based on the label parties. We gonna bring first of all the Size artists on the line-up and then I'm gonna do nice bigger during the year so I'm gonna do once a month during the ministry shows. It looks promising so far. We had last month Fun Loving Criminals, which was me and Sebastian in the main room, Fun Loving Criminals in the back room, which was amazing. It's a crowd we love at Ministry and they're really open-minded and up for it so I think its one of my favourite crowds in the world, to be honest."
Last year saw him play 160 gigs around the globe, so what were his most memorable- "Ibiza, Pacha in Ibiza last year. Ministry of Sound, England. Lush, Northern Ireland. Yellow, Japan. I've been everywhere basically and it's a lot of good clubs so of the 160 gigs last year I think I had at least 100 good clubs or I've been to a place twice or three times so its hard to say but I think Ibiza is the place to be if you're a party boy. I love Pacha, it's an amazing place. Space is amazing as well. Amnesia is doing good. You know, it's so many places, it's so much to see…it's hardcore, Ibiza you know-! Too many parties so every time I go there I start shaking, I'm afraid of what's gonna happen! I become the devil there for a couple of days or so!" [obviously the image used for this article was taken in Ibiza - Ed.]
Back to the work-in-progress Buy Now album. "It sounds really promising and it's different" he allows. "We're gonna try and bring on as many vocalists as possible and we're gonna try and go (for) non-dance vocals, so we're gonna focus a lot on working with soul and rock vocalists and going more for other mean vocals. We're gonna try and combine everything into dance and so far it sounds really good. I don't think people will expect this album to sound like it does, it's still gonna have the Buy Now sound in it but it's gonna be an album, you know and we have to think album more than just think doing a dance track. It's a challenge and it's hard for us to work on it but we've done so much so far I think challenges make us go the extra yard instead of doing what we usually do, and it's a lot of fun so far so we just gonna do it and< Tags