Today we have an interview and minimix from guest from Sweden. After listening to his tracks like: "we have disco", "mango sunset", okay all tracks that he uploaded ;) we decided to learn something more about him. Now we know that he's quite a personality. We welcome you to read an interview below and to listen and download his guest minimix. We also encourage you to visit his Soundcloud profile and get to know Testarossa's remixes and productions. What kind of music is it? Answer to that question is in the interview.
Richard at first tell us maybe few words about yourself. Where are you from? What's your occupation?
Stockholm is my home. I´m a full time DJ, I organize parties where i book my favorite Djs and Artists. During days i do a lot of studiowork editing and remixing tracks to fit my sets. I also spend endless hours chasing new music.
How did you come up with your nickname Testarossa? Is there any story behind this?
I have an overactive thyroid gland, and have been pretty ill from this later years. This ment I easily and often got sick because my immune system was messed up. My father in law, with a habbit of crashing expensive cars during the 80's told me that I was just like a Ferrari ”Really beautiful but breaks down all the time”. And at this time I was about to release my remix of Headmans ”catch me if you can” so I popped it as my producer name and now I'm stuck with it. I don't even like cars. However it also means redhead.
How did your music adventure started? Some earliest memories?
When I was around 6 I collected cassete tapes from relatives and created small stories in my head connected to the different tracks I loved. So every song had its own specific story, colour, and context in my head, and I visualized music like ”scenarios” from a movie. As a teenager I chose to identify myself with bands like Magma, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, Sun-Ra etc. Not so much for their sound, but because I loved to love them. I was obsessed in compiling mixtapes to my friends, when I wanted someone to pay extra attention to a specific track I just recorded a dull track before the good one, that makes the good track shine brighter. I started to DJ at a local rockbar when I was around 20-21. Then I moved to Barcelona and lied about being an experienced DJ and ended up as a resident at different venues and took it from there. Thanks to the ”electroclash” people with the rock/postpunk/indie backround like me could move the clubfloors and develop some conventional DJ techniques rather than just being selectors.
What lead you into producing electronic music?
When I was 19 we had krautband named ”Free Hasch”. We drank a lot, played one show of CAN & David Peel covers and then our singer comitted suicide. I gave away my guitar to a homeless guy because my lack of skills just made everything pointless. When I started to Dj frequently I wanted to cut out the boring parts of a track and extend the good ones. Especially a lot of 80's italodisco that starts off really heavy but often transforms into something really different as soon as the lyric kicks in. So I started to cuztomize tracks, and then developed it from there.
You are a dj and producer. We could hear your productions on Soundcloud. Are you connected or signed by any label or is only for your own satisfaction?
I have released some remixes on different labels but no full tracks. I do get some requests from labels but I never send anything. I love making beats and sounds but everything is more or less aimed to DJ.
Even if I DJ very often nowadays I still want to deliver and try out new stuff every time I play. The reward of producing is that I can put it into use straight away.
Is there any project that you're currently working on?
Yeah, I'm programming some samplers, synthezisers and ableton into a new liveset. I would love to have a bassguitplayer with me as well.
How would you describe your sound?
Many of my tracks are results of failure and not at all intended to sound as they do.
You've studied polish national cinema, it's very interesting and probably not very popular faculty. Why did you choose it? What polish movies have you seen? Do you remember any titles?
When I was a kid I was completely hooked on "Dekalog 5". Saw it by misstake when I was around six and it made huge emotional impact on me. So I had that one on repeat for many years and it just stuck with me.
I studied polish cinema at at the institution for eastern european studies at Lunds Univeristy. Not only because of Kieślowski, but because I was really into eastern european art and poetry and how their cultural expressions correlated to politics. Later I found the historic value of Polish Cinema too wich makes it more interesting. We watched a lot of cinema during the lectures but unfortunatly I´ve boozed my memory away. But I do like Wajda, Zanussi, Munk, etc. My all time favourite is "Popiół i diament" with Zbigniew Cybulski (and his strange death).
Have you ever been to Poland?
No
Top 3 tunes right now for you ?
It's contextual.
What are your interests besides music ?
Synthezisers. Robots and Artificial Intelligence. Aviation. Japanese vintage toys.
Richard thank you very much for an interview and your time put into it. We'll surely follow your next productions.
And here is his live session with his DJ edits and mashups, jammed and recorded on the AKAI APC 40.
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