Swedish duo, Olle Cornéer & Stefan Engblom more prominently known as Dada Life have ever since setting foot in the realms of the electronic music scene built a reputation of being one of the genre’s most celebrated exponents. The twosome have garnered a humongous fan following over time with each new release and, have also been the reason for umpteen number of smiles on many a fan’s face and it goes without saying that their exhilarating live performances have induced multifarious supporters to rage their hearts out at various festivals, concerts and club shows worldwide.
Famous for their unique, driven sound and pulsating energy which they bring forth while performing live & for the merriment they generate within the crowd, the duo are one of the wildest yet exceedingly phenomenal acts to witness perform and it came as no surprise when the pair broke the Guinness World Record a while back, for the world’s largest pillow fight at a ‘Dada Land Compound’ event in Chicago.
When rumours of a possible tour of India first emerged, fans all across the country were captured in a frenzy and the prospect of watching the duo live had a large number wishing they would get to witness the duo treat them to the madness the two are known for across the world. The confirmation of the tour which followed from dance music event giant, Submerge mightily furthered the excitement which had generated and left fans uncontrollably awaiting their chance to ‘feed the dada’.
Now, with the duo’s tour of India set to kick off tonight, we had the pleasure of interviewing Stefan to know more about the twosome prior to their first show in the country. Scroll down now to know what they had to tell us about the story behind their infamous craze for champagne and bananas, their love for red meat, what they look forward to as part of their tour of India & more!
TBB: Hey Stefan! Welcome to thebanginbeats.com. To begin could you tell us a little about your respective individual backgrounds and how you started making music together?
Dada Life: We came from two different sides or spectrums of dance music. I was making music on my own but I preferred the harder sound, Olle, who was also making music, came from a more softer sound. And when we came together is when the Dada Life sound was born.
TBB: Could you tell us the story behind all the craze that Dada Life has for “Champagne & Bananas”?
Dada Life: 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.
TBB: If the rather enchanting DadaLand was to be officiated, would you possibly provide asylum to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden?
Dada Life: Umm… I would pass this question.
TBB: The rules of Dada state “Doing the air-piano while looking up in the air? Never”. Does this mean artist of the like of Avicii are banned from Dada Land?
Dada Life: If Avicii wants to join Dada Land and rage in Dada Land, he can. But if he wants to be on stage and do the air piano, hmm… then no. He will have to behave himself.
TBB: As your discography is vast we won’t dwell too much into different tracks however, could you describe the experience of bringing in a heavy metal vocalist; Sebastian Bach on ‘Born to Rage’ your big hit this year? And where did the idea stem from?
Dada Life: Olle and I wrote the whole track, the melody and the lyrics. And then we wanted a vocalist who could carry that track. We wanted a fresh sound, fresh voice who hadn’t done any dance music collaboration before. Sebastian was actually one of the first names we thought of. We thought, if we can get his voice on this record, it would be killer. We sent the request through our management and they pulled some strings and we managed to get Sebastian into our studio in Los Angeles to record the track.
TBB: The “Dada Life Sausage Fattener” plugin is widely used by a number of producers in the industry, what intrigues us is however that why did you decide to develop a plugin at the time? Are there any other plug’s possibly in the works?
Dada Life: 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. On the homepage for the most popular plugins, this was the like third on the list. It’s amazing. People love sausages, and they want the tracks to sound fat like a sausage. We are working on a new plugin, but this one needs a lot more work and time. It’s quite complicated but it will be a fantastic one.
TBB: Coming to your live shows, you guys have had a number of crazy shows. Could you tell us a little about your infamous show in LA in 2010?
Dada Life: What happened was that it was one of the first big shows we did or were supposed to do in Los Angeles. The tickets were sold out but then they said that a few tickets were available at the door. The club was full but 2,000-3,000 fans landed up to buy tickets at the door and it turned into chaos. They had to call the riot squad, helicopters in the sky and the whole Hollywood boulevard had armed cops who were trying to get people to leave. We were in the hotel next to the club and we were standing in the club watching all of this. For us, that was the best show we didn’t do.
TBB: Speaking of crazy shows, your pillow fight record made headlines recently. What went behind pulling the remarkable feat off?
Dada Life: That was actually amazing teamwork, from our fans and from our team. 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.
TBB: To round things up, what does one actually feed the Dada apart from obviously, bananas?
Dada Life: Red meat!
TBB: Thank you so much for taking time out and speaking with us. It’s been an absolute pleasure and we look forward to catching you live this weekend!
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Special thanks to the team at Submerge!
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[…] fat sounds and greasy basslines, the ‘Dada life Sausage Fattener‘ inventors recently spoke to us in a heart-to-heart interview, where they shared their expectations from the crowds on their India tour. From the likes of it, it […]