W. A. Production interviewer Aneta got to sit down with Danish DJ Michael Parsberg of Pegboard Nerds to discuss
Q: Are you nervous?
Michael: I’m good, no I’m not nervous. I’m excited.
Q: How was the collaboration with Knife Party?
Michael: That was fun. I mean its been underway for a long time. We, just about a month or two ago, I was talking to Rob about doing something with Knife Party, we sent him over an idea and that same night he sent back some vocals he did for the song, we thought hell this is great, should we book a flight ticket and get it done, and he was like yeah man lets get it done, lets do it. We did it like 3 days after that and the track was done.
Q: So it was challenging for you?
Michael: No, it was fun.
Q: Why are you here alone ?
Michael: Alex, he is in the States. Because we kind of made a bad choice and we booked 2 shows in one night, he is actually playing alone in New York tonight. For the first time we are playing apart.
Q: About your production, how much time do you spend on creating music?
Michael: A long time. A long long long time. You are asking on one specific track or just in general?
Because in general, we’ve been producing for more than 20 years. I made my first record in 1992.Alex did his first record in 96. We’ve been making music for so long, which I mean of course, is why we have some kind of experience, but usually it takes between 2 and 5 days to finalize a song.
Q: How much time do you spend listening to new music?
Michael: Nothing. Of course we do for the shows, DJing and stuff like that. We listen to a lot of promo’s, buy new records and stuff like that. But when we come home from the studio we don’t listen to music
Q: What are the top 5 places you’ve played?
Michael: Tomorrowland is always great, Red Rocks in Denver(Colorado) is probably one of our favorite places, The Gorge in Washington is really great, I mean there are so many places so its really difficult to choose which one is the best I mean really great places, club wise, Beta in Denver, Foundations in Seattle(Washington), I keep saying Denver and Seattle. And of course tonight Czech Republic.
Q: Massive or Serum?
Michael: They are both great. Somethings are really good with Massive and somethings are really great with Serum. Up until Serum came out, 4 years ago or whatever, everybody was choosing Massive, and now everyone has changed to Serum because its new, fresh but now its not new and refreshing anymore so more and more people are starting to blend things, so are we, try new things.
We really like the Avenger from …. (doesn’t remember).
Q: Nexus or Kontakt 5?
Michael: Depends on what its for. I mean Nexus we made a few expansion packs for Nexus so obviously we like it, its a good bread and butter sim, but the Kontakt library is just so vast, gigantic,
You can have basically anything you want.
Q: Headphones or Speakers?
Michael: Speakers.
Q:Mac or PC?
Michael: Mac but, I mean, I am allergic to Windows but a lot of people say that using Windows is by far more versatile, Mac OS is a closed system. I just can’t, I tried to change to Windows, but I can’t.
Q: Salvatore Ganacci. Clown or a Showman?
Michael: He is both. I mean its so crazy but everybody is talking about him and that is the clever thing. We are sitting here talking about him. So he just made the biggest media stunt ya know. Everybody is talking about him and now everyone is going to want to see him play. I think its clever. Personally I would never do something like that but that's not what its about, if he feels its OK to do it, he should do it. I don’t feel intimidated in any way or feel he is destroying something, everybody has their own way of doing things ya know. Its kind of refreshing at the same time as its sad because why do you need to things like that to be interesting.