Taking A Few Moments With Darude (Exclusive Interview)

If you were born in the early 90s or before, there’s a good chance that you remember Sandstorm slaying the radio waves in 1997 as a part of dance music’s last invasion into pop culture. Darude was the man behind that track, as well as Feel The Beat, and other trance jams of the era. The last time Darude was in town, we sat down with him for the first time, right before his set at Lucky 2014. Now, a year and a half later, he has a brand new album released and a lot to say.

[divider]Moments[/divider]

Just like any normal person, Darude has a life outside his career. Part of what kept Moments in the making for so long was quite simply that life happened. He “got married, had a son, moved to the US, moved back from the US, and had some illness in the family.” The album features songs that are up to eight years old, with about half the tracks produced in the past two years. There’s a variety of styles on the album, and that’s partially due to the heavy focus on collaborations. Even Warrior, which has no credited vocals on it, is a collaboration (albeit an un-credited one). Darude doesn’t typically sing on his tracks, but he does “sing to his son every night when [he] puts him to bed.” (so sweet!)

“All of them are collaborations with various people, writers and producers. It was very interesting to me, and a good learning experience as well.”

[divider]A True Collaborative Effort[/divider]

Photo Credit: Mikey McNulty

With such a variety of tracks from different years with different collaborators and different points in Darude’s style, how could he link it all together? This question in combination with his busy life kept the album in progress for an extended period. In the end, Darude assembled the array of tracks he’d selected from the past several years into Moments, and trusted that his fans would “find the combining factors from track to track.”

Featured on Moments is a track called Peace Revisited, a rework of an Apocalyptica track. Many years ago, before the drummer Mikko was a full member of Apocalyptica, he played acoustic and electronic percussion for Darude during his live performances. Upon the release of Apocalyptica’s album Worlds Collide, they offered to let Darude remix one of the songs, and this track is that coming to fruition (and it’s beautiful!). This is one of the tracks that Darude has been hanging onto the longest, and “one of the oldest on the album.”

“The sound of the cellos is amazing, and also to find it on my album is surprising.”