Catching up with Axel Boman

Having forged his reputation in his hometown of Stockholm, Axel Boman is now widely famed for his delectable diet of fresh dancefloor cuts, suitably moving the hearts, minds and souls of party goers and music lovers around the world. With a plethora of epic house anthems firmly under his belt already, the Studio Barnhus boss’ work remains in constant rotation with musical connoisseurs, from the likes of DJ Koze and Magda to Seth Troxler and everyone in between. With his latest drop Family Vacation gathering a slew of critical attention ahead of its release this November, there’s no question that Axel’s currently thriving. With an impending Studio Barnhus Room Three takeover on 2nd November and the news of his new album we thought it timely to catch up with Axel to find out more about what’s in store next month. Hey Axel, how it’s it going? Very well, thank you but I’m still waiting for the big autumn angst to hit me. I thought we could start this off with you giving us some background info on yourself and on your new album Family Vacation. I was born in Stockholm where I still live. I used to be a chef, cooking delicious food at French restaurants but somehow music saved me. It was in art school where I started making music. Before that I was only a DJ. Once I was in a short lived band called Snack Attack. It featured me and Andreas Ermanbriks and two super-hot girls who couldn’t really sing. We used to do very aggressive electro (oldschool!) punk gigs around Gothenburg and the gigs always ended by us throwing fake blood at the audience and getting beat up. My album Family Vacation is the result of a process that started there in Gothenburg. It took me many years to get to this point and I don’t even know where or what that point was, only that it feels good to have finally finished a lot of ideas. It seems the songs are connected by more than just narrative and context but by higher powers! Listening to your album, I would say it’s a fairly playful and charismatic record in terms of its tribal/carnival qualities, especially at the beginning of the album. Was this the direction you wanted the record to take from the get-go? Oh I love how you say tribal and carnival! That sounds spot on. Well I think I try to aim for a feeling in my music that is naive, beautiful and “light” but with hints of terror and fear. Just like a carnival! I got a lot of help from Petter and Kornél, which whom I run Studio Barnhus; they helped me to pick the tracks for the album. I was standing too close to the trees to see the forest when I started. Now it sounds like the tracks are really a family. I read in the album description that the record was a ‘collection of all your ideas and sketches’. Can you tell us more about that? Instead of diving into an ocean of new ideas I decided to go backwards, to music I did a long time ago, revisit ideas I had when I was “young and dumb” with the knowledge I have today. It was really hard sometimes because I’m really not a nostalgic guy and I believe in moving forward. Of course, some songs on the album are brand new but I made them when I started to hear the album coming together as a whole. How does this record compare to your other outputs? The album is less "the label" and more "the artist". I would compare it to having a solo exhibition in an art gallery or something. All aspects are important, like the artwork and the concept. Most times people don’t care so much about that stuff but with an album, it’s different. As an artist, you must be used to a stack of music journalists and critics describing your music but how would you describe it? You described it best just now: "fairly playful with tribal/carnival qualities". Brilliant. Growing up in Stockholm, Sweden. How did the city influence you as a producer? Do you think your music might have panned out differently had you been living in let’s say, London or Berlin? Maybe my music would have been more "functional" in I grew up in Berlin, more "floor friendly?" Stockholm gives me darkness and calm. Exceptional stuff to counter-balance with escapist retro disco/house. What does playing for fabric mean to you? What can we expect from your set? I grew up with the fabric mixes! The Andrew Wethereall mix is still my favourite!! or Akufen's maybe? Argh, there’s so many good ones. The club is great, and so big. I love to get lost and that place is great for that. I will be playing with my Studio Barnhus homies, we always bring a broad range of stuff and we're pretty eager to play in London. Expect loads of future releases on Studio Barnhus, some strange house-not-house records and tracks with basslines that’ll make you cry.