WOLFGANG GARTNER INTERVIEW

The artist formerly known as Joey Youngman is one of the biggest names in electro with his alter ego Wolfgang Gartner. Responsible for a stream of club hits and remixes (including six Beatport top 10 singles), Gartner is heading to HQ as part of Ministry Of Sound’s Jacked tour. The increasingly popular DJ who successfully merges electro with progressive and indie dance speaks to Onion.

Are you looking forward to another Australian tour?

Absolutely. Australia is such a dance music-friendly country and the crowds are always up for it.

You’ve said the secret of Wolfgang Gartner’s success simply relates to the beat and the bass coupled with your experience. But have you surprised yourself how the hits have been coming one after the other?

I may have been selling myself a bit short there. The thing that has probably allowed my tracks to be enjoyed by general audiences and not just the DJ/club crowd is the melodic and hook aspect of some of them. The beats and bassline are the foundation, and have to be strong, but I've done a few things that were pretty catchy (or at least that's what they tell me) and that has helped move things beyond the underground.



In a recent interview you said that you would either keep releasing on Kindergarten and put out singles like you have been doing or you will sign with a label and release an album. Has there been a decision yet regarding the album?

No, still looking at options there. It will be singles still for a while. I think I prefer that anyway, rather than spending a year working on an album and by the end of it the material all sounds stale.  

Also in that interview you said with your label you could make a track, master it and then release it almost straight away. Does that artistic power excite you?

For sure, and whenever I occasionally do something for another label like a remix for example, I am reminded of the insanely long lag-time from production to actual release, and it makes me so glad I have this instant option at my fingertips.

You spoken out with regards to blogs uploading your tracks and people stealing your songs. Have you used a company like Ripblock to sweep the blogs? And do you have any answers to what can be done to protect artists and labels from illegal downloading especially relating to the dance scene?

I did use Ripblock for one thing yeah, not sure how much it helped, they took down a lot but there were still loads of links giving it away. I think the only way around it is to have somebody whose full-time job is removal of tracks from blogs. A few of the big labels do this and it works. But it's not quite worth it to me to pay somebody a full time salary just for my releases! The blogs don't even really bother me that much anymore to be honest, it's when they just post a link to download without even talking about the release or giving it credit, that's when it bothers me.

With DJing you look to the indie dance section with more rock electro type beats before re-editing them to fit your style. You’ve name checked a few Australian acts in interviews before such as Bag Raiders and Midnight Juggernauts. When you are in Australia do you get a chance to check these acts out and the scene in Oz?

I am all over the genre spectrum when it comes to my DJ sets, but yes I do source quite a bit of music from what is called ‘indie dance’. Haven’t had chances to check out live performances or sets from any of those guys yet. The problem is that when I come down there, I have to play almost every night, so there's not really down time. I get a few days off in the middle but I have to catch up on email and sleep then!

You took a break from remixes to concentrate on your productions. Recently you’ve had two big name remixes with MSTRKRFT and John Legend’s Heartbreaker as well as Timbaland and Nelly Furtardo’s Morning After Dark. Have you got more remixes lined up?

Those and the Britney Spears remix were the most recent big ones yes, nothing else remix-wise that's lined up to be out. A couple of collaborations that I'm really excited about though.  



You live in Austin, Texas, which I guess from an outsider’s point of view seems like a very rock’n’roll town. I know you DJ a lot of tunes with a rock feel but do you source a lot of inspiration from rock and the music scene in Austin?

Austin is not like the rest of Texas - thankfully.  It's the only sane place in Texas in my opinion, a little pocket of hipsters and college kids among a state of cowboys and pickup truck drivers! It's definitely geared more for the live music/rock scene, which basically means that I just don't go out at night here. But when I've got a weekend off at home, the last thing I want to do is be in a club anyway. To be honest California is my real home, it's where I'm from and where I'll be moving back to soon, I just happened to end up here in Austin for a few years.  

Finally, what’s coming up for you that we should all know about?

I've got a new release coming in February on my label Kindergarten (a preview of the song is on my MySpace player myspace.com/djwolfganggartner) and is currently untitled.  And a few very exciting collaborations that I'm not supposed to be revealing yet but are sounding huge. Expect my sound in 2010 to be pretty different from last year too; I am changing things up a bit with the new stuff I'm working on. It will still be Wolfgang, just a slightly different direction.

David Knight

Wolfgang Gartner plays HQ on Mon Jan 25 with Afrojack and Hardwell.

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