#003: viagra boys & kite producer daniel fagge fagerström: “I love freaks”.

📸 by Axel Bauer.

During his 15+ year long career, Swedish producer Daniel Fagge Fagerström have explored dark and distorted soundscapes with bands like Viagra Boys, Kite, Provoker and many more. Aux Haus had a nice, lengthy chat with him about his love for The Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann, odd sounding 90’s rack effects – and freaks.

Looking at your Instagram, you have a lot of tube microphones, tape echoes and other old, cool stuff. Where does the love for analogue things originate?
It started when I was like 12 or 13 years old. I got this old double cassette deck amplifier recording device with a microphone and guitar input and realized I could overdub myself and just started making songs. Years later I borrowed a 4-track from a friend and was amazed by the amazing opportunities of overdubbing. But I’m not a purist, I don’t shame anyone who’s not into gear, because I genuinely think it’s a bit dorky.

I also saw on your IG that you have the same Roland Chorus Echo RE-501 as I do.
Yeah I have five tape echoes and I use them a lot, but not always as echoes, I just run stuff through them, using the tape sound, in combination with other effects. But I honestly have more love for like the 90’s rack effects that I’ve only really discovered these past five years or so. So although they sound a bit odd, mostly because of terrible sample rate, it’s a fucking awesome sound!

What’s the most fun piece of music equipment that you own? 
Right now it’s a MXR Pitch Transposer. I’ve been on the hunt for that one for a long time. And the Lexicon Vortex. It’s this really weird modulation effect from the mid 90’s that nobody wanted up until a few years ago, that lets you morph between two different effects. There’s something about the modulation in the Vortex that’s really exciting.

Wanna know what the Lexicon Vortex sounds like? YouTube has the answer!

Is there a red thread between all the people you produce, like personality wise? What kind of people are they? 
I mean, I like people who are a bit weird. It’s exciting to meet people who have a different view on music or production than me. But there has to be something I can latch onto. That’s why I can’t take on every request. I love freaks, people who just do stuff and don’t spend too much time thinking about why they’re doing it. 

You’ve produced Viagra Boys. Tell me about that experience!
It was their label Year0001 who asked if I wanted to work with Viagra boys. I had a meeting with them and they explained how they wanted to make a “weird hit record”. The second they said that I knew it was right for me. They turned out to be freaks too!

You recorded their second album “Wellfare Jazz” too, right?  
Yeah, after the first record the process got way more drawn-out. Me and Pelle (Gunnerfeldt, editor's note) recorded and produced it together, we had two separate studios in the same space going simultaneously. It’s cool because everyone in the band is so in tune with each other. They all have their quirks and superpowers, they’re like X-Men but in a really strange shrimp world.

Haha yeah, they feel sort of messy, but very chill?
Well, they’re just freaks living very much outside the everyday world. But at the same time they’re extremely sensible, with quite ordinary lives.  

The amazing video for “Sports” by Viagra Boys. Music produced by Fagge Fagerström.

What was it like having Matt Sweeney on the same production?
Viagra Boys recorded with him at Electric Lady Studios in New York. There are still some unreleased tracks from that session that’ll probably end up on a vinyl box set in like 25 years or something. I can tell he’s a lovely character though we haven’t worked in the same room ever. His way of approaching producing feels very inspiring, the way he always plays with the band he’s working with. He just seems like a music lover!

You’ve also worked with Kite, what was that like?
I was super happy when they asked. Kite really are an extremely fun band to work with, they’re incredibly close-knit, it’s only been those two guys for years and years. And they’re really into sound, how things should feel in a certain way. The process was very much about fine tuning all the synth sounds and finding the right texture. The songs went through a lot of different phases and lots of tracks were removed before we got to the core.

Talking to you I sort of imagine you having four full rooms of vinyl records at home.
Haha well sort of. But I’ve split it up in two different rooms. I’ve also sold a lot of records these past years, it makes the collection better. Now I maybe have 1000 LP’s or so.

That’s quite a lot still. I hope you’re not planning on moving anytime soon?
We moved like one and a half years ago, it wasn’t super fun. I don’t know, it’s kind of boring to have a lot of vinyl, it makes you feel like a really really old man.

But isn’t it nice to just embrace the old man inside of yourself?
Well sure, but I’m really not a nostalgic person. Maybe I should be, but I don’t like old stuff per se. 

Your sound seems to be inspired by music from the 70’s and 80’s. Still, you’re not nostalgic about that sound?
Well maybe I am a bit nostalgic then haha. I’m mostly drawn to late 70’s, early 80’s music, from progressive, to industry, Throbbing Gristle and anything that Brian Eno has been involved with, from Roxy Music and onwards. It’s close to my heart, so it’s easy for me to end up there.

Do you remember the first song you ever produced?
I was working with Jenny Wilson in like 2010, we were doing music for a dance performance. I remember her saying ”we’re producers, we’re producing these pieces of music”. That was sort of an eye opener, like “oh shit, maybe I am a producer”. I didn’t think I was ever gonna work in music. I didn’t even know you could work as a producer. I only realized that like “wait, this is what I’ve alway been doing”. Because in every band I’ve ever been in when I was younger, I’ve always had all these thoughts about how stuff should feel and sound. After I worked on the music with Jenny, people started asking if I could produce their records, and I was like “well yeah, maybe I can!”.  

What’s your favorite sound?
Wow, that’s hard! I’d say the sound of a beautiful synth pad, recorded really loud to a worn out and fucked up old tape. That saturated and broken sound really speaks to me! 

I feel like you would be great at writing film music or rather music for horror films. Is that something you’ve ever considered? 
Yeah, I’ve done some scoring for film and I’m actually working on music for a horror movie right now! It feels totally right. I love Moroder and Vangelis. It’s a cliché that the Blade Runner soundtrack is fucking amazing, but there’s really no way around it. I’m also a huge fan of Mica Levi, they’re probably the best one around scoring right now.

You strike me as being very curious, have you always been that way? 
I think so, yes.

Where does that come from? 
I’m a very positive person, for me the glass is always half full. That also means I’m curious about a lot of things. My starting point is always that something is good. If someone says “I think we should throw out all guitars and record them again” I say “great, let’s do it!”. I think it’s important to go into any idea like it’s the absolute best idea ever. Saying “no” rarely leads to something new.   

That’s a great way of looking at things, I honestly wish I had a little bit more of that. Which record do you wish that you had produced?  
I wish I had my name on “The Soft Bulletin” by The Flaming Lips. When I first heard it I was like “damn, so this is what music can sound like!”. Then I’ve read up on everything about Dave Fridmann, his philosophy and way of working. I’ve always looked up to him as a producer. Then there are albums that I wish I had produced because then I would’ve taken the music in another direction. But maybe that’s sensitive, so let’s leave it haha.  

When I was 17, playing in a band, I never wanted to leave the rehearsal space. But as I got older I sort of lost that fire. Are you still as enthusiastic about making music as ever? 
I really remember that feeling from when I was 14-15, of being in a rehearsal space, never wanting to go home. But I still look forward to every day I can go to the studio and do this thing that I love so much. Not everyone can do this for a living, but for some weird reason I can, and I’m very grateful for that. But it’s important to not work long days. A lot of people are in the studio from 12PM to 12AM, that doesn’t work for me, it drains me of all my inspiration. I work really hard from 9AM to 4PM and then I go home.       

Tell me about Zone Music, your own music project!
When I work in the studio and I bounce tracks or whatever, there’s all this time that I’ve had to spend doing something else. So I’ve started recording stuff that I play to learn new things, to find new timbres or to connect different effects. It’s a byproduct of other things. The songs have to be at least 10 minutes long and they’re very static. It’s really not that important if anyone hears it or not. My dream is for it to be on Spotify but you can only play every song once, that would’ve been great for that project.   

It sounds more like an ongoing art piece? 
Yeah, but it’s free from any concepts. I don’t have any desire for the music to make people think or feel any special way, I just want people to listen to it IF they feel like it. It’s more about me developing new skills. Sort of a self help thing haha. 

You had a song featured in the Super Bowl, how did that happen? 
That’s right! It was for a commercial for Polestar (the Swedish electric car company, editor´s note.) I had done a song for one of their commercials a couple of years earlier, and later on when they were making the ad spot for Superbowl, they wanted that original piece of music. So I had to cut it down from 40 to 30 seconds. It was an incredibly long and difficult process but the end result was very nice. All the other car commercials had like Austin Powers and different celebrities, this one was this really hard, black and white one with text and close ups of the car, sort of shaming Elon Musk.

The Super Bowl commercial for Polestar, with music by Daniel Fagge Fagerström.

Did you watch it live? 
No but I saw the reactions afterwards, that was a lot of fun. It’s a great way to be seen. And a great thing to display, like “look mum, I made it”. It’s not as fun playing Zone Music to your mother haha. 

Yeah maybe that’s not quite as impressive haha. Ok well I think that’s it! 
I just gotta say one thing. I read the interview with Joel Sjöö and he said he doesn’t like presets. I just wanna say that I love presets and I want people to know that. A preset is a Japanese man that has been sitting in a factory working hard to create the perfect sound that’ll showcase this synthesizer or whatever. I love using presets, it’s always someone who has thought about the sounds in a way I never would’ve. Anyway, I hope this turns out to be this huge producer beef haha.