At the tender age of 26, Steve Angello is among the world’s most sought-after house producers, forming part of uber triple-header that is the Swedish House Mafia alongside longterm partner in crime Sebastian Ingrosso along with Axwell. Angello’s collaborations with his compatriot Mafiosi, as well as other house luminaries like Erick Morillo and Laidback Luke, have made him a fixture in the scene in recent years. He’s released records under monikers like Supermode, Buy Now and Who’s Who, not to mention remixing everyone from Justin Timberlake to Royksopp to Moby.

Never one to rest on his laurels, he holds down a ceaseless tour schedule that ensures the sounds of Angello continues to fill dancefloors around the world. On the eve of his third visit down under in as many years as part of the Future Music Festival, Angello tells us why he loves Australia, why reckons illegal downloads pose a threat to the future of dance music, as well as fielding the inevitable questions on that aerophobic friend of his.

Teenage DJs are hardly an anomaly, but Angello’s tale is more touching than most. Born in Stockholm to a Swedish mother and Greek father, Angello spent his summers in Athens growing up, where his father ran nightclubs. “I was running around in nightclubs when I was like 12 and 13 years old so I kinda got into the music in that way”, he explains. His father died in 1996, and in 2001, his stepfather also passed away, rendering the then 16 year old new man of the house. “My mum didn’t have that much money so I had to contribute and support the family”, says Angello of the underage gigs that marked the start of his ascent.

He met Ingrosso when he was just six years old. “I grew up with Seb, he was living like 5 blocks from my house. We both got into music at around the same time and then it just kicked off.” I wonder if, spending so much time together, they ever get sick of each other? “Well, we spend a lot of time away from each other as well. We try to hook up once in a while to keep the friendship close, but recently we’ve been doing a lot of things solo. We try to get to the studio as much as possible. It’s kinda hard though, but you just have to make time.”

Speaking of studios, Angello concedes that not much time was spent within one last year, and declares that 2009 will be a year of production (apart from the occasional Australian music festival, of course). In addition to an upcoming track with Morillo, there’s another one with Axwell and Ingrosso, a Buy Now album a couple of collaborations with big-name bands that are in the pipeline for his Size Records imprint. Though he remains typically hush-hush about who exactly he’s lined up.

“I have like 30 tracks ready to go, but I’m just waiting for the right time,” he told ITM. “The market’s just so bad at the moment. The gigs have been amazing, but record wise… I did this test were I marked one of my records with a digital stamp and put it up on a blog. I had 5,000 downloads in sales but something like 48,500 illegal downloads – that’s a huge difference. If people bought more records we’d have more DJs and more producers and parties, because it all goes hand in hand,” he insists.

“A lot of people can’t make enough money off their music alone, so they have to get a second or third job to support themselves,” he continues. “At the end of the day these people are working their asses off and if they don’t make any money at all, they’ll basically stop making the music. I don’t think that the bloggers and illegal downloaders understand that, they think that we make enough from gigs. But there’s only about a hundred DJs who make any money from gigs. The rest don’t make shit. If you can’t support the future, there isn’t any future, because people are going to stop producing music basically.”

While he’s fighting for the future of dance music, the affable Swede is also happy to speak about another potentially sensitive matter – the fate of his good friend Eric Prydz. Having just spent a week with him in their home town of Stockholm, Angello reassures me that Prydz is OK, but suggests that he probably won’t travel for the rest of the year – not long distances, anyway. “He’d been struggling to fly all through 2008 and had been flying a lot, but lately he just lost it and said fuck it, I’m not going to fly anymore. So he cancelled Miami, cancelled America and Brazil, he cancelled everything this year.” Emboldened by Angello’s openness, I jokingly suggest that Prydz might have simply popped a sedative pre-flight? Angello laughs. “It reminds me of the A-Team, you know when they punched Mr. T in the neck before going on the plane? We were talking about [sedatives] but it doesn’t help, it’s just something that he has to do on his own… and it’s kinda hard.” Nuff said.

Angello, on the other hand, is rather excited about his return to Oz. “I love it there. The people, the food, the climate, the sea. If it wasn’t so far I would definitely move there”, he says. He has fond memories of Summadayze in 2008, saying that, festival wise, Australia is his favourite place to play.

So what can we expect from him at Future Music Festival? “We have a very special set lined up for this year, we’ve been working hard to make something special and unique that the people haven’t heard before. The crowds are amazing over there so if there’s any place you should try something new, it’s Australia.”
Steve Angello will be returning to the “best festival country he’s been to” before the end of the month for Future Music Festival…

Sat 28th Feb – Future Music Festival Sydney
Sun 1st Mar – Future Music Festival, Perth
Sat 7th Mar – Future Music Festival, Brisbane
Sun 8th Mar – Future Music Festival, Melbourne
Mon 9th Mar – Future Music Festival, Adelaide

Keep your eyes on our Festival Page for absolutely everything Future Music Festival, and check out the clip below for a special behind-the-decks view of Angello and his compatriot Ingrosso playing to a rather large crowd…