Swedish Dreams : Interview with Tooli of Local Talk
local talk
The Stockholm dj scene comes to Montreal with label Local Talk appearing at Le Bleury-Bar à Vinyle. I interviewed Tooli, who runs the Swedish label Local Talk with Mat Mats.
Rachel Levine (RL): Who runs Local Talk and how did it get started? Were you both dj-ing in Stockholm or elsewhere? Do either of you still DJ or are you primarily in production and promotion now?
Tooli (T): Local Talk is myself (Tooli) and my colleague Mad Mats. We started working together late 2010 and around summer 2011 we had the first release out.
Both of us have been DJing and doing parties for many years. Mats started DJing in ’85, I started a bit later, but we still play, and love it. We play on our own and also do Local Talk doing label nights and play with artists on the label. Besides DJing there’s of course work on the the labels, Local Talk being the main one. We have an office so we work Monday to Friday with the labels and then play on weekends. The little time that’s left, I tend to work on some music, produce and remix so there’s some music out and more to come soon hopefully.
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RL: Who will be coming to Montreal on behalf of Local Talk? What kind of vibe and music should we expect?
T: It’s both of us, we couldn’t have it any other way ;). We’ll bring plenty of good vibes, play house music, music that will put a smile on your face and keep you dancing until the early morning.
RL: How does Local Talk find its artists?
T: In the beginning we did most of the search ourselves, searching both through the internet and talking to friends we knew that made music. These days we get a lot sent on a daily basis. It’s producers from all around the world, but we also have a number or artists signed to the label that make music for us.
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RL: Can you tell me a bit more about One Offs? I’m interested in how the music under the One Offs sub-label is different from what is usually occurs on Local Talk.
T: OneOffs started as a project when we got a lot of music sent from producers that had made one track and didn’t have any other tracks at the moment. The usual way is to have two or three tracks on an EP, but since we had all the good tracks we thought “Why not make a little compilation series?” So we put together four volumes with music which ended up pretty neat. There’s a little bit of everything really. At the moment we’ve decided to put it on hold and focus on Local Talk but you never know. It might return next year.
RL: What do you think makes House Music so appealing?
T: It’s a spiritual thing, a body thing, a soul thing.
RL: How would you categorize Sweden’s (or Stockholm) electronic music community?
T: There’s a scene, not big but it’s there. There are many people playing music but perhaps not that many DJs and techno has been the flavor of the month for a while now.
Hopefully you caught Mad Mats and Tooli at Bleury-Bar à Vinyle on Sept 18 at 10 p.m. $15.
