Ex-Swedish House Mafia member Steve Angello has been able to curate quite a successful solo career after splitting from the group nearly four years ago. After touring the world and reestablishing himself under a new banner, his debut solo album is finally at our doorstep. Tomorrow, January 22nd, Wild Youth will finally be unveiled in full to his welcoming fanbase, who have been on the edge of their seats for three whole years as Angello scrapped and rewrote large portions of the album. It can be preordered on iTunes here.
In a brief interview with We Got This Covered, Angello described the conception of Wild Youth and why it took so long to be completed.
“I felt that I needed more space in between the music and the visual content. It’s a new time now and people consume music differently than a couple of years ago. Each song tells a story and if you want that to be told you have to give each song its time and space. It’s hard enough to penetrate the masses of information coming though on daily basis. My choice was simple. Let’s give it more time, let’s tell the story the way it was meant to be told.” 
After nearly completing the album once through, Angello unexpectedly decided to start from scratch on half of the included tracks. The reason, he says, stemmed from his own perception of its lack of quality in relation to his production potential.
“I wasn’t satisfied with my creative attribution to the album. It had such an important meaning that I felt like I hadn’t given my all and therefore I scrapped almost of half of the album and re-did most songs. I have 20 years of experience and I want to hear it in the music. Imagine being one of the biggest chefs in the world but you still go work at McDonalds. It’s kind of like that.”
When questioned about the evolution of progressive house, beginning in his days with SHM and transforming over time into its new, modern form, Angello pointed to the prominence of social media as one of its biggest influences.
“I think it’s the social media and the reach music has now that cause all these changes. People don’t know what they are listening to anymore and that’s good and bad. It’s up to us artists to educate the fans. A lot of music today is hard house, but labeled under electronic because some DJ plays it in his set. The issue I’m having is the lack of originality in artists today.”
Finally, and like most interviews with the three DJs, Angello was asked about the possibility of an eventual Swedish House Mafia reunion. He unfortunately said that they had never discussed the idea and had no concrete plans to ever reignite the project. He also said, however, that they hadn’t ever decided not to go on tour again. Looks like, as always, we’ll have to wait and keep our fingers crossed for awhile longer.
“[Laughs] Well, isn’t that part of the mystique surrounding the question and answer – we haven’t discussed it. We haven’t even thought about it. We haven’t said we’ll never tour again, but we also haven’t said we’ll tour again, either. We’ll just have to see what happens.”
To read the full interview, visit We Got This Covered‘s page here.
Source: We Got This Covered
