When the Coronavirus shut us down, clubs and festivals ceased, and everyone was essentially forced inside with no definitive end in sight, DJ Times wondered: How is our tribe coping? How are DJs getting by?
So, we sent out our “Coronavirus Questionnaire” to DJ/producers from all musical genres to find out. During this period, DJ Times will continue presenting the questionnaire responses from talented music-makers from all over the world. Here’s our latest entry, this time from Scandinavia, the Stockholm-based trio Moodshift (aka Lucas Nord, Oliver Nelson and Rasmus Flyckt).
What’s it like where you’re living? How did you spend most of your time? Here in Sweden, we haven’t had any real type of lockdown – but obviously, things have been way different. Most of our time has been spent at home, but we’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time in the studio just the three of us, working away writing and producing.
Did you lose important gigs, or income-producing work? Since we started this project pretty much right when the pandemic hit, it’s hard to say how gigs would’ve looked like for us… so we can’t say we’ve lost any gigs or any type of production work.
Are you doing anything now that can or will produce music-related income? Have you learned anything in the downtime? We’ve just been grinding in the studio pretty much writing new songs and figuring out as much as possible what direction we wanna take, etc. It’s been good for us in that sense that we’ve been able to spend that time on the sound. And hopefully, those songs will generate income further down the line.
What are you doing now that’s ultimately constructive to your music life/career? For example, any releases during this period? Our latest release is “Heartless.” We’ve only released music during this period, which definitely has been interesting and a new experience. Having to fully rely on social media for feedback, rather than being able to play shows or meeting/talking to people in person, has been different for sure. Hopefully, the releases we have now are helping us with getting a bigger crowd to play for when this craziness is over.
In the studio, what’s your set-up? We mainly work in Ableton Live, but record most vocals in Logic – workflow is just way better there for that purpose. Like most people trying it out, we’re in love with [oeksound] soothe2 [dynamic resonance suppressor] – just to take care of those unwanted resonances. In terms of hardware and synths, we use the Prophet and the Udo Super 6 a lot.
What’s your creation process in the studio? I’d say we usually write the song as a traditional pop song most of the time. Just with a piano or guitar and then build the track and production around that and try out different things along the way.
What’s your typical DJ set-up? Just Pioneer DJ CDJs – keeping it simple!
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve realized during this period of social distancing? I think we’ve all realized how much we need other people and how we need real interactions. We no longer take those things for granted. I mean, this is, of course, an extreme situation, but seeing how the lack of interactions and social life has affected our and other peoples’ mental health has been crazy to see and experience.
Have you done anything online recently? Have you seen any DJ video streams that impressed you? We’ve been releasing this weekly mix series called “Moodshift Monday Mix” that we started last year that we now recently started filming. So we’re gonna do that once a month which is really fun. Always love whatever Cercle is posting on YouTube.
Any theme tunes recommended for the moment? I’d recommend our recent single, “Touch.” We’re all really excited about this release.
Any advice on staying sane & relatively positive through this situation? For other DJs and producers, I think it’s the perfect time to just create, create and, create. Hopefully, with that, you’ll feel some positivity because you’ll have something to look forward to. Just visualize the future. I know that might sound cheesy. Just be as ready and prepared as you possibly can when this is all over.
To check out more Life in Lockdown interviews, click here.
DJ Times Magazine is copyright © 2021 by DJ Publishing, Inc. www.djtimes.com
