Thanks to Swedish House Mafia, it feels like 2010 again.
Back then, electronic dance music was enjoying its heyday. And Swedish House Mafia were emblematic of the scene at the time—cohesive and tight-knit, but combustible and ready to explode. You couldn't go to a music festival without hearing the visceral signature sound of the trio, who dominated the scene like Michael Jordan in Game 6.
Generational anthems like "Miami 2 Ibiza" and "Don't You Worry Child" soundtracked the EDM boom of the early 2010s, a timeframe which Swedish House Mafia conjured with their long-awaited debut album, Paradise Again. Released just days ago, the record functioned as a neurotransmitter, triggering the elusive serotonin rush that fans thought would never happen again after the band's gut-wrenching disbandment in 2013.
In a new interview with Zane Lowe of Apple Music 1, Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso and Steve Angello opened up about those early days and dissected the challenges that come with being the vanguard of a movement. EDM.com is exclusively premiering a clip from the interview today before it airs.
Axwell, Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso of Swedish House Mafia.
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"Everything was new, right? Every day was a new day," Angello says. "Meaning that obstacles that we had, things that we were challenged with. Going into an arena was a challenge. Nobody wanted to put dance music anywhere. We always had huge ambitions. Our goal was always to push boundaries, and how do we go from Brixton to Madison Square Garden?"
But despite the myopia lying underneath the turf of the world's stadiums, the band never lost sight of their ambitions. And after Swedish House Mafia's historic performance at Coachella—a festival that counts Calvin Harris as the only other DJ headliner in the last decade—it's tough to deny their role in ushering in another golden age of EDM.
"We believed so much in ourselves that we never gave up with an idea of opening those doors for our crowd. Put the rave in Madison Square Garden," Angello continues. "Just the conversations with them to book the arena was like a whole movie, because nobody wanted to put the show on. So for us it's like, you go step by step by step, but it's like fires you got to put out everywhere. I think, as much as it's fun, we're just having fun, but our ambitions have always been so big."
Check out the exclusive clip below and watch the full interview at 10AM PT (1PM ET) on Apple Music 1.
