For his 14th show, Leuven based artist & WAV host Max invited Prins Emanuel (Fasaan rec, MFD, Sweden) for a guest mix. Last month Prins Emanuel released his 3rd album on the JJ Funhouse imprint and it’s much recommended. So we jumped on this occasion to ask him a few questions since we’re big fans of his productions. Special s/o to Max to set this up.
WAV: “Can you introduce yourself in 2-3 lines?”
PE: “I’m a music maker / organizer and DJ from Malmö. I run the Fasaan Rec and Ny Agenda labels.”
WAV: “Your latest record was released on the JJ Funhouse label. It’s a very beautiful piece of work and I would recommend to listen to it in one take. My personal favourite is the last track on the album ‘Principen’. I’m curious if it was a difficult one to record or was it more like an advantage because you had more time due to the isolation thing & the lack of touring last year.”
PE: “Recording an album is really difficult for me. The challenge is to find the most interesting ratio between consistency, playfulness and chance. A lot of the sequences in these songs are recorded in one take with a lot of ’flaws’ which kind of built the structure dynamics of the songs intuitively. This method is something kind of new for me. The isolation definitely helped me finalizing it.”
WAV: “How do you choose the labels you work with? You released records on Music For Dreams, Fasaan , Nosejob (also a Belgian label) & now JJ Funhouse (from Antwerp).”
PE: “Basically I have been approached by them. Jj has always been a very consistent and playful label with an output I’ve always enjoyed, so I was really happy to get the suggestion of doing something by Joke. MFD has given me total creative freedom and has a structure of a bigger label which is very helpful if you partially live off your music. I’m really thankful to everyone who thinks my music is worth releasing. Fasaan is my own label that I co-run with Inre Kretsen Grupp and Golden Ivy so that’s that :).”
WAV: ‘You also have regular shows on Retreat Radio & Dublab.de. Tell us a bit about Retreat Radio and the vibe of your shows on that station.”
PE: ‘Retreat is a great local initiative that has gathered and helped develop the ’underground’ music scene here. The idea is to play music mostly for listening. So, yeah thinking about it, there is no real idea except from playing the music I love. I also get to invite guests. This is something I’ve been wanting to do again since the Wildlife Radio days.’
WAV: “I’ve been a big fan of Wildlife Records in Sweden (the record store, community hub & radio). I discovered quite some good artists through it like Danza, Johannes Kjellgrën, you, etc …. What happened to it and how important was it for you & the scene over there. ”
PE: ‘Basically, we didn’t have time. It grew a bit too much but was never profitable enough to support five people financially, which maybe isn’t a surprise to anyone. Wildlife was and is really important to me personally. For the scene, I don’t know. I know that a few people have expressed that our parties meant a lot and for that I am really happy!’
WAV: “You recorded a guest mix for Max his Distant Dreams show which we broadcast this Monday. If you had to explain the vibe from the show via a phrase or description. How would it look like?”
PE: “The basic idea was that I wanted to feature the Lasse Englund record (listed below) and I improvised from that.”
WAV: “Can you pick one favourite record from the mix & tell us something about it?”
PE: Lasse Englund: “Anchor”, it’s an amazing guitar based record apart from one or two cheesy tracks. It’s released on the local Amalthea label, named after the historically important (for Malmö, that is) Amalthea bombings.
WAV: ‘Thank you so much and we hope we’ll see you soon in Belgium for a gig or live show’
[Interview by Fred Nasen (WAV)]