Gaudium – Confused Miracles – Interview
Gaudium has a new third album just released on Iboga Records. Confused Miracles is a real musical adventure that manages to present a tight package of dancefloor stormers and beautiful melodic compositions. It keeps changing and surprising you, while never letting go for a moment of the trance experience. Already this album is a contender for album of the year for us.
We hooked up via email with the man behind Gaudium, Andreas Wennersköld, to learn a bit about the album.
Listen to a special mega mix of Confused Miracles by Gaudium for Trancentral:
Q: Who is Gaudium? What does the name mean?
A: Gaudium is me Andreas Wennersköld from Sweden, It’s a latin word meaning satisfaction and also what I think music should be.
Q: Do you remember the first party you went to? Any juicy story to share? Were you hooked at once?
A: I don’t remember the name of the party but it was in the forrest outside Gothenburg, not really a juicy story except then that I was way to young to attend to a rave party. Of course I was hook I’m still going to parties!
The approach I had making the album was to go back in time a bit, doing proper recording sessions just pressing rec and tweaking synths instead of sitting in front of the computer trying to make the perfect sounds. Working this way has resulted in many interesting stuff and confused miracles was born.
Q: Tell us a bit about your journey from that party to become Gaudium?
A: It’s a long journey. Ive always been in love with electronic music and always will, it was not just that party that inspired me to start making psytrance music. I started out long before exploring different sonic territories trance, techno, tech, electro. In 2005 me and one of my best friends went to the studio just to hang out and have fun. That resulted in the first Gaudium track to be born. Ever since that I’ve been hooked to make psytrance music in different forms.
Q: New album, 5th one, coming out on Iboga Records – tell us about it
A: It’s a 9 track album, 3 of the tracks are collaborations with my buddies Ticon, Ritmo and Animato. I had so much fun writing all the tracks as I was building up my studio with analog gear again, new stuff in the studio means a lot of inspiration and new possibilities. The album took some time to make but I had so much sonic territories to explore. Also the approach I had making the album was to go back in time a bit, doing proper recording sessions just pressing rec and tweaking synths instead of sitting in front of the computer trying to make the perfect sounds. Working this way has resulted in many interesting stuff and confused miracles was born.
Get Gaudium – Confused Miracles: https://www.beatport.com/release/confused-miracles/2580597
Q: In what way going analog and the current studio setting affected the way the music for the album came out in terms of story and sound? Can you share with us your studio set up?
A: It made everything so much more interesting and fun. It’s like going back in time a bit but being able to benefit all modern tools. When I start a new track I just sit with a synth tweaking it and explore sounds, when something cool comes out I start to record it. After a few hours of recording I have a nice sample bank to start lay out the track in Logic.
I have a few synths:
Roland sh-2
Roland sh101
Korg Mono/Poly
Korg Ms20
ARP odyssey
Dsi prophet rev2
Eurorack system
To name a few then a bunch of hardware processors, sequencers and audio interfaces. Everything in my studio is connected to patchbays so I can send signals wherever I want. That makes the workflow really easy as I never need to connect and disconnect cables. Everything is in sync with the computer so it’s just about pressing play and have fun 🙂
Q: There are rumors that you have another profession apart from playing and making music. Is that true?
A: Yes it is, daytime I do something totally different
Q: What’s your personal ultimate psytrance track?
A: Hard question! theres many tracks but the first one that I think of is The Delta – Pop, classic tech track which is one of my all time favorites
Q: Future plans for Gaudium once the album is out?
A: Already done some new tracks, working on some remixes and new collaborations too. Will be focusing more and more on mastering and mixing, but the best part after the album is that I’m gonna be a father this summer.
You can also listen to the mix on Soundcloud: