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 i:Vibes had the opportunity to speak to the German trance star Ronski Speed...!
Ronski Speed About To Release Debut Album...
Ever since the massive success of ‘I’m Alone’ aka Sun Decade in 2003, Ronski Speed has been a household name in the trance scene. He started his musical career in 1997 and quickly became a part of the Euphonic label family. It didn’t take him long to experiment with sounds, because he quickly showed his unending talent with one his first remixes of Sonorous - Glass Garden and Ralphie B - Massive with Mirco de Govia, which was one of the big summer trance hits in 2001 as well as co producing another big hit in 2001, ‘Epic Monolith’ with Mirco De Govia. In 2003, after some years with monumental success as a producer, he released his first track as Ronski Speed called ‘Iris’. He started to focus also on DJing and quickly got gigs all over the world. On the production side, he released ‘EOS’ and the second Sun Decade ‘I Will Follow You’, which were greeted with positive feedback. At the end of 2004, he also cracked the DJ Mag Top 100 at #83 for the first time. In 2005, on account of his continued massive success as a producer, he got to visit many new countries as a DJ and preformed at the Love Parade in Acapulco, Mexico and at Germany’s biggest Rave, Nature One. He produced the Euphonic classic tune ‘Asarja’ with Mirco de Govia and also ‘Incognition’ together with Stoneface & Terminal, which became one of the biggest progressive tunes in 2005. 2006 was another busy year, with first rate productions like ‘The Space We Are’ as Ronski Speed and the third Sun Decade single ‘Have It All’. He also preformed in the far east for the first time and ended the year back in the DJ Mag top 100 at #87. Last year, he started taking his sound in a different direction with ‘Stormbound’ as RST and released ‘The Prespective Space’ with Rex Mundi giving the word progressive a new definition. He also released the vocal smasher with Julie Scott, ‘Love All The Pain Away’, showing a new fascination for vocals. He ended the year cruising up the DJ Mag top 100 landing at #44. This year, he visited exciting new countries like Argentina, Moldavia and Japan, played at the German Mayday and is focusing on the release of his debut album. i:Vibes had the chance to chat with the German Trance hero...
i:Vibes: Hi Ron, thanks for taking a moment out of your busy schedule to talk to i:Vibes. You have been producing music now successfully since 2000. Did you ever think in 2000, that you would have such a big impact on the trance scene as a producer and have played all over the world by the year 2008?
Ronski Speed: Hi, definitely not. In the beginning I worked only in the background with other Euphonic artists like Sonorous and Mirco de Govia. Together we developed some cool sounds. I wrote and produced with these guys together and we were so happy to be part of the scene and being recognized by DJs like PvD, Ferry, Armin and Tiesto. In 2003 everything was changing after releasing Sun Decade’s ‘I’m Alone’. Suddenly there were so many remix requests for Ronski Speed, this year was absolutely massive and I started travelling around the world and more and more people wanted to listen to my music, which is great.
i:Vibes: What was your childhood like in East Germany? What acts from the 90s inspired you as a producer and DJ?
Ronski Speed: My childhood in East Germany was great, but unfortunately it was pretty hard to get all the music I wanted. Mostly I taped tracks from the radio on a cassette-recorder. Many 80s bands inspired me like the Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Depeche Mode and New Order. When it comes to electronic music for sure acts like Chicane, Paul van Dyk, Inner City, Cosmic Baby, Way Out West and BT.
i:Vibes: You started producing music in 1997. When exactly did you join Euphonic and can you remember your first meeting with Ralph Kyau? What can you remember from this time?
Ronski Speed: A Friend of mine introduced me to this guys and like everybody knows Ralph Kyau is a very nice person and easy to talk with. He and Steven were starting their label Euphonic and were searching for producers and acts. I also met Mirco de Govia who was developing his new sound and Marc Marberg. What I definitely remember was that they had weird haircuts! Ralph and Steve had long hair and were looking like a rock band. I was afraid! Haha!
i:Vibes: Euphonic is a tight knit family, that has only a small number of artists in their catalogue. Euphonic has belonged to the top German trance labels for years. What makes this label so unique?
Ronski Speed: This is quite hard to say in a few words. Mainly all the artists made the label strong, also the co-operations, the quality of the music and sometimes new ideas of sounds. Tony McGuinness from Above & Beyond said about Euphonic last year: “Euphonic don't want to be the biggest label in Germany, they just want to be the best: I love that about them. They aren't VW, they're Porsche.” He got the point. It was always important to have a focus on the quality and the artist, instead of the quantity. But also Euphonic has to follow the rules of the new world. The internet has changed so many things in the past few years. The business was becoming harder, everybody is running a label, but to do good business and have good contacts, is much more important these days.
i:Vibes: You have been at Euphonic from the beginning, but somehow it seems like when the word Euphonic is said, one thinks of Kyau & Albert. Mirco de Govia received cult status after many big hits in 2001-2003, plus his legendary album ‘Chronoscale’. Stoneface & Terminal have been having huge success the last few years. You seem to be somewhat of an unsung hero, you produce hit after hit, play around the world, but sometimes it seems like you should be getting more recognition for your work. Is this something that bothers you or are you happy just to go out and do your job without having this big cult status like a Paul van Dyk?
Ronski Speed: I’m really glad and respect the success of the other guys, as we all work together. I really love to play out the Euphonic stuff which is always top notch. I’m working into other businesses too, not only in electronic music. So it is absolutely OK for me to have my status and being respected as I am.
i:Vibes: You have produced hit after hit for so many years. It surely doesn’t get any easier making new hits. Do you feel more pressure now than say 2003-2004, where you were less known than now?
Ronski Speed: This is true, these days the people are looking very sceptically on every track and remix you’re doing. They always expect something you did before. That’s why I’m very happy to do the album to show a bigger variety of styles.
i:Vibes: ‘I’m Alone’ from Sun Decade stands as a trance classic. What was your inspiration behind this track? Do you remember what the most difficult thing was in getting this track perfect in the studio?
Ronski Speed: I was working very long on this track and then showed a preview version to Mirco de Govia when we visited the Love Parade in Berlin in 2001. He loved it. Then we did some vocals with this great singer called Devia Lea in a rented studio in Dessau, Germany. Mirco made a great remix of it and shortly before releasing it, I was sitting in the studio and developing the Ronski Speed remix with a new main theme. We gave it to Paul van Dyk and he made it into one of the absolute club hits of the year 2003. Everything was pretty confusing as the white labels were already pressed by Euphonic without my new remix and everybody was hooking up on the Ronski Speed remix. Finally the vinyl masters were cut again with my new mix. So whenever you have a white label in your case with the original mixes of ‘I’m Alone’ - it is really rare, because they were never released.
i:Vibes: You had a lot of success in the first years with Sun Decade, The ‘Massive’ remix, or the co production with Mirco de Govia ‘Epic Monolith’. What are your nicest memories of this time? What has changed the most in the dance scene in the last years that you have noticed?
Ronski Speed: I really loved the good and clear productions of that time. Today it seems that many upcoming producers are not taking enough time to get everything perfect. Just using 1 preset a million times. Some tracks even have good melodies but the production lacks. Today I get hundreds of releases and demos every month and there’s so much crap. I remember the ‘Epic Monolith’ track very well. Mirco has produced a new version of the original compilation version. During a label meeting he was showing it to the guys from the Euphonic family and everybody said, that Mirco should work on new stuff and leave ‘Epic Monolith’ behind. Then I asked Mirco for the parts and worked on the track. The result was the version we all know. After that we saw that this co-operation should be kept for a while as there came so many requests for Mirco de Govia remixes and tracks. In 2005 we finished our collaborations with the track ‘Asarja’. Two years ago Mirco and his family moved to another city and there is no time anymore for collaborations. His main job is in the computer business and he just does music for fun.
i:Vibes: Since 2005, you have slowly changed your sound more in a progressive direction, but haven’t lost your ability for making first class tracks. Since your latest release ‘The Prespective Space’, the fans have received a totally new Ronski Speed. What were the main reasons for taking your sound to a different sound level?
Ronski Speed: After a while producing the same sound you get bored of it and as a producer you want to find new challenges. That does not mean that I don’t produce uplifting and melodic sounds anymore. To build a new sound with new inspirations is my aim.
i:Vibes: How have the fans taken your sound change? Do you think the majority have accepted the new sound? What are the reactions at the gigs when you speak to them?
Ronski Speed: Some people always missing the old sound but I won a lot of new fans with tracks like ‘The Space We Are’ or ‘All The Way’. The business is very fast. Many people only remember your latest stuff. You have to convince the people all the time. To sit down and say “Hey we sold 10,000 copies of a vinyl in 2001” is lame. Moving forward is the slogan.
i:Vibes: When listening a few times closely to ‘Love All The Pain Away’, I get the sense that this is a very complex track sound wise that surely wasn’t easy to make. Was this a track that was really difficult to make?
Ronski Speed: Yes, I worked on my album already in the last year and made this track a special version you will hear on the album. Ralph Kyau and Steven Moebius Albert were listening to it while a meeting and said they needed a new single from me. So I decided to re-create the slow original version with a new more danceable beat. The track works very well on the floor.
i:Vibes: How was the collaboration with Rex Mundi for ‘The Perspective Space’? What did you learn from Rex Mundi?
Ronski Speed: This was no real collaboration as Markus Schulz came up with the idea of mashing 2 tracks up. The mash-up between Rex Mundi’s track ‘Perspective’ and my ‘The Space We Are’ worked very well. And everybody wants a copy of it. Armin, Carl Cox & Markus were hammering it for over a year. Armada cleared the rights and released it on Coldharbour Recordings. That’s it. We all have to thank Markus Schulz.
i:Vibes: You now finished your solo album. What can we expect from this album? Will it showcase more your current sound or can we hear some uplifting and melodic sounds?
Ronski Speed: The album will consist of two CDs. The first CD contains ambient, break beats, electro and progressive trance sounds. A new version of ‘The Space We Are’ with a kind of rock music beat. The original version of ‘Love All the Pain Away’ and a bunch of new songs with talented singers from all over the world. I believe many people will be surprised by this. The second CD will contain brand new club tracks and uplifting new trance tracks. I hope the people will like the combination of different sounds as I didn’t want to make a kind of track after track dance album. I wanted to make it interesting to listen to and send the listener on a journey. I liked the progression of old Chicane and Way Out West albums. I wanted to create something similar in 2008 style.
i:Vibes: Your colleague Mirco de Govia released his solo album a few months ago. Did you produce some tracks with him for his album? Can you give a hint about the tracks you produced with him?
Ronski Speed: As I said before we stopped working together in 2005. ‘Asarja’ was the last track we did together. We both were very busy in producing our albums. Sometimes we were sitting together and showing the other our works to each other. I gave him some tips for the arrangement of the album and some tracks. He gives me his opinion about my stuff. Maybe sometime in the future we will cross paths and work on something brand new. We regularly meet each other at Euphonic meetings or BBQs. So we will see!
i:Vibes: You produced tracks with Mirco de Govia in the past. It is difficult to imagine how two sound wizards like you and Mirco would work in the studio. How did that work in the past? Who is responsible for what in the studio when a track is being made?
Ronski Speed: Usually Mirco came up with the main idea and a bunch of lines and sounds. In our old studio we optimised it and made DJ-friendly versions.
What other releases can we await from you in 2008?
Ronski Speed: The album is the main thing and is now ready for release. I am really happy about it. I will start with some interesting remix works soon. In the back of my mind there is also maybe the possibility of doing a new Sun Decade record. We’ll see!
You have been playing extensively all around the world for quite a few years now. In 2008, you had many gigs in the USA as well as Japan. After so many years touring, are you still as excited as in the beginning? Besides seeing the fans, what is the biggest thing you enjoy on the road?
Ronski Speed: Absolutely! It is always nice and you always meet new people and see new places. That’s amazing. To see the people reacting to your music is always a blast. Japan, Indonesia, Moldavia and Argentina were brand new experiences in the past. I know that this is a dream for every DJ to play around the world. I’m able to live it.
i:Vibes: A few months ago, you played for the first time in Argentina. What kind of experience was that and what did you like most about the country?
Ronski Speed: The gig was absolutely amazing. I had some problems with the time change and everything was very hectic before the gig. But the crowd was really great.
i:Vibes: You played at Mayday in Germany. How was that experience for you?
Ronski Speed: I played 1 hour on the main floor. Sound and light were amazing. The audience was great. This was definitely a dream come true after once visiting Mayday before as a guest.
i:Vibes: When you have a free day, how do you like to spend it the most?
Ronski Speed: When I’m relaxing in summer I like to relax a bit in the sun, listening to music and reading or doing nothing. I also love watching movies or TV series like ‘House’ the good old dickhead!
i:Vibes: If you had to choose between ‘Epic Monolith’ and your ‘Massive’ remix, what track would you end your DJ set with?
Ronski Speed: ‘Epic Monolith’, that’s really a masterpiece.
i:Vibes: Thanks Ron for the interview and good luck with the new album!!!
Ronski Speed: Thanks!
Grab signed Ronski Speed CDs at http://www.shop.euphonic.de/
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