EDM Life: We’re here with Thomas Gold prior to your show tonight in Hollywood. You just passed the halfway point on your ‘On Fire’ tour with mainly nightclubs you’ve been playing. How has the tour been going so far?
Thomas Gold: It’s been going amazing. I had a bunch of like really great shows and it’s really cool to see how excited people are for the music and for ‘On Fire’ and when they show up and how crazy everybody goes. It’s really been a great tour so far.
EDM Life: Sounds great! As part of the tour you have the vocalist, Rico and Miella who sing on your single ‘On Fire’. The song definitely has a kind of like a big room feel to it. How would you say the crowd reaction has been when the singers came out and you did the song live?
Thomas Gold: We’ve done it twice already in D.C. and in Miami and it was amazing. It’s mainly Miella performing live and Rico is more in the background, he is kind of like checking the sound. But she’s amazing on stage and I was really impressed by her performance and how she connects with the crowd and then how good she connects with the room and everything. It’s really awesome. I can’t wait for tonight because tonight we have a big stage and I just saw it and she can really do her thing there.
EDM Life: Was that something you worked on together in the studio? With all of the long distance producing going on now…
Thomas Gold: We haven’t been in studio together but we have been in close contact as these guys are very like-minded in a way as well and they were involved in the music production a lot as well. So we did everything together, the vocal and the music and we fired the ideas back and forth and we worked on both these versions, on the club version and on the radio version very intensely together and it was really cool. I really appreciate what these guys are doing.
EDM Life: We noticed that along with On Fire, about every 2 or 3 months in the past year you’ve had a single coming out. Is there some sort of new album project you’re working on you can kind of tell us about a little bit?
Thomas Gold: Yes, there is an album coming out. It’s my first album ever so I’m really excited about the whole thing. And I’m taking a different approach. It’s not going to be an EDM album, it’s more like a dance-pop-based album and the interesting and exciting thing for me is that every song in the album will be based on a real song, on a vocal, on a more like pop vocal and then I put production around that. I just got back from a bunch of vocal writing sessions – back in January we had around 14 sessions in a row every day, with different people in the studio and that was so cool, so creative. I’m meeting all these people and I’m following up right now on all these projects and I have like a ton of good ideas right now for the album. And it’s hard to pick the ones who actually will make it. But that’s a luxury problem I think and I can’t wait to get back in the studio after the tour where I like I’m going to lock myself in for a couple of weeks and just produce music.
EDM Life: And is that studio back in Berlin or…?
Thomas Gold: Yes – Berlin-based.
EDM Life: One question we were wondering about is that the music reputation of Berlin and Germany in general is that it’s more techno underground music and your music is sort of different. So how would you say the people in the US versus in Germany see your music – do you see a difference in the reaction with the fans here and there for what you play?
Thomas Gold: At the moment you can see a difference coming up and the music scene is shifting right now. For example Europe is all about deep house and kind of like the old schoolish groovier stuff and America is more like going into let’s say trap and bass music a lot. EDM is slowing down and house is coming up. And even the old school house is getting bigger right now.
So both parts of the world and Asia are still picking up on EDM but they have their own stuff as well. So every continent is different right now. But talking about Germany or even Berlin in Germany has a very special position. It’s different from all the rest of Germany when you look at the music because we have this big techno and minimal scene. Which is quite old and then it has grown over the years and they’re really like trying to keep it going as it is, keep it as it is and I love it. And because whenever I have time in Berlin I want to go out and hang out with friends at clubs. And I love to listen to all these DJs. And most of them I don’t even know their names because they have all these young guys coming up. But it’s amazing to see different stars and I mean Berlin is always very chill and very cool. So it’s very cool to get out and spend some time going out to clubs.
EDM Life: That’s a great take on the differences between here (USA) and there versus the crowd and in the music. Now back to your music: last October you finally released your track ‘Never Alone’ which you did with Deniz Koyu… originally it had the different name of ‘Torn Apart’ and it was usually shown as ‘ID’ on the set lists online. Why did that take 3 years to actually finally get released?
Thomas Gold: In the beginning it was called ‘Torn Apart’ and it was written by Adrian Lux. And he just put it out on Axetone actually a couple of months ago and they just released some remixes. So Adrien had given us the vocal which was called ‘Torn Apart’ and then we worked on a track and we were actually planning to release it on Axetone and Axwell told us he would love to do that.
And it took us a while to find the right and final version of the track. Deniz and me worked a lot in the studio together and we actually sat down in the studio. We spent like – I don’t know like 6-7-8 days, pure days just in the studio like in different sessions in Miami, in his studio, in my studio. But at the end Adrien decided to put this track out by himself so he actually took it away from us. And we were not too happy about that but at that time we already had like tweaked the melody of the track and the groove and the rhythmic lines of the vocal. So that we could easily get another singer, get another lyric line on top of that and then we took it that direction.
EDM Life: So the song sort of actually split in two.
Thomas Gold: Yeah, exactly. We created something new out of it and so there’s no similarities anymore and the vibe is totally different from what Adrian did with the track. And at the end we ended up in good terms. I talk to him a lot and so we cleared things up and everybody has his own track now. And Deniz and me we were actually quite happy with the final version of the final, final version. But it took so long.
EDM Life: That’s a very interesting story. So for coming up this summer are there any major festival plans or an Ibiza residency you can tell us about?
Thomas Gold: Ibiza I can’t tell, not yet but we’re talking to a bunch of people right now but I’m playing Creamfields for example and I play a festival where I do the Protocol stage in Belgium and I think it’s in June. And then there’s some other stuff coming up. I will play in a festival in Columbia but it’s the calendar is filling up right now.
EDM Life: And now you have a weekly radio show called Fanfare and you’re going to come out with the 200th episode in a week.
Thomas Gold: Exactly. One week. (Ed. note – this show was just released)
EDM Life: It’s definitely a lot of work producing a weekly radio show. How would you find that goes with you’re always on a tour, you’re somewhere, you have to sit down and spend the time to pick the tracks and make the mix and do everything. Is that kind of a grind putting that together? Or it works out okay?
Thomas Gold: First of all you get into kind of some sort of routine with that. I know exactly what to do and I collect my promo tracks in a special folder. I go through them like once or twice a week, then I pick my tracks. And then I have people helping me with setting up the technical stuff for example putting it out in the different formats, for iTunes and for online or whatever you want to have and the different radio stations. These people help me and – but of course I have to produce the voice-overs every week and I have to put them together. But again, I have help there with people who just do the technical stuff. And I’m like the creative part and people are doing the rest.
So because with all those traveling I got to some point where I cannot do it all by myself because it takes me like 2 days and when you’re away like 4 days a week or 5 and then you want to spend 1 or 2 days in the studio. So we had to find a way. But I’m happy now and it’s still like my show and it totally reflects my taste of music and so I’m really happy to have it to 200 episodes.
EDM Life: Our last question actually would be are there any vocalists or producers or other DJs that you kind of haven’t had a chance to work with yet but maybe either as part of your upcoming album or do you have like a wish list like “man, I wish I could work with this vocalist or with this producer and get something out there.”
Thomas Gold: At the moment I don’t have a wish list because I found out especially now, right now in the process of making the album that I get so many demos from people I don’t even know, I never heard those names, form singers and I was like “Wow, these guy sound amazing and awesome and they don’t have names yet.” And then so like it’s – I just said it before it’s like really not about, like the name it’s more about the sound or the idea behind the track or the song. And so I really don’t want to focus on special names right now. And sometimes it’s really hard to work with – the bigger the names, the less time they have. They’re touring, they have other projects going on and just to not to lose too much time and I’m absolutely happy with the material I’m getting right now with the people I’m working right now. They are super hungry and they want to work together and everybody is open for new ideas and stuff and that’s just pretty cool. So I don’t actually need a wish list.
EDM Life: So if any of our readers wanted to submit a promo or a tune, what email address or how can I submit it?
Thomas Gold: Yes, it’s best to send it to promo@thomas-gold.com
