Matoma Talks Live Performances

 

We had the pleasure of sitting down with Matoma and delving into a deep conversation about his latest successes in 2016. Following up on his incredible live performance at Coachella, he manned the Bakermat & Friends Stage at Tomorrowland for the first time and smashed it! This year Matoma has been going from strength to strength whilst continuously adding to his ever evolving Hakuna Matoma album with his latest highlight record "False Alarm," which has already racked up more than 15 million plays on Spotify. With all of these 'firsts' for Matoma, he is now headlining his first ever bus tour across North America this fall. Enjoy his live set from Tomorrowland to get a taste of what is to come on tour and check out the dates below for shows near you!

 

That was a big, big milestone. That seriously may be the biggest milestone of my career. When I got the news from my booking agent and my manager that we closed Coachella and I was performing there, we didn’t know the set time. I was just so, so happy. And then when the set time came, my agent really hustled to get me the set time we got. I think it was one of the best slots at the Sahara tent. It was at 5:30pm on Saturday and no other big acts were going on at the same time, so it was really good. He hustled like crazy to convince Coachella that it was a good slot for me and hopefully we proved him right!

 

It was just incredible to bring out Akon and Sean Paul on stage. I’ve been in the studio with them and I know the guys and they are really, really nice. To actually bring them out at a performance was just incredible. Having Ja Rule coming out and giving me support on "Old Thing Back" at Weekend One was truly amazing and a really big milestone for me.

 

I’ve had that many people perform live with me during a show before in Oslo when we did the Opera House. We sold it out twice and we had eight guest artists. I played for one hour and fifteen minutes and we had eight guest artists including a cellist, violinist, and saxophonist. It was a big show and it was amazing. Some venues have the opportunity to bring out live aspects, some don’t. I really also just enjoy DJing and my sets are pretty different from anyone else. I play everything from hip hop to deep house to electro to really, really hard stuff and tropical. It depends on the crowd and the night. My sets are always different.

 

 

 

It has to be a story. For me, a set tells something about me. There should be a thread throughout the whole set. A lot of DJs just throw in songs and I don’t do that. I really want my sets to be almost continually uplifting until you reach the climax. So you always build, build, build the crowd. A lot of sets, especially EDM sets, are up and down like a roller coaster, up and down, up and down. With me, it is continually going up and up, and rising until you are on top of Mt. Everest.

 

I try and discover music without any tools. I go on the Internet and search myself because that’s always been something I’ve enjoyed. I get music from Soundcloud, Beatport, and the radio. I always download new music so every time I’m on the plane, I find new music and make a new playlist. I download it offline, then listen to it on the plane. If I find some songs I really like I download them or contact the artist and ask them to send me the file. I get support or have to buy it, but I always get the tracks.

 

I really like to play my friends tracks too, but I like to discover my music myself and get my mind blown, like if I listen to a song and think, “Wow, this is big!” and then I play it. It’s really about finding music made with passion. It’s very easy to hear music made with heart and passion. Especially for me, because music has been my whole life since I was a kid. I started listening to old school hip hop because my brother introduced me to it. I was also listening to classical music and pop. What really stuck out with hip hop was the emotions. You could really hear in their voice that they had so many feelings when they were rapping. Later when I dug into the history of rap music and also started to understand the lyrics, it made total sense.

 

The problem with EDM music today is that like 70-80 percent of the EDM acts play the same music and it feels like they play what is expected of them. They often play what is expected of typical festival sets and also I think what I have seen over here in the States is that a lot of the kids these days use some type of substance to get them to the next level, and then you need to play really, really hard. Then you have some artists that stick out and I really feel like the artists that stick out have their own sound and mix in their own music. For me, music without melody, music without groove, music that is only bass and really, really hard bass and noise, I can’t listen to that. It’s way too heavy, so I pick out music that for me fits my personality and who I am. I think that also makes me different from a lot of the DJs because I play the music I love.

 

I saw Carl Cox in Oslo with my brother. I was probably like 15, so it was about ten years ago. I snuck in because I was underage. He played for three hours. That was during a time when he had turntables. I didn’t like the music, the tech house and techno was way too hard for me, but I just thought to myself about his presence on stage, how technical he was, how confident he was, he had so much fun playing. His energy affected me. I remember thinking, “Damn, he’s a god. He’s like untouchable.”

 

 

 

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