Your biography describes you as a self-taught instrumentalist, which ist surprising thinking how musically sophisticated your productions are. What can you tell us about your musical background?
Well here’s a funny fact. I actually don’t master a single instrument. Everytime I talk to someone from the press I stress the fact that I don’t play any instrument really. For some strange reason people insist on it. So yeah, I’m a self taught instrumentalist alright but a pretty terrible one. But I’m not entirely blank. My mom forced me for a few years to take lessons. I never practiced, I absolutely hated it. But I guess I learned the somewhat basics of how melodies and chords work – but my hands can play very little on the piano. But I was already making whole tracks on my dads computer at the time when I was “taking lessons” so I wasn’t really feeling practicing scales for hours on end when i could be making whole songs instead.
I think my musical background really comes from going to the library and to record shops. My dad used to take my brother and I to the library quite often when we were really small and eventually I became old enough to go myself. I used to go to the music library in my hometown as often as i could after school, which was an absolutely amazing place. This was before the internet basically fucked up everything. I was bringing home lots and lots of music and going through it, and returning the next day with a bit more knowledge about where to look in which section. Also my cousin was a hiphop dj when I was a kid so he introduced me to records and hiphop culture. He was really into scratching so I got into that too for a while. I must’ve been like 14 – 15 at the time. I enherited his 1200’s and mixer. Scratching didn’t really stick but sampling and dj’ing definitely did.
If you should name five essential albums that influenced you the most as a musician and producer, which are the titles that you would chose?
Oh man, too many to mention. But here are some in no particular order. And for better or for worse.
Placebo – Ball of Eyes (That with the Marvin Gaye cover)
Jan Jelinek – Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records
Andrew Pekler – Nocturnes False Dawns and Breakdowns
Caribou – Swim
Dj Shadow – Endtroducing
Digital Mystikz – Return II Space
Flying Lotus – Los Angeles
Lukid – Onandon
What can you tell us about your collaboration with Tartelet, a label that with its esthetic and its roster suits quite well your music?
I was always a fan of the label. Especially the artwork, one of the main reasons I always wanted to do a record for them was to see what Zander aka The Emperor of Antarctica would come with. This guy is a genius. So happy he was onboard doing the artwork for ‘No!’. My agent Pernille introduced me to Muff Deep when I was in Berlin for my first ever Uffe live gig and we stayed in touch since. And two albums came out of it, crazy enough. It’s really cool how Emil aka Muff Deep was really into just letting me do whatever I wanted for the label, even though obviously the labels roots are in club music. I would send him something and say “I’m not sure anyone would play this” or “You can’t mix this tune” and he would just say “Fuck if anyone can mix it, if it’s a good tune – it’s a good tune”. The Wayne Snow album that’s coming for you in a second is off the chain.
You also released an EP for FaltyDL´s own label, and he also sort of compared your singing style to Arthur Russell´s one. How did you get to meet him and start collaborating together?
Being compared to Arthur Russel is quite an honour in my book. Well the story here is pretty boring to be honest. Drew had heard my music and reached out to ask if I had some music for his label. He liked all the tracks that no one else wanted to put out, so obviously I was thrilled. I make a loooot of music and I think that probably 10% of that actually ever comes out. I’m quite a big fan of FaltyDL and I’ve been following him since he did Love is A Liability so I was pretty star struck to say the least that he got in touch. I’m definitely going to do something on Blueberry again sometime soon.
You singing voice it´s actually very particular, soulful in a very understated way. When did you start singing and how did you develope your style?
When I did the first ‘Uffe’ release looong time ago, back when the sound still was in the experimental phase of things, I sang on my music for the first time. It must have been the ‘I Leave Soon’ track. Before that I would always try to outsource someone to sing on my music, which can be a pain. So it’s only been a few years that I’ve been singing myself. I honestly don’t consider myself as a singer and I really can’t sing very well to be honest, but i try my best. The good thing is that you think a lot differently about the music you make when having the option of singing on it while working. It kind of adds a new element to things while working on a song to think “oh you know what, I’m gonna record this sentence on top of this and see what happens” instead of vocals having to be this big decision on a song. I think often my voice has the same effect on a track as sampled vocal would.
Your debut album “Radio Days”, compared to “No!”, was a quite eclectic affair. Can you tell us which was the approach you used in that occasion and, on the other hand, how you approached the production of the new one?
The whole point of “Radio Days” was that it should be an eclectic record. The music for the record was all made over a time period where I was totally bombarded with inspiration and inputs. Especially from getting heavily into radio, both listening to and playing on the radio. Even my graduation work from the art school i went to was a radio program. So the title “Radio Days” seemed to sum up the whole period really well. During this period I was really frustrated with the current state of music consumption – still is. It seemed to me that 10-20 years ago people would put money and effort into producing a record by all means. But now people make one song and put all of their time and effort into doing a mediocre video instead. Because that’s the main medium for music now. I really can’t relate to that somehow – it’s a huge handicap to feel this way in 2016. All the records I grew up listening to were all one works in themselves so I wanted Radio Days to reflect that. I wanted the new album a continuation of that idea, but sound more coherent as a whole. But in terms of the title it’s kind of a simillar story. Everything around me at the time when making the album was all about saying no to things. For better or for worse. I think it’s important to allow yourself to say no to things and be critical towards thing. But it’s not always the easiest thing.
The sound of “No!” is very homogeneous. Even in it´s more danceble tracks -or the dub versions of a couple of tracks released as a super-sexy 7″- it sounds like it s coming from a long single session with all the instruments recorded together in real time. What can you tell us about it?
The idea of the Uffe music really came about with an idea of making club tracks that sounded like drunk band jamming house music in their rehearsel space – or something like that. I basically grew up listening to electronic music and hiphop (the stuff from the library), a lot of it quite weird records considering my age I suppose. So basically I don’t really find “electronic sounds” as interesting anymore as I did 10 years ago. I discovered jazz, techno, disco and dub much later in my life as opposed to many others. So these days I’m much more fascinated of how someone made that drumkit sound so dope on that disco record or the fact that you can actually hear Scientist touching the faders on his album. Do you know what I mean? I try to make the stuff I make sound like everything is moving a little bit. In and out of time with each other. Nothing like a computer would sound like. It’s basically sample based but I’m very lucky to have good friends in my life who are great musicians and wan’t to record with me. So they are kind enough to let me completely profit of their talents and turn it into techno music. I always loved the b-sides and dub versions of songs in particular the disco tracks that i like playing out as a dj. So when Tartelet purposed to do a 7″ to accompany the LP I thought this was my chance to get into that side of things. My next record is basically a full ep of b-sides. Working on it at the moment.
Are you going to promote the album with dj sets or live gigs? Any chances to see you in Italy in the next future?
Holla at me, I can come w a box of records or with my band. Would love to come back to Italy soon.
