Wolfgang Gartner on the genre, sub-genre, and the love of house music

The music industry has a tendency to divide artists in various genres and sub-genre pockets. What used to be referred to as house music over the last decade crumpled into over a dozen sub-genres dominated by EDM, but a new title doesn’t change the true nature of things. House music is house music and that’s how Joseph Thomas Youngman, better known as Wolfgang Gartner, looks at what he does.

Quip had an opportunity to catch up with Gartner to talk about his musical path, view on the avid variety of genres, the early days, and how luck has got nothing to do with it. Gartner also makes a small confession in the interview, but you’ll have to read on to find out what it is.

Kateryna Topol: You recently went through what has been labeled as a 3rd change in direction, going back to your roots making more soulful dance music; would you be able to share with us when this new album might drop? 

Wolfgang Gartner: I wish I knew when the album was gonna drop, then I’d be able to tell you. This is the worst thing about the recording industry, it takes so long to get things done and for music to come out if you’re really shooting for the best possible outcome, exposure, and success of the album.

I also think it’s fundamentally wrong to say that I’ve gone in 3 direction changes, I’ve been making dance music my whole career. Every artist evolves and changes sonically, does that mean the Beatles went through 10 career changes?

KT: You’re on tour now till February 15th, can we expect the set to be in line with the so called re-direction?  

WG: Actually we just extended the tour to Feb 21st so it’s 5 weeks now. Like I said, there is no re-direction as I would label it, but maybe I can try and clear this up a bit for readers who are hearing these buzzwords and don’t quite understand: I make and play dance music and house music, that’s all it’s ever been. It’s been labeled on the internet as dozens of different subgenres, from electro house to deep house to chicago house to disco house to progressive house to funky house. But every single one of those labels has the word “house” on the end.

People and publications often frame change in music as some kind of news; change in music is the natural order of things. Artists evolving or migrating and shifting sounds and emotions is a natural and good part of the cycle of music and the cycle of an artist. It is to be expected and embraced, in my opinion. Am I going to play a set that sounded like the set I played 2 or 3 years ago, or 8 or 9 years ago? No. Neither. And I hope nobody would expect or want that.

KT: How is the tour going so far? 

WG: Great so far. I hadn’t played Texas in a while and forgot how generous the crowds were. I am looking forward to the venues and cities that are the least cold, because for some reason I seem to end up touring the coldest areas of North America in the middle of winter every year. It’s like a curse. And I live in L.A.

KT: You started DJ’ing at a very early age, who were some of your biggest house influences starting up, any specific tracks?

WG: As producers: Armand Van Helden, Kerri Chandler, Kenny Dope & Louie Vega, The Timewriter, Marshall Jefferson.  As DJs/Producers: Derrick Carter, Sneak, Mark Farina, Heather, Doc, Dan, and a lot of other guys on the west coast. Specific tracks?  Shit man, it was all just disco samples over 909 beats. Half the time it was the same samples. It was all the same. But I still love it.

KT: To say that you’ve been doing well as a DJ/Producer would be an understatement, and the fame is undoubtedly well deserved. One of your more recent tweets was “don’t do it for money; do it for fun. and if you end up getting paid; then you’ve won.” –  do you ever feel lucky? 

WG: Well first of all I actually wrote that tweet as an answer to an interview recently when asked if I had any advice for up-and-coming producers, that was my answer and then I just copied and pasted it onto twitter because it rhymed. Do I feel lucky? I guess it depends on how you define lucky. I say I consider myself lucky a lot. But luck is usually something that comes your way without any work. The luck of the draw, dumb luck, lucky charms, whatever.

I got to where I am from two decades of work and I feel like there was very little luck involved, if you want to talk about it in dictionary definition terms. If I were lucky, one of the demos I sent out would have gotten signed within the first 10 years of banging on the industry’s door I think. All that said I was born on St. Patrick’s day, you’d think I’d be lucky.

KT: When it comes to EDM some people treat it just as an evolution of dance music while others think that it’s a culture that destroyed quality house music, what’s your point of view on the genre now, in retrospective?

WG: Nothing has destroyed quality house music. Generally the term “quality house music” refers to a more underground sound, you don’t hear it used as a defining term for the iTunes dance charts or the Billboard top 10 except for the rare crossover act. So you can’t really say that “EDM destroyed the underground,” because the underground never dies, it’s like roaches, always living, never dying. I still keep in touch with some of those guys, they’re my friends. They’re still doing their thing, the music still sounds the same whether you consider that a good or bad thing, I love the nostalgia of it. And the underground lives on.

EDM or at least what that acronym has come to represent has just created an even more obvious and glaring rift between the commercial dance music “industry,” and the actual music.

KT: Where do you see dance music moving towards in the next few years?

WG: I don’t think anybody could predict that with any certainty right now. It’s in such a state of constant flux and change that it really could go any one of 5 or 10 directions. It’s gotten past the point of trying to steer that change, that’s in the hands of billion dollar corporations now.

KT: Which do you like more, DJing or producing? 

WG: Producing. And I’ve never admitted that in an interview before. I was born to produce music. That was how I got into all this. I started DJ’ing when I was 14 and I’ve been doing it for almost 20 years. I got into that because everybody who was producing music was DJ’ing too, they just seemed to go hand in hand. Then I got obsessed with it and so did all my friends, and all we did in our free time was get together and spin records. It was my favorite thing to do in the world. Mix records. Obviously I’m not in my friend’s garage mixing records anymore.

What’s my favorite thing about being a DJ?  Getting to DJ. Because when you’re on tour that’s pretty much the only good two hours of the day.

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Next Wolfgang Gartner show is in Toronto on January 30th at Uniun, see the full tour list here.