What’s it like releasing a song to the public and waiting for a reaction? Does it stir up any nerves?

No, not really. I have a really broad aspect of fans. I have a lot of fans that love my more radio stuff and I have fans who love my more underground stuff. So I try to stay in between that basically. With a track like this, for the more underground club kids, it’s a radio sound. The other way around, it’s like an underground track that I can’t play on the radio cause people won’t understand. So I’m not really worried about any reactions usually. I just hope they understand what it’s going to do for the music. It’ll introduce people to more underground tracks, and the other way around. You can’t do one without another, at least I think anyway.

Can you talk us through the song and what the creative process was like in the studio when you started producing the track?

I actually produced it with a friend of mine that I just signed to my label, his name is Leroy Styles. We started the song in Amsterdam. Basically the song made itself, he had already written it and we started working on the chord and built it. It’s almost like when you work on a track, you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re just doing what feels right and eventually the track came out. That’s how it usually comes together.

When you’re in the studio, do you have any rituals or certain items that you bring with you?

Well, not really. My laptop cause I produce everything on my laptop. That’s usually what I use most of the time. I don’t really bring anything else.

Was there a specific vibe you were going for with “As Your Friend?"

I wanted to try and create the big progressive sounds you have in the festivals and put that in a radio sound so that when people hear it on the radio they have a bit of the festival.

You and Chris Brown have worked together in the past, having co-produced “Look at Me Now” last year. How’d you guys meet for the first time?

I met him a couple of weeks ago in the studio here in LA. We actually did another track together. We’ve just been hanging. He’s a great guy, really relaxed. It’s fun to see all the other sides of the music scene, especially during Grammy week when everyone is here. Especially for me coming out of the whole EDM scene and then seeing from our perspective what the rest of the music industry is doing. It’s really cool to see that we’re a couple of steps ahead of the rest of the industry.

What was it like working in the studio with him (Chris)?

What are you looking for? It was ridiculously, amazingly beautiful. No, it was fun, really fast. I played him a couple of songs and then he said “oh shit. That shit is dope.” Then he just jumped in the booth and put down the vocals in within ten minutes.

What was it like working on a vocal track with other producers from varied background?

The co-production aspect of them was more guiding the whole project; making sure we got Chris in the studio and making sure the arrangement was right and just producing vocals the right way for the radio. Like the engineering type of thing, the vocal mixing basically, I didn’t have much experience with and DJ Buddha did. They have a lot of experience with radio arranging. If it’s up to me, I’ll have an eight minute version with a two minute build up and a gigantic drop. But on the radio you only get three or four minutes so you have to make sure you put the right elements in there. And that’s where Buddha came in and just helped to rearrange the track and mix the vocals and of course to get Chris sounding right on the whole track and making sure the track got delivered. Because outside of the actual music production, a big part of the production is getting the project on the radio and through people. It’s a combination of a lot of things after you finish the music.

So we heard you teased the track already by dropping it at events like the Clive Davis pre-Grammy Gala. What’s been the reaction from the track so far?

Everyone loves it. My twitter is blowing up like crazy. I asked all my friends with shit tons of twitter followers to just tweet it and it’s been going crazy. I get like ten tweets every minute now. Completely insane, so im happy everyone is loving the track. The Clive Davis pre-Grammy gala it’s a party, but for the top music business executives. So the owner of Universal, and Sony, and Ultra, Warner Bros. the top of everything are there. Clive asked me to show them what EDM was about, which was an honor of course. But it was also cool to show to all those people what we are doing and how it is getting across. Like they never did any show elements there (Clive Davis) before and now EDM comes on the table and we bring a gigantic LED screen, and shitloads of lighting and 120 decibels of sound and they never had that there before so it’s really cool to get them dancing and just amaze with what is going on in music these days. We are like the representatives of a new generation. The new track with Chris went up today on iTunes or yesterday and within one day it went from zero sales of course up to number 51 in the main charts in one day. And that’s no support from any major labels, no A&R, no gurus, just me, my team and shitload of EDM friends. And it just shows the power of what we’re doing right now and the power of what we’re gonna be doing a lot more.

Your preview for "Air Guitar" came out today and is going to be released on Ultra records. When are we going to be seeing that track released?

I think the release date is set for right before Ultra. I just put out “As Your Friend” and it’s on the radio everywhere and everyone’s going crazy. But it’s a song, a radio edit. But I also wanted to show everyone that I’m still die-hard crazy dance music with big ass drops and big ass crazy shit, so that’s why I put it out right after the other one.

More From Elektro Daily