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 Fifteen years after he launched his career Cari Lekebusch remains one of Sweden and the world’s most prolific producers, releasing scores of electro/ techno tracks under a bewildering list of aliases including Mystic Letter K, KJB and Shapechanger.
“I’ve used so many different pseudonyms over the last ten years, mainly because I was releasing so many records on so many different labels that I couldn’t put my own name out there three or four times a month,” he explains.
“All the names are different characters and different experiments; some of the pseudonyms you go on using but I’m generally not so keen on creating sequels. It’s more fun to create something entirely new, with a new name of course,” he adds.
Alongside fellow Swedish electronic stars Adam Beyer and Jesper Dahlbeck, he’s pretty much created something entirely new, in establishing Sweden as an unlikely centre of techno excellence, unlikely given the country’s minimal (as tiny) club scene.
“To make a living off making music and DJing in Sweden you’d need to make really mainstream music,” he suggests, “ For a narrower scene like techno and electro, you need to go international.”
One factor that’s kept club culture firmly under wraps, is Sweden’s notoriously strict zero tolerance drug laws, which have been rigorously enforced by puritanical cops, who continue to raid nightclubs shining torches in dancers’ faces to check for drug use.
Cari admits he’s perplexed by Sweden’s US style approach, particularly as the rest of Europe move towards enlightened drug policies based on harm reduction rather than prohibition.
“They really fight drugs here in Sweden bad, even minor stuff like marijuana,” he confirms, “ And people get caught straight away because it’s so easy to keep track of all the people here in Stockholm, there’s just like a million people here and only eight million people in the whole of Sweden.”
“We also had this special police commission for a while, a special department for party drugs who were going out scanning all the clubs,” he continues, “They still do that, so it’s still a worry that they might raid a club though it hasn’t happened to me. It’s really strange, drugs are seen as a moral issue here. I remember when I was at school, watching frightening stories and films, propaganda movies.”
Instead, most pleasure seeking Swedes favour legal drug of choice alcohol, says Cari, getting ‘really stupidly drunk and puking all over the streets.’
“I know some places in the UK are like that too, I guess it’s a Scandinavian and British thing to drink a lot of alcohol and just get messy,” he muses, “You don’t see people do that in most other countries but the drinking culture in Scandinavia and England is quite similar. It’s messy.”
Drug talk aside, he’s chatting to Skrufff today about his fast expanding internet plans, which involve him offering more and more of his tracks- both old and new- as digital downloads.
Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): What’s with the move to digital; are you planning to put all your tracks online?
Cari Lekebusch: “I’m starting with the latest releases on my own label, then slowly going to work my way backwards into the catalogue. I have seventy or eighty releases at least on my own label. Maybe in one year to come I’m going to be backtracking all the way to the beginning of the catalogue, to find the best ones, and to respond to public demand. You always get feedback on which records people like the most, so I want to zoom in on those one and re-release them as MP3s.”
Skrufff: How much has the digital MP3 factor changed your life so far?
Cari Lekebush: “So far, not that much. As far as vinyl is concerned, there are a lot more labels nowadays than there used to be, so sales have fallen as they’re divided between all these different labels. I don’t think MP3s have had a big impact on vinyl really, though for CDs it’s totally different; the CD market has almost been destroyed by MP3s. I guess MP3 is just another new format, and as the artist you need to adapt yourself to all these formats and try to make the best of it.”
Skrufff: I read in an interview from a few years ago that you follow a philosophy of practicing every day, are you still doing that?
Cari Lekebusch: “Oh yes, everyday, it’s really important to me. I try to make music every single day and try to constantly figure out new things. I reckon it’s like science, you need to do it every day to continue evolving. Just like kung fu as well; I also like to do that too. I get a lot of ideas from kung fu when it comes to philosophies about music and how you want to go about doing it; about how you are supposed to know which choices to make. I’ve been practicing kung fu since I was a little boy and I also do that pretty much every day.”
Skrufff: Are you a black belt?
Cari Lekebusch: “There’s no belts in Kung Fu, that’s more in Japanese karate, in kung fu there are grades, either you can be a teacher or a master, probably I could be a teacher by now. I entered competitions when I was younger and I was doing other sports as well, tennis and table tennis even.”
Skrufff: Have you ever found the kung fu training useful in self-defense situations?
Cari Lekebusch: “A couple of times, yeah. I was at this club once and about to play with my vinyl records, messing about with my record case. There was a fridge there with beers and sodas and this guy came up to me, said he was working there and told me ‘Put the beer back – you can’t just steal the DJ’s beer’. I said ‘Well I’m one of the DJs, I’m about to play’, but there was something wrong with him, he was really aggressive. He looked like one of those dudes that are always in the gym doing steroids and he was crazy with alcohol. He threw a punch at me and it’s no problem really to avoid one punch, so I did that and he stopped after that.”
Skrufff: What stopped him?
Cari Lekebusch: “He suddenly realized that I really was the DJ, because my friend who was playing at the time saw the whole event and threw himself over this guy, shouting ‘what are you doing?’ It was very funny. That was in Stockholm and was typical Stockholm; there are always bar fights and stupid things happening.”
Skrufff: Do you still find that kind of vibe in clubs these days?
Cari Lekebusch: “Not here in Stockholm, no. I’d say that the people who go clubbing here are more conscious about the music, they’re not in the club looking to get wasted and fuck about with some boys or some girls. They’re there more for stimulation, maybe not intellectual stimulation but musical stimulation; something more than just getting drunk every weekend and seeing the same people all the time and getting wasted and ending up with somebody you really don’t want to end up with. It’s fun to do that stuff too, of course, but when you have done that stuff for ten years and you haven’t realized there’s got to be something else, then it’s time to wake up.”
Skrufff: The very first line on your web site biog says ‘born Capricorn’ Why?
Cari Lekebusch: “I don’t really know why I did that, but I’ve seen on a lot of other biographies that people always mention their star sign so I thought ‘why not?’ For me, the star sign is not a hugely important thing, it’s nice, you can fantasize that there might be something in it, but I’m not on it on a scientific level, like a Capricorn is like this or that. I’ve met other Capricorns and they are definitely not like me. There is a huge difference.”
Skrufff: You talk about applying a scientific approach to practicing and creating, are you a believer in the magic of creation?
Cari Lekebusch: “I don’t believe in magic in a classical sense, but I believe in magic in an abstract way, that magic is within and what is within will emerge in the outside world. I guess I take a scientific approach to spiritualism somehow. If you’re ask me where I get my inspiration, it could be anything; a crazy idea, a movie, but not so much other kinds of music. When I listen to music I don’t get huge inspiration to create music. I find that a lot of people that are painting, for example, draw a lot of inspiration from music, while lot of people that create music, draw inspiration from the visual realm, like video and movies.”
Skrufff: Do you sometimes hear other producers tracks and feel inspired to try and create something similar?
Cari Lekebusch: “Maybe a long time ago, probably I did that many times when I was getting started, when I was thirteen/fourteen years old. I remember when Kraftwerk’s ‘Computer World’ came out when I was eleven or twelve, trying to mimic the sounds on a little synthesizer we had. I guess that’s how you learn, you copy something, then you can start to create your own style. I guess it works like that when it comes to DJing as well. You start out DJing, you listen to other DJs, pick up some ideas and stuff, then put your own style to it.”
Skrufff: When you started out were you planning to go to university?
Cari Lekebusch: “No, not at all. I finished school as quickly as possible so I could try to get some crappy work to earn money to buy more equipment for the studio. That’s what I did when I finished high school. In Sweden you have to go school until you are sixteen, after that you can decide for yourself if you want to do two or four more years. After that you start a career school. I went to a business school for four years, where you get to learn about stock markets and such. I wanted to set up my own company and my own label, so I figured this might give me some good skills for that. When I finished school I set up my own company straight away, which is pretty simple here in Sweden. You don’t need any money, you just figure out a name, make a registration, then you get some different tax sheets. That’s about it, it’s really simple.”
Skrufff: Did you go through periods when you were earning no money at all and getting into debt?
Cari Lekebusch: “I wasn’t making money through the DJing and producing at all when I started and I reckon it was five years of living on bread and water until around 1993 when more and more gigs started coming in. By 1995 I was making a living off my own music and that was a great feeling. I think it’s harder nowadays, it’s going to take you so many releases and so many gigs to even get noticed because there are so many more DJs and labels out there. I reckon it’s much harder now than it was during the nineties.”
Skrufff: How are you perceived in Sweden? Is everybody proud of you for spreading the Swedish vibe?
Cari Lekebusch: “It’s kind of easy here, because it’s a small country. When you do something for some time, people get to know about it, sooner or later. This kind of music is more on an underground level here in Sweden. People my own age that like music, they probably might have heard of me, but other than that, I don’t think so.”
Skrufff: You talked in a recent interview about remaining based in Sweden long term and said ‘It doesn’t matter where you are because you can’t escape from yourself.’
Cari Lekebusch: “Yeah, yeah, people ask me: How the fuck can you live in Sweden, it’s so cold and dark in winter, but you get used to it. Of course, some people constantly move and never get satisfied, and that’s got to be because they can’t escape from themselves.”
Skrufff: Do you never consider moving to somewhere like Berlin or London?
Cari Lekebusch: “I don’t know. Personally I like the space here in Sweden. You never get that crowded London, inner city feeling. Not even in the inner city here, rush hour can be pretty bad but not that bad. I don’t think I could live in a city like New York for long. I need space and fresh air. I think that’s typical for somebody brought up in Sweden, you get used to having all this space around you.”
http://www.lekebuschmusik.se
Article by Jonty Skrufff (JontySkrufff.com)
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