Drop Out Orchestra: Live Instruments, Disco Grooves, and Creative Reinvention on the Virtual Sessions 8/14/25

In this captivating episode of The DJ Sessions - Virtual Sessions, host Darran Bruce connects with Dan Lindeberg of Sweden’s Drop Out Orchestra for an insightful exploration into the duo’s creative process, career milestones, and their unique approach to live performance. Speaking from Lund, Dan explains how he and his partner Inko collaborate remotely, exchanging ideas and files between separate studios to keep their productions innovative and dynamic. Their upcoming EP, Popstad Lund 2025, features three remixes of successful local acts, showcasing their refined, disco-inspired sound.

Known for blending live bass and percussion with DJ sets, Drop Out Orchestra brings a distinctive energy to their performances, reminiscent of acts like Chuck Love who merge live musicianship with electronic grooves. Dan discusses the shift from analog hardware to fully digital production in Cubase, as well as their creative strategies to avoid burnout by experimenting with different genres.

From remixing Paul Weller to crafting a standout bootleg of Psycho Killer, Dan reflects on navigating licensing challenges, industry changes, and staying authentic in a fast-paced music world. He also shares advice for emerging producers about pacing releases, using aliases, and constantly reinventing their sound. The episode concludes with the story behind their exclusive TDJS mix—an eclectic selection from Dan’s 45 collection recorded at Lund’s Doolittle Records.

About Drop Out Orchestra -

Taking their cues from original Disco pioneers such as MFSB as much as DFA, Drop Out Orchestra launched themselves onto the scene in 2008, and with edits of tracks by everyone from TLC and Daft Punk to Rick Astley and The Sex Pistols they transformed them into the kind of luxurious, gloriously sophisticated, and indeed soulful disco, that would have made Chic proud.

Since the Drop Out Orchestra began in 2008, the project has grown from one man and a sampler to a studio team consisting of a music teacher, a studio engineer and a music tech writer. What has remained constant is the mystery regarding their true identity with no names or pictures, ensuring the focus remains on their music.

To date, the troupe have had some seriously big releases, including their Daft Punk cover "International Track", (Released as Drop Out City Rockers, crowned "Essential Tune of the Week" on Pete Tong's BBC Radio 1 show and charted at #1 by Fatboy Slim!) their single 'Baby Come Home' and their impeccable remixes of acts like Paul Weller, Flight Facilities, Mario Basanov and Ilija Rudman.

In addition to these official releases Drop Out Orchestra delight in reworking some of pop music’s most iconic figures with the likes of Rick Astley, Robyn, Craig David and The Ramones already treated to the Drop Out magic. Over the last few months they have received huge amounts of love from dance music maestro's such as Aeroplane, Greg Wilson, Jaymo & Andy George, The Magician, Fatboy Slim, Tronik Youth, Mylo, Chris Coco, Annie Mac, Classixx, Laidback Luke, Seamus Haji & more.

The dropouts have set out to deliver a DJ performance out of the ordinary with added live bass and percussion playing on top of an intense mix of unique edits, loops and acapellas. Since their live debut just before Christmas last year the touring orchestra - consisting of two people - have played a string of gigs in their native Sweden and all over Europe, including EGO in Hamburg, rated by DJ Magazine as one of the 100 best clubs in the world.

About The DJ Sessions -

“The DJ Sessions” is a Twitch/Mixcloud "Featured Partner” live streaming/podcast series featuring electronic music DJ’s/Producers via live mixes/interviews and streamed/distributed to a global audience. TheDJSessions.com

The series constantly places in the “Top Ten” on Twitch Music and the “Top Five” in the “Electronic Music", “DJ", "Dance Music" categories. TDJS is rated in the Top 0.11% of live streaming shows on Twitch out of millions of live streamers.

"The DJ Sessions" is listed in the Feedspot directory as one of the Top 60 EDM Podcasts.

It has also been recognized by Apple twice as a "New and Noteworthy” podcast and featured three times in the Apple Music Store video podcast section. UStream and Livestream have also listed the series as a "Featured" stream on their platforms since its inception.

The series is also streamed live to multiple other platforms and hosted on several podcast sites. It has a combined live streaming/podcast audience is over 125,000 viewers per week.

With over 2,600 episodes produced over the last 16 years "The DJ Sessions" has featured international artists such as:

Matt Staffanina,

(00:28):
Dan, how's it going today?
Yeah, great.
Thanks.
Great to be on your show.
I'm looking forward to having a chat.
Yeah, it's awesome.
So I, you know, I don't make it over to Europe as often as I like.
You know, I have been to Amsterdam a few times, was in Berlin last year for Rave the Planet, fun time there, planning to go back there more often and kind of get a Eurorail pass and tour and see everything around.

(00:53):
But you're in Sweden right now, and you are with the Dropout Orchestra.
You have a partner though, correct?
They're a duo.
Where's the duo partner?
Where's he at?
Is he out on the slopes?
What's going on?
I mean, I don't know if he's skiing this time of year.
Well, he is a skier actually.
He lives nearby, but we don't, to tell you the truth, we don't see each other much because we got two separate studios and we just send the files, you know, between us.

(01:24):
You know, that's a really awesome way.
Obviously, a lot of people are doing that, have been doing that for years now, being able to collaborate, you know, via because of the internet.
It's awesome to get collaborations like that.
You weren't able to get something like that years ago.
I was interviewing Robert Owens earlier this week and, you know, he moved from, grew up in Chicago and LA and eventually moved to London.

(01:48):
And then now he's in Berlin and, you know, obviously collaborating with artists from around the world.
It didn't really have that.
It wasn't possible years ago.
I have to say though, his name is Inko.
Inko, yes.
Inko, my partner, yeah, in Dropout Orchestra.
He should have been here.

(02:08):
I'm sorry about that.
No, no, we'll get him next time.
No worries there.
We'd like to invite our guests back on the show, so it'd be great to have you both in the studio.
But yeah, I mean, one of the things that I noticed too with technology that was really awesome is that this type of interview, I mean, they could have taken place pre-pandy, but, you know, I noticed that a lot of people weren't ready for Zoom or they weren't ready for video interviewing, online interviews.

(02:35):
And now because of that, one of the good things that came out of all of that was that people now know how to Zoom, conference call.
It wasn't just emails back and forth.
It's jumping online and you can listen to it.
They can listen to it.
You can do a shared thing and both be listening to the track, you know, and do that feedback and input.
So that's awesome.
You guys have a setup like that.
And speaking of working together, you recently, I mean, like tomorrow, because it's nighttime there, it's probably what, about seven, eight o'clock there right now, PM?

(03:06):
Yeah, eight o'clock.
That's right.
And tomorrow you'll be dropping out an EP coming out, Popstadlund 2025.
Is it Popstadlund 2025 or just Popstadlund?
It's Popstadlund 2025, I think.
I'm pretty sure it is.
It's a special project.
We have remixed three local acts.

(03:29):
They just happen to be local.
They're actually quite, you know, successful internationally and stuff.
And I didn't even know they live here.
So we got an event coming up in Lund.
We're all going to play there.
And so we remixed them anyway.
It's an orchestra remix EP of three dropout orchestra remixes.

(03:51):
Yeah.
That's what I've been doing for months.
It took a long time to finish.
You know, albums and EPs can do that when you're used to producing just tracks.
I mean, I was talking with Thomas Dat from Australia earlier this week, too.
And he just released the new album.

(04:12):
Album, it has to all go together before you want to release even one track.
So you may be in the studio working on multiple things before it just all gets compiled, where some artists or producers in the electronic music world track once every six to eight weeks, they're pumping out something new.
Your performance, though, your DJ performances is kind of a unique experience.

(04:36):
I would love to see more of this in the world.
I have something to add into this after we chat about this.
But you add live bass and percussion on top of the mix that you're doing as well.
Together, I hope.
It's a bit of a weird one coming with the bass to a DJ booth, because you have to plug it into the Pioneer anyway, and sort of make a reasonable sound out of it.

(05:03):
And it's a bit of a challenge.
But we got a system working where we're touring with a computer into live bass setup, and the live bass and percussion.
And we did that for about three, four years.
And then we decided to have a break because it's hard work when you get older, you know.

(05:27):
You know, you may have heard of the artist and this always blew me away.
Back in the day.
And I didn't know anything about the performer.
But I had heard this.
My friend had a compilation disc, electronic music, like DJ mix.
And one of the songs on there was by a gentleman by the name of Chuck Love.

(05:49):
I don't know if you're familiar with Chuck Love or not.
And I just fell in love with the song.
And one night at one of our local clubs here in Seattle, I'm at this club, very, very intimate club, only maybe about 100 people could be in the room at a time comfortably.
I mean, it was packed.
But that was the best part of this club called the C Sound Lounge, is that you could get right up next to the person on stage, you know, not even on stage in the DJ booth.

(06:15):
And it was just a great time.
And, and so...
Was that before or after the sync button?
I would say, let's see, that was 2000.
I'm not gonna knock.
No, they may have been using CDJ 1000s at that point.

(06:37):
So I don't think I don't think the sync button.
I don't think the sync button came out until the 2000s.
Don't quote me on that, though.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
But basically, maybe it did.
Don't quote me on that.
Maybe they were on the MK3 1000s.
But I don't recall seeing them on my MK1 1000s that I had for my studio.
But that being said, Chuck Love, I'm in this nightclub one night.

(07:00):
And what's funny is I saw this guy outside playing on a trombone out in front of the club.
He's playing on a trumpet.
He's playing on the trombone.
I'm like, Oh, what is he just the street performer out in front of a nightclub just right over my head.
Then he gets into the club and he starts playing his tracks playing a song.
I'm like, Oh, that's the guy from outside.
And then this song comes on.

(07:21):
I realized it's the song that I've been putting on repeat over and over and over again.
And I take my phone and I go to the girl that he's with in the booth.
And I say, Hey, is this is this him?
Is this Chuck Love?
And she's yeah.
And it was the song he's playing Jimster.
It was the Jimster remix of Dancing All Night or something like that.
I just I love it.
It's such a fun song.

(07:41):
I got to listen to that song today too.
What you get when you put live instruments in a club is a different vibe.
It's still not a concert.
People are not there.
Well, people were not staring at us so much as dancing.
And it's still a club, you know?
Yeah, absolutely.
We were in the booth.

(08:02):
Yeah.
What was awesome is that Chuck Love, unbeknownst to me, his whole show, he played like seven different instruments over top of his DJ mix and sung over top of it as well.
So, I mean, it was multifaceted.
It was just like my mind was completely blown.
This was 2008 because I went to Winter Music Conference 2009 in Miami and I saw him there as well.

(08:29):
And really nice guy, really cool guy.
But it just blew me away.
Adding that element to a live DJ mix, it just, you're right, adds so much more to the show, to the set, whether it's, you know, you know, Colette gets up and she'll sing or some of them have the tambourine, you know, doing that and they perform live on their sets.

(08:50):
I mean, that is, I think that should be more.
The only problem with the tambourine and stuff is that when you get drunk, you always end up losing it in the club.
You know, I don't know how many tambourines or cabassos or shakers that I've lost, you know, every time it happens.

(09:10):
But back to that, I was touring as a house DJ, like a house project, years before we started doing this.
And I was thinking there's something missing, you know, people are looking at the DJ and they're interested in what's going on, but it's not that much going on, really.

(09:35):
You know, you can fiddle with your EQ and stuff, but it's not that.
You don't feel like this, like the whole night to go anywhere.
But when you put live instruments in the booth, it's a different vibe altogether.
And it sounds pretty cool.

(09:55):
It can be on the right system, like a function one or so that live bass really pops out.
It sounds great.
Absolutely.
I've seen some people, even Carl Cox has now reinvented himself.
A few years back,
I saw him at ADE and he was talking about reinventing himself and going into, not necessarily

(10:18):
with live instruments, but he had a laptop on one side, a CDJ here, was doing his set,
but he goes, you'll never see the same set for me twice ever again, because he's making music
in real time over here on his laptop, but also coming in with like a CDJ to mix it in to make
sure it's all mixing together.
It was a really cool setup and being innovative like that, or taking a chance and doing something.

(10:42):
I wouldn't necessarily say that's different, but to me, it's different.
You don't see it all the time.
He's the best.
He's my favorite DJ.
Whenever he goes on, he like plays the samba with the faders.
Yeah.
So impressive.
We were fortunate here.
He supported a track of ours, must have been 15 years ago, and we got a whole lot of wind through that.

(11:09):
He was kind of quick, wasn't he?
And then he came back.
I think somebody said once, it was like an internal joke.
I think it was even at ADE.
He's like, here's Carl Cox reinventing himself again.
But I recently saw, I'm going down to Dreamfields, Mexico.

(11:32):
It's going to be in Puebla instead of Guadalajara this year.
And he was on the lineup last year, and under his name, it said Carl Cox performing.
There was like a bubble underneath, live mix, like a live stage mix, not a DJ set.
He's starting to brand that that's what he's bringing to his shows now.

(11:52):
By the way, I'm going to pause here just for a second.
I want to give a shout out to Inko, Doolittle Records, and DiscoAnon for being in the chat room over there on Twitch.
Thanks for finding the right channel.
I really appreciate it.
And thank you for being here in the show.
Any questions you want to poke over into Dan's way, let me know.
We'll make sure we get them in the show.

(12:13):
What was your strongest motivation though to pursue a career or would you call it a career in music, hobby in music?
Is this your full time gig?
No, not anymore.
But it was for 15 years.
And, you know, I was running labels.
And it was a big thing for me.

(12:36):
Motivation.
I mean, I always knew that I was going to do this.
Since the age, I mean, I, the first record I put up was in 1989.
And I've just kept going with new aliases and different projects and collaborators, through house, techno, and then on to disco.

(12:58):
And yeah, I mean, we're still doing it.
We're not touring anymore.
But we're still working in the studio.
So there's got to be something there, you know.
And the motivation has always been seeing people dance to your music.
That's the thing.
Making people happy just from music.

(13:20):
That's sounds silly, but that's what it's that's what it always was about.
Anyway.
We were talking a little bit about this pre show.
And you know, how, you know, I started in all this with the music was, basically, I found my love for music and said, you know, I'm not a musician.
I'm not a DJ, everyone confuses me with being a DJ, because I do a show called the DJ sessions.

(13:43):
I just, we made a funny page on our site that I actually made myself a DJ page on the site as a resident DJ.
But my bio is, I'm not a DJ, I just play one on TV.
Because I kind of fake, you know, it's an internal joke.
But no, I mean, I found that I wanted to mix my passion of film and television background and being behind the camera and executive producing shows.

(14:06):
And basically bring the video element to a lot of people that weren't getting the video element.
And all these years, you know, and then put something together for them.
And then it grew into what was a local show to a podcast show that blew kind of got big.
And now we went into live streaming and kind of the past, you know, 16 years on this brand here.

(14:27):
And it growing and keeps growing and getting better and better and better.
You know, we're pretty excited.
And the new technology that are coming out and everything.
It's cool.
I mean, yours is the first request that I ever got for a for a video stream.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
It was a bit challenging.
But once I got the hang of it, yeah.

(14:48):
Well, what's cool is we'll talk about this a little bit.
We get it.
We get it.
The awesome thing is with technologies, we get to now get the exclusive mixes from people that get to air on our show as well.
And it's a video mix, which, you know, audio has been around radio has been around for years.
But we're now expanding into also syndicating shows and adding a new music section.

(15:10):
We can talk about that all later.
Yes, that's a whole nother subject.
But out of all the productions, you mentioned you started in 89.
And out of the list of productions you've done so far, probably know exactly what this one's going, which one of those stands out to you the most and why?
That's a tough one.
But I gotta say, when we got a request from Paul Weller to remix his single, that was huge for me.

(15:37):
I'm a big Jam and Style Council fan and Weller as well.
I mean, and we spent a lot of time on that one.
We got a friend in to play trombone and it was hard work, but it was well worth it.
I think that was stands out.
But probably I have to say, we did a remix of Psycho Killer, Talking Heads.

(16:05):
And I just did that to fill out an EP of edits, you know, it took me about three hours.
And we got booked on that on the base of that track for years.
It has millions of YouTube plays, and it's been everywhere.
We got a big DJ, Hamburg based.

(16:31):
He wanted to clear it.
So he talked to the labels and he got all the way up David Byrne.
He said, No, you can't do it.
So we were that close to getting an official release, but it didn't happen.
I think that's my standout thing.
You know, a lot of people don't understand if you've been running, you run labels, you know, all about the rights, permissions, master, sync, blah, blah, blah, all the stuff that people don't have a general knowledge of.

(17:02):
I was in a conversation with somebody the other day.
And she's written and write a book.
And she's like, Darran, what points do you think more artists or DJs, musicians should know about going into the music industry?
And one of my biggest things is what happened in Pandy is people didn't understand the basics of copyright, and why you can't use somebody else's music without their permission.

(17:24):
And they say, well, I bought it online.
I said, that's for personal use, not for commercial use.
And well, I can only use this much of it doesn't matter.
They still own the copyright, whether it's one second or a melody or beat.
And that's go look at Vanilla Ice.
Okay, go look at Kanye Lewis in the news and Ray Parker Jr. Go look at these monumental cases, you know, of where people sampled music and kind of got the hammer put down on them.

(17:51):
And, you know, they put the they sign these terms and conditions online, and they don't read them.
And then they wonder, why is my episode flag?
Why is it taken down?
You're talking to a guy who's done like, I don't know, 50 bootlegs.
I'm not a nice guy when it comes to copyright.
I've done it all.

(18:11):
You know, I was just the other day we got Universal to clear something that we released.
It's a long story.
But for some reason, Universal got the question, can we do this?
And they actually said yes.
Because it's 200 copies on vinyl doesn't matter to them.

(18:33):
It wasn't worth the hassle to adjust royalty splits and stuff.
They just said, yeah, do it.
We don't care.
But apart from that, I never asked anyone, you know, we've just done it.
And sometimes we've got complaints and we take it down or we take it back.

(18:54):
There's so many stories about the bootlegs that I, you know, Simon Dunbar, he was threatening me, I'm gonna track you down.
I'm gonna find you if you release this, because we had one of these artists on Pete Tong, he played it.

(19:15):
I know what you've done.
I know what you're doing.
Don't do it.
Is that one of those circumstances where like, oops, it got out on the internet?
I don't know how.
Yeah, exactly.
And usually, I mean, if you press something on vinyl, it's going to be such a small run that it's not worth anybody's time.

(19:39):
So I'm not feeling very, I'm not feeling bad.
I'm not making that much money from it.
It's just for fun.
And I'm thinking as long as it's on that level, it doesn't really matter.
On the internet, it's another story.
It's just a matter of not being found, I think.
Well, I've seen some ads now coming out that if a producer wants to press a single vinyl, or a limited run vinyl, you know, there's services out there now that'll make your 10, 11, 12, maybe they make 200,000 vinyl copies for you.

(20:16):
And it's a little more accessible.
I know for a while there was a gap because they went, oh, we only do 1,000 copies, or we'll do 5,000 copies.
That's all gone now, isn't it?
That's all gone now.
Now digital, obviously.
But I keep seeing ads popping up on one of the socials saying, you want a vinyl copy of your track?

(20:36):
Send us up.
And maybe it costs 30 bucks per.
That's going to be a lot more.
I don't know what the cost is.
Maybe it is.
But I saw some ads for that, and I thought it was the one-offs that used to be acetates that you wore out in 10 plays.
They're not like that anymore.
You know, the one-offs are exactly like pressed vinyl, really, these days.

(21:00):
10, 15 years.
And I've done some of those favorite tracks that are hard to find and stuff like that from other people.
I've pressed one-offs.
It's a good thing.
You can't wear them out.
I'm muddy after 10 plays.
Now, are you a hardware or software producer or both?

(21:23):
Obviously, you're doing analog equipment with your instruments.
Yeah, Inko is the musician, really.
He records the guitars and the bass and sometimes keyboard.
He's got a proper studio.
I have a shit studio, a little laptop-based studio.
But that works for me.
Everything is software these days.

(21:46):
I haven't done a track on a hardware keyboard or anything like that for two decades.
It's fantastic.
And it's so fast and a whole different approach to producing.
What DAW are you using to do all your work on?

(22:07):
Sorry?
Well, what software do you use to do all your production on?
Oh, that's Cubase.
Since the Atari ST days.
Do you find that using...
Would you consider yourself more...
Would you consider yourself, one, a perfectionist?
Two, by using non-analog gear, is it easier to hone in on a sound and get it bounced out quicker than it would if you were in an analog environment?

(22:38):
Yes.
Yeah, I would say so.
But part of that trick is knowing what you have.
Know a few bits very well.
You don't have to know everything.
But know a few bits well and I can achieve what I'm looking for in my head.
And it didn't used to be like that.
You had to have little marks on the mixing desk, where does the kit go, blah, blah, blah.

(23:05):
And then you come in the next day and it's all gone.
And I'd say, yeah, it's a lot easier getting the right sound these days.
But it's also a bit of a trap because the hardest thing about making music, I find, is you do too much.

(23:28):
Because it's so easy.
I can put everything in there, but you shouldn't do that.
It's dance music, so you have to keep it nice and clean and sharp.
But it's easy to overwork your productions, I'd say.
And I hear a lot from other people, it's like, take half of it off.

(23:52):
As always, the groove is what you're after.
A lot of artists, a lot of producers that I've talked to in the past, they've mentioned that they'll have libraries and libraries of music, stuff they haven't touched for three, four, five years sometimes.
And then they'll come out, in the metaphorical term, they'll come out and dust it off and then go, oh, now I'm ready to produce this track.

(24:14):
And they'll pull it out of the vault and put it there.
But you're right with the ease of digital music creation.
I remember playing with Fruity Loops 3 back in 2000.
And I was like, oh, I was always into sequencers.
And I ended up getting a Roland MC-505 and a Roland SP-808 and MIDIing them together.

(24:34):
And I was like, oh, I got a sequencer that I can turn the knobs and change it.
And I got the sampler that can trigger effects.
It was really cool.
I mean, very dabble, dabble, dabble, dabble.
That's wonderful stuff.
It's a whole different thing.
I mean, just having those knobs and direct access can trigger something else creatively.

(24:56):
So I'm not knocking that at all.
It's just right now for what I'm doing, the digital stuff is so much faster and easier.
Yeah, I used to have a group of DJs, Area 303, that would come into our studios back in the day when we first started the show.
And they would do their whole MIDI setup.
They would have to bring a board into the studio, place everything, connect everything, and then do a live mix with everything going on, techno mix.

(25:22):
It was really badass.
But the setup, I mean...
It was hard work.
It was, yeah.
It was not something like, here's a flash drive, boom.
And even then, I think we were still using CDJs at that time.
We didn't even have flash drives at that time.
But it's evolution of music.
I get it.
Yeah.

(25:42):
And I always...
I don't know how to explain it, but I can totally understand people that prefer the hardware stuff, because it will get you doing other stuff than what you do when you just fiddle with the mouse.
And especially for techno, I think the hardware setup can do wonders.

(26:06):
Definitely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And as you said, Inko is always laying down bass, real bass and guitar.
And adding that to a digital sound, sort of, I get a free ride.
It sounds live.
If some of the bits are live, then the rest will sound live too.

(26:30):
I find, sometimes.
Yeah.
Now, do you ever get fed up with making music and playing music?
If you ever did, what are your ways of dealing with that?
Getting back to your mantra, getting back to your space, or getting back in the zone?
Because a lot of musicians do experience burnout of some way, shape, or form, or just life stresses going on and everything.

(26:55):
But you say, no, you don't get fed up playing music.
That's not totally true.
We had three years of complete silence from us.
We didn't do anything.
Not me, anyways.
I don't think Inko made much either.
But my best tip is to switch genres, get a new persona, invent a new alias.

(27:19):
Right now, I'm doing reggae.
Like, with a new project, Inko is playing on that as well.
We're doing dub reggae, stepper styles.
It's totally different from the disco stuff.
But it gets you going, and suddenly the disco stuff sounds different.

(27:40):
So, that's my tip.
You know, invent a persona.
Or look somewhere else.
It was an experiment for me.
Can I make credible reggae music?
So, I tried, and yeah, I could.
And it's fun as a bit of a distraction.

(28:02):
If you could pick a classic electronic music track that comes to mind, and kind of like, briefly dissect it, or explain why it's such an amazing track.
What's the first one that comes to mind that you have, that would come to mind?

(28:26):
Too many.
But yeah, automatically, Stardust music sounds better, pops up.
I still remember the excitement when that was coming out.
I was one of the people queuing up outside Tower Records in London, you know, because it's coming out today.

(28:46):
And the whole Daft Punk first album was a killer for me.
I mean, I was doing house music as best as I could.
But when that came out, it changed everything.
Can you do, how do they do that?
And it just, it's hard to explain, but it sounded so different to any other music out there at the time.

(29:14):
And it just gave me a new perspective of what you actually could do.
And then I found out, they got the simplest hardware setup, with one compressor, and doing that whole album.
It's just mind-blowing.
You know, Daft Punk, a lot of people, I mean, I remember when, I was listening to Daft Punk back in 95.

(29:34):
Like back when, you're right, when, was it Homework?
Homework.
Yeah.
Oh, Homework?
Homework, yeah.
Yeah, with Around the World on it.
And I was watching that late night on MTV.
And it was one of the most creative videos of all time.
But they only played it late night on MTV here in the States.

(29:56):
It wasn't played in the normal rotation during the day.
And we'd be up at my house partying all night, and that would come on.
And I was like, I would try to tell my friends about it, this music video that I saw, where it was all like in unison, and they're on the stage, doing the different dancers, the different genres and everything.
It was so sick.
And then they also used it in one of my favorite movies as the soundtrack in the background in the movie The Saint with Val Kelmer.

(30:22):
All right.
There's a scene where they're playing Daft Punk on the radio, and they're chasing them around.
The guys in the car are listening to Daft Punk on the radio in that movie.
And then, of course, Daft Punk comes out, goes boom, and blows up.
And I'm like, I've been listening to him for years.
I actually just mentioned him about Daft Punk the other day in the video, the 5555.

(30:47):
Did you ever see the animation that they did where they used the whole album?
I want to say, I think it was Discovery.
Please, nobody ever shoot me.
Don't get me wrong on that.
Hang on.
Let's do Discovery, D-A-S-C-O-V-E-R-Y, Discovery, D-A-S-C-O-V-E-R-Y.
That must have been the second album.
Was it the second?
Yeah, I think Discovery was...

(31:09):
Was it Discovery?
Yeah, it was based off the Discovery album.
And it's an awesome album, beautiful all the way through.
But Interstellar 5555 was the animation they did.
And they used the entire album from beginning to end.
And there's no words in the entire movie.
It's all just animation.

(31:29):
But the words of their songs and everything that happens is what's going on in the animation.
Very, very awesome piece of work.
I highly recommend it if you're a Daft Punk fan to definitely check it out.
But really, really awesome stuff there.
But yeah, I mean, you've seen they're going up and now they disbanded.
And now it's rumored they're coming back.
Yeah.
Do you want me to dissect, pick apart a music that sounds better with you?

(31:54):
Yeah.
Now that's a class.
That is a very classic one.
I just listened to that the other day.
I mean, just the compression on it.
I never understood.
How do they do that?
You know, and it turns out it was still the bedrooms to set up.

(32:15):
I think they regret that say something about said something about their studio.
And he came down as it was the studio.
This is it.
It's a 303 and the sequencer and one compressor.
And there's something about that sound, how the kick sort of it's sort of the sidechain thing, where the whole sample ducks every time the kick hits.

(32:44):
And that I know, I mean, other people were doing that DJ sneak and stuff.
But there was something about that part that was so a little bit brighter, you know, the whole sound was just a little bit better than anyone else.
And yeah, a friend of mine told me he understood electronic music when he remade around the world from scratch, every sound, the drums, the bass line, everything.

(33:15):
He sort of rebuilt it.
And then he said, then I understood electronic music.
And yeah, I think that's pretty on point.
Yeah, you know, it's you're right.
There is a distinct Daft Punk sound there.
And I was wondering, you know, going back to that Stardust track, you know, if they were making it in their bedroom studio, I wonder what it was like for them to hear it played on an amplified club nightclub, big room system and be like, oh, baby, you know, oh, that's always, yeah, but just, I mean, bringing your own sounds out to a nice PA, like a function one or something.

(34:03):
And that was the best part of touring, because then you actually heard everything suddenly, all the bits that you couldn't that you can't hear in a bedroom studio just pops out, like the bass and stuff.
So that was my favorite bit, bringing new tracks to the club, listening for the first time.

(34:24):
And you definitely get, I mean, you know, does it work or not?
The first time you hear it on a PA, you know.
And a lot of times it didn't work.
And I took it back.
Well, a lot of people do test out their songs on crowds.
I've talked to a lot of people, they also do the car test, where they play it in the car and see what it's gonna sound like in the car.

(34:48):
They test it out on different headphones, to see what it sounds like in these kind, what it sounds like in this kind, and, you know, those kinds of things.
But speaking of listening to your own or hearing your own music, you know, for the first time in the club, where's the weirdest moment you've ever heard one of your own tracks play?
I can tell you instantly, I'm thinking, we were playing on Bali.

(35:11):
And we were just sitting on in a beach bar, you know, waiting for our set to happen.
It was just normal quiet.
And they played one of my ghost productions, suddenly comes on the speaker.
It doesn't say anything about Drupal, or Kestrel, or me, it's just like, I did quite a bit of ghost producing for people 10 years ago.

(35:39):
And it came on while we're sitting down on the beach bar.
That's a favorite moment.
I think it's not that weird.
But it was nice to hear.
Even like, the track was sold as someone else.
But we did it, you know, so it was just a really weird one.

(36:01):
Apart from that.
I don't know.
Yeah, Carl Cox playing our track.
That was a favorite.
Nice moment.
Definitely.
Nice.
You know, is there is there something you would like to say to new and up and coming producers to watch out when it comes to making their career successful?

(36:21):
A tidbit something to look for?
Look out for to do?
There's a lot.
I mean, are you talking producers or DJs?
Producers, mainly.
The creators of the music, not the purveyors of the music, which can now synonymous pretty much.

(36:41):
Sure.
But I'd say the most important thing is to be like, take it a bit step back a bit sometimes and don't, don't try to release a track every two weeks, every week.
Because it's not, it's not going to work.
It's not going to be good.

(37:02):
I mean, I've done that so many times, I've fallen into that new music, I want the new music to come out now.
But one thing is that people don't want to hear new tracks from me all the time.
I don't want to hear new tracks from my producers every week.
That's too much.
So you got to you know, you get for the like market wise, you got to step back sometimes and not flood it with your tracks.

(37:28):
And second is to use different names, project names.
So you can put out more music without people getting sick of hearing it.
And another thing that I've fallen into sometimes is produce tracks like I expect people to want, you know, people like people are expecting a certain sound from dropout orchestra.

(37:56):
And then you sort of you can fall into a trap where you just repeat yourself.
And it's just pointless.
And that happened to me a few times, when you just, you know, you because you got to produce, you got to remix, and you got to play DJ gigs, and equal parts.
And sometimes, people demand, what's your release schedule?

(38:22):
So we got no, we've got nothing scheduled, you know?
Oh, but you got to have some release schedules, because I can't do PR if you haven't got a busy release schedule.
And then you start doing stuff just to get like the PR companies, please.
And it's not going to be good.
It's not going to be interesting.
It's just I say that I have flooded the market so many times with different aliases.

(38:53):
It's not a good idea to do that.
There's so much music coming out right now.
So you think by releasing a track every week, that people will notice you, but it doesn't work like that, you know?
Well, it does for some people, but it's not going to get you any fans, you know, because it's going to be a just a functional music for DJs just to get it out.

(39:23):
And yeah, that could easily happen when people start to have expectations of your stuff.
And definitely, yeah, I can see that pattern.
I mean, a lot of people here do the six to eight weeks.
The more seasoned or seasoned.
That's like music.

(39:44):
That's like releasing music in the 60s, where the Beach Boys had three albums out in 1963, you know?
Yeah, that's crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a lot of churning and burning.
Yeah, that's a lot of music.
Who was the most inspiring person that you've ever met, say backstage or in person, worked with?

(40:06):
And what was inspiring about meeting that person that kind of like, wow.
I'd say the first booking agent we got, his name is Alberto Montelli.
He's not, he wasn't like a musical inspiration, but he handled the business so well.

(40:30):
So I got to see it from a different perspective and how you could work it.
And he was a super efficient guy who really knew everything he had to know about the booking agency, especially in Europe.
We were touring so much, thanks to him.

(40:51):
And I think, yeah, because, and I have to say also, do you know Too Slow to Disco, the series from Berlin?
That sounds so familiar.
It sounds so familiar.
His name, the guy's name is Marcus.
He always has a little golfing thing.

(41:13):
Anyway, well, you get, when you're out touring, you get to meet a lot of nice people.
I have to say, I have to say, well, we saw a lot of the guys from Punk's Jump up back in the day.

(41:41):
And, oh, yeah, there were a lot of promoters actually, made me realize that you could do things differently.
We were just out partying, trying to do a good set at some point and then party some more.
But a lot of people did it differently, like keeping it straight.

(42:05):
And I think they have better careers probably.
Yeah, it's kind of part of the, it comes along with the turf, I guess you could say a little bit.
Yeah.
If you could host your own event without any limitations, what five things would you have at that event?

(42:30):
Oh, I'd have the best sound system, like Danny Tenaglia's basement, all of that stuff.
I'll have his basement, like the same size as my bedroom, you know, I'd have those and some function one tops and probably Tenaglia doing an eight-hour set.

(42:52):
That's it.
That's true.
That's true.
Oh, shit.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I'd have no cameras, no video.
Yeah, no cell phones allowed.
That's a big topic right now.
Big, big topic.
I think it's going to start echoing out there in the world.

(43:15):
I think it's going to be one of the next biggest things that there's gonna be a crackdown on stuff like that.
Yay.
I mean, rightly so.
You shouldn't be there to film some douchebag playing CDs or whatever.
You should be having fun with your mates.
We always aim for that.
Please don't stare at us.

(43:38):
Do something else.
Be with your friends and have a good time.
But around the time where we stopped touring, the cameras came and they were everywhere.
There was one gig in Mexico.
All we could see was phones, you know, and nobody was dancing except us.

(43:59):
What's the point of that?
So yeah, I'd have a cell phone restriction and free water.
Two more, two more.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
We've got to have like a very simple light system with just one beam lasers going back and forth.

(44:29):
Keep it like an old warehouse party.
Just the one thing.
And yeah, I just wish that everyone who came to a club would do that to dance and have a good time with their friends and talk to girls and, you know, have drinks or whatever and listen to the music.

(44:49):
If people were doing that more than just staring at the DJ, we would have a better culture.
We wouldn't have the poster DJs.
You know, we would have real people in the business.
Well, you know, I'm not going to be that grumpy old man who hates everything, but it's a bit, in some ways, clubbing is not as good as it used to be.

(45:16):
I can totally understand that.
You know, there was a big article that came out, an article that came out, a big club in the UK has announced no cell phone use in the clubs.
I had somebody here recently that, you know, is a local promoter that said, what can we do to bring it back?
And I chimed in.
Nobody mentioned this in the whole, everyone was on the thread saying bunches and bunches of stuff.

(45:37):
I said, do like they do in Germany.
I was in Berlin last year, went to the club.
They put a sticker on the front of my phone, sticker on the back, no cell phone.
I can still text and do my Facebook and everything there, but I wasn't doing this.
Not that I'm one of those people that does that, because I know my lighting looks like crap.
My audio looks like crap.
And what am I going to do?
Show somebody?
And so it goes back to that age old adage.

(45:59):
Nobody's going to watch you filming the fireworks display from your phone.
They're just not going to.
It's cool.
You capture it.
And you're probably not even going to go back and watch the fireworks display you captured from your phone.
And so, from a social media standpoint, there's a system out there in play where they can put your phone in a magnetic, lock it magnetically.

(46:22):
And then when you walk out, they can unlock it.
It's in a bag.
Obviously, you can't get your phone.
But I think simply, I loosely wanted to propose the idea of forming a nonprofit corporation in the States here, at least, even just locally here at our state level in Seattle, Washington, that would get all these nightclubs on board and saying, hey, we're all going to sign an agreement that this needs to stop happening in our clubs.

(46:49):
And then they sign on board and maybe there's some incentive or something.
I don't know, whatever it is, but it's like a manifesto that says we all agree and we're all going to sign on board.
And then everyone is doing it throughout the industry.
It's not like one nightclubs doing it and they're going to be worried about losing business or giving zero one-star ratings on Yelp or people talking bad about them, but a multitude of clubs.

(47:13):
And there aren't that many clubs in Seattle you could do this at.
But if the trend gets started and it's just like, if before the non-smoking policy here in our area got put into play, Seattle was ahead of the game and restaurants were already saying no smoking in our restaurants, no smoking in our bars before it was illegal to do or banned.
Well, people didn't think the industry would survive that.

(47:37):
Yeah, exactly.
If I go outside to smoke, clubs are dead from now on.
But I'm not so sure people are going to accept the phone policy.
Well, even if it's as simple as putting a sticker on the front and the back of the phone and saying, look, if you're going to do that, we're going to ask you to leave.
Because back in the day when we started doing this, you're back in 89, I started going out to clubs in roughly around the same timeframe, 1990, but I didn't start going to electronic music clubs until about 92.

(48:11):
You didn't have a recording device with a 24 megapixel camera with you.
No.
You didn't even have a, let alone a recording device you could bring.
It had to be plugged into the wall if you wanted to record and have a microphone.
I mean, I was allowed to get video cameras into the clubs via the organization that Shoah is working with.
And we can get video cameras in that way, but nobody had anything to video record on.

(48:35):
And even if when you went to a concert, they'd say no recording devices, no cameras.
I mean, a good camera, you could have a little digital snap camera, but no cameras with removable lenses, but they weren't digital cameras even at that point, they were film cameras.
So you had 24, 30 exposures, you can snap, snap, snap, but if it had a removable, detachable lens, you couldn't bring it into the event unless you had clearance.

(49:01):
So nowadays people are filming and distributing, they're on site and technically they're recording a performance they don't have the rights to the music of, one, and then recording and sharing it.
Two, they don't have permission to use the location to film at the location.
And if these locations said, hey, we do not authorize, only authorized people to film can film, only authorized people to record can record.

(49:25):
This is from a legal standpoint, because that's maybe that could work.
I'm just worried that a lot of people expect when you get a ticket to an event to capture, I mean, yeah, or whatever, or if you pay to get into a club, you kind of expect to be able to take a short film of some DJ doing something jumping up and down.

(49:52):
I'm not sure it would be that accepted.
If they came at it from the legality standpoint, though, because here's what happens is here's what happened.
This just happened recently to a local nightclub in town, very far and few between.
I know ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, they don't have police people out there that run the streets, but a bar got in trouble and fined for using two songs they didn't have the rights for that a band played in their bar.

(50:19):
Now somebody goes out there and somebody's posting videos online that these songs are being played.
The DJ doesn't have the performance rights.
The band isn't submitting their licensing of the tracks that were played so they can pay out the royalties to the artist.
It can be a very big legal nightmare.
Here's all the proof.

(50:39):
All that ASCAP has to do is get those videos and say, this is the location.
This is where it was.
We verified it.
We've cross-checked it.
We're now suing you, bar, because you don't have the license to the place.
The bar goes, guess what?
We no longer want to have DJs here because we can have bands with original music.
This happens a lot with bars and nightclubs that do band performances and they play cover songs and they don't have the rights to perform those cover songs.

(51:05):
If you go around Europe and Sweden, any serious bar or nightclub would have a license for everything.
Sometimes you report it and sometimes you don't, but the license is always clear, like a blanket license where you get percentages from other places.

(51:28):
I know ASCAP is different.
What would be nice is if these label, they're so worried about protecting their license agreements in these establishments, is that they make a box, like a Shazam box that goes in there and listens to the music the whole time.
It goes, there's a song from the library, there's a song from the library.
Because that's what some of these bars and nightclubs do.

(51:50):
I think ASCAP does a blanket, but BMI and SESAC, you have to submit everything that was played track by track.
Those DJs would have to go back and say, here's our playlist, and somebody in the establishment has to upload that and see.
What I was reading in the study is that ASCAP, sorry, we're getting a little off on licensing.
The talk for people to know about is that it's really something like the top 700 music events around the world determine the payouts for these artists, the big, big dollar music that they do.

(52:24):
Because those big festivals are making sure they're clear on the rights.
They're making sure the artists are submitting, they have a separate person that is just collecting that information to send off to the agencies to make sure.
But all the bars and nightclubs and free parties and everywhere around the world, those artists, people are making money using their tracks, and they're not getting any kickback for that.
That's right.

(52:44):
That's how it works over here with everything.
It's actually like you said, it's a blanket license for a nightclub.
But I sometimes get a little payout from the collection society where it says discotheque play.
I always wonder who reports that.
There's got to be some DJs who actually does a list.
What did I play tonight?

(53:06):
I still haven't met one who does it.
With the advent of the technology getting better, and the decks and the software connecting to the internet, that can be automatically transmitted to them saying, yes, it doesn't cost the artist anything, but you didn't have performance rights to perform it, so a lot of them might turn that off.

(53:27):
The argument that the collection society made before was that it's too expensive to report everything.
Report everything, yep, absolutely.
But now it's different now.
Like you said, it could be automatic.
Yeah.
Some people think I'm bringing the hairbringer of doom when I'm saying, when they look at the terms and conditions and what they're doing, and it's like, yes, you're doing this on XYZ platform, but do you understand, you could eventually, and this is what happened to me when I went to become a partner with Twitch back two years before everyone jumped online and started live streaming.

(54:04):
They said to me, they said, Darran, we'll put you back to the front page of Twitch, but you got to watch out for something.
You have 400 episodes on our website that don't have the music rights to them, or at least you haven't shown us that.
And so you want to go back up there.
What happens is we're not going to say anything necessarily, not putting words in their mouth, but the labels and that Sony and Universal could come down on you and say, hey, not only do you have 400 episodes here, you have 1700 more episodes over on your website we're going to come after you for as well.

(54:34):
Did it actually happen?
No, because I removed them all from Twitch and I took care of all my licensing on the back end of my servers to make sure our stuff is licensed and used how we use it and package it on our site and our domains and everything.
But a lot of these artists that are out there streaming, they're going to be in a world of hurt if all of a sudden they're slapped at the seasons or slapped the letter saying, we have your past episodes.

(54:57):
We got these recordings.
We can see you perform and guess what?
We want our money.
And these are big name DJs that the bigger name DJs, they usually know all this stuff.
Like, you know it, they know it, but these smaller DJs, they don't get it.
And they're blowing up and making money and they're getting subscription fees.
They're making money, but they're not paying performance licenses.

(55:19):
They could be anyway.
So that's, that's too technical.
I know hands down, Dan, between you and I, I know everyone that's in this damn business and live streaming DJs.
I've been doing it for 16 years.
I can go.
That person does not have it.
That person does not have it.
And even if they do, they're not submitting their checklist because they would be advocates for it of telling everyone to do it.

(55:43):
And then they could be, they could be though under a blanket license.
You never know.
It'd be very interesting if they were, but even, even so, you know, then, then you got to worry about now you got the, the ephemeral performance right use, but then you got to go into the sync and master use as well, which I damn well know they don't know how to negotiate on that.
There's always two, two parts, you know.

(56:07):
Like I said, we can go down that conversation in a little show, but you know, outside of your, your own, or your own genre of music, who's, who's one of your favorite artists?
Oh, the Beach Boys.
Okay.
There we go.
Beach Boys.
That was quick.
Beach Boys.
Yeah.
That's a, they got some classic hits.

(56:27):
I like the Beach Boys.
I'm not, I'm not thinking about the Stripe shirt Beach Boys, but rather end of sixties, early seventies.
I have to say Kraftwerk.
I have, I've been a fan since I was 10 years old and I still listen to them like every week.
It's a, it's just a fantastic body of music and they have curated it so well.

(56:54):
They don't, they don't put out new music because there's no need.
People don't want to hear it, you know?
And I like that approach, that art, arty approach to the music.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, it's earlier when we were talking the first, one of the first songs that popped in my head was Autobot.
Yeah.
You know, first I, that was what came to my mind earlier in this interview, like, you know, you know, we're getting a little low on time here.

(57:22):
Just one last, a couple of last questions before we go, when you're not entertaining others, what do you do to entertain yourself?
I'm a simple guy, you know, I like to make music.
I make a lot of music that I don't play to other people, just for me, for fun.
And I collect records like a total nerd.

(57:44):
I'm getting worse as I get older.
Yeah.
I'm going to be one of those really old guys who have old, dusty records.
And I'm getting into that more and more listening to other people's music, discovering new genres that I never thought about before.
Hmm.
And speaking of exploring other genres and new music, you made an exclusive mix for us here at the DJ sessions.

(58:11):
Can you tell us a little bit about what went into making that exclusive mix for the DJ?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, when I got the request, I was thinking about doing like a disco set of new tracks and old tracks and like, like I've always done when I get a request.
Then I thought, no, I'm not going to do that.
So I just took a box of my favorite 45s down to a friend of mine, Ronnie, who has a record shop in Lund.

(58:37):
It's called Doolittle Records.
Fantastic, fantastic shop.
And I just went down there with my 45s and some beers and a tape deck to record the music on.
And then I just set up the camera and played my favorite songs for an hour.
It's it's gonna be a bit weird if you expect dropout orchestra sound or disco or house music.

(59:02):
It's none of that.
It's Little Richard and Weird Reggae Songs.
Nice.
Well, give me a shout out.
Oh, go ahead.
I was gonna say, I just hope you like it.
It's a, it's an odd mix, but it's great music.
If you just, you know, open up your ears and try not to expect the usual electronic stuff.

(59:24):
It's a bit of a weird one, but I hope you like it.
Absolutely.
No, I'm always excited to see new stuff on the series.
And it's big shout out to Doolittle Records who's in the chat room with us right now.
Hope you're enjoying the show.
On that note, anything else you want to let our DJ Sessions fans know about before we let you go?
Well, I have to mention the EP again coming out tomorrow.

(59:48):
Popstad Lund 2025.
It's got four new dropout orchestra remixes on it, and I'm really proud of it.
We have been working on it for the whole spring, like for months.
It took a lot of work, but we got there and I hope people are gonna enjoy it as well.
Coming out tomorrow.
Where's the best place people can go to find out more information about you and the new album, the new EP coming out?

(01:00:12):
Probably on Instagram.
Awesome.
Oh, there you go.
Fantastic.
That's it.
Instagram, Facebook, SoundCloud as well.
I have a copyright story for you some other time.
Okay, no, we'll follow up with you.
We'd like to stay in touch with everyone.
But every six months, we just like to touch base.

(01:00:33):
We always know there's new stuff going on new industry news, and everything.
So definitely would love to hear how that how that release goes.
Looking forward to seeing the exclusive mixes.
And thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Well, thanks for having me.
It's been very fun.
Absolutely.
Well, on that note, don't forget to go to our website, the DJ sessions.com.

(01:00:54):
You can find out all our socials over 700 news stories a month 2600 past episodes, our new music section syndicated episodes.
You can find out about our VR nightclub, our clothing store, which will be being revamped here soon.
And more at the DJ sessions.com.
You can just take a picture of like their cell phone QR code, take it right to the site or just go to the DJ sessions.com.

(01:01:17):
I'm your host, Darran coming to you from the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington.
That's Dan Lindenberg coming in from Lund, Sweden for the DJ sessions.
And remember, on the DJ sessions, the music never stops.
Thank you.