To have your song played by Swedish House Mafia in Madison Square Gardens, in Manhattan, New York, has got to be one of the coolest things you could say about yourself. Well – that’s the case with Hard Rock Sofa. Their song Quasar, which is out on Axtone records, was played at that show. We had a chance to fire over some questions for these guys, and ask them how they felt about it. Check out their answers below
Q: First off, tell us a little bit about Hard Rock Sofa. How did you guys meet and what got you into DJing/producing in the first place?
A: In 2005 we started off as a trio. All 3 of us (Alexander Shapovalov – producer / DJ, Denis Chepikov – producer/ DJ, Sergey Zuev – vocals) live in the same town, Smolensk. We’d known each other and been friends much longer before we organized the project of Hard Rock Sofa. The 2 of us (Alex & Dan) were djing in local clubs while Sergey was performing live with his rock band. As Hard Rock Sofa we toured a lot throughout Russia and Europe but not long ago Sergey Zuev left the project to pursue his own career of a lead singer in a rock ‘n’ roll band.
Q: How did you come up with the name?
A: We thought about it for a long time as we wanted it to be creative, interesting and original at the same time. In the early days of our career our house music was a little more influenced by rock and dance music of the 80’s than it is now.
Producing our tracks we used some live instruments like guitars, synths, old drum machines and vintage effects to make our house music have a slight resemblance with hard rock.
At that time we tried to make music that was good for a club audience as well as for listening at home on the sofa.
Q: You guys have played in the US, Europe, and Russia. What’s your favorite club or festival venue that you’ve played at?
A: All the clubs and fests where we played at are good, each in their own way. Lately we’ve been touring the US a lot and the show we enjoyed the most was the one at Amnesia club in Miami, Florida.
Q: Speaking of playing in the US – how does the EDM scene in Russia compare to America?
A: It’s hard to differentiate between the US and Russian EDM scene since the DJs are playing more or less the same kind of music and the clubs are designed and decorated basically in the same way. We have a lot of fans in the USA and Russia. We think that there’s more opportunity in America due to its warmer climate to organize huge shows and fests in the open air.
Q: Who are you guys listening to right now, personally? Any guilty pleasures?
A: Of course we listen to lots of top house producers and DJs like: Swedish House Mafia, Afrojack, Dirty South, Fedde Le Grand, Avicii and others as well as old school electronic music such as: Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Groove Armada, Daft Punk, Fatboy Slim.
Q: Congratulations on getting a huge amount of support from Swedish House Mafia! What are your thoughts on having Quasar played at Madison Square Garden?
A: We were very happy and honoured that Quasar was played by the great Swedish House Mafia in NYC at one of the biggest arenas in the world. It’s really cool that our track was heard by thousands of people.
Q:Is there anyone that you would love to collaborate with, that you haven’t already?
A: It would be really nice to work with Axwell at a studio together.
Q: Random question – if you were an animal, what would you be?
A: Since there’re 2 of us we would want to be the Gummy Bears as we would like to try their magic gummyberry juice and jump as high as they could. 🙂 🙂 🙂
