INTERVIEW: Booka Shade talk fatherhood and pop music

Dance music as a genre always has the danger of being trite. Booka Shade have a knack for making it profound. Whether it’s the mystery of Night Falls or the warmth of Charlotte, Booka Shade make electronic music that is enriching. The power of their music is largely due to their genre-shattering approach, incorporating elements of classical, rock jazz and even film score into their lethal drum and synthesiser combo. When it comes to live shows, Booka Shade more than prove their chops as musicians. Their live sets are famous for the frenetic energy of Arno and Walter – sweatily pounding away on drums and keys. Booka Shade has again blessed Australia with their live music, headlining Harbourlife and Strawberry Fields Festival. We had a chat to Arno from Booka Shade.

You’re both family men. How do you make the transition from a sweaty 6am sunrise set to playing with your kids?

That’s always a challenge there of course. We try to have good time management, when we are in the studio we work with focus basically, that’s the whole point. But when we’re with the family, we’re also with the family. And the travelling – we’re not that crazy like we used to be, the whole touring schedule –we try to keep in a way that we have weekends off. We play much less weekends then we used to because for us its very important that we spend time with the family, because you know at the end of the day you could do this touring for ever and ever and ever, you could go every weekend, everywhere all the time. – good time management, not so many shows as their used ot be, and we try to have it like we do in Australia, we fly in, we don’t have extra days, so we do the 4 shows and then we fly back – there used to be a time when I had the great privilege two years ago I could bring the family and then we had some extra weeks in Australia so that was amazing, because we could see the country a little bit, and we flew up to the north to Queensland and then we spent some time there, and Walter does the same some times if its okay to bring the kids, and umm yeah its important for us and its doable –you have to be a bit more healthy, and you know we look after ourselves, to do some sports and stuff like that, and that works.

You’ve had a successful partnership for more than 30 years. What’s the best and worst part of working with the other?

It depends that we are still together and that we can work together. There were times obviously when you don’t’ get along so well its over the years. Nowadays, we’re much more like relaxed. When you look at a career it’s a long thing, (hopefully at least for us). There are times when you’re more focused on the music, and times when you’re more focused on pure travelling and touring and then you take some time off again. But we still have the feeling that together we can do great things and produce great music. Every time we are together and we write something, and then we realise that, yeah, the two of us together really works. Obviously the downside is that yeah, you spend so much time together when you don’t really want to, when you’re tired, you’re sick, sometimes you just want to be home but you’re still on the road… But you know you can’t have it all! There has to be a little suffering for all the good stuff that’s happening.

You were previously pop producers. What was it like becoming your own boss when you started Get Physical?

To be our own bosses… It’s funny, I just talked to somebody the other day about work in general, and how great it is that you are your own boss and that nobody tells you what to do. Sometimes I actually wish there was somebody to tell me what to do! I would just have to do it, and not think so much and not have all these options and you could do this and do that. But at the end of the day both of us are really – we wouldn’t function in a system where we would just have to be in a big company, in a big enterprise. I don’t think we wouldn’t work very well there – so yeah for us its great we’ve always been independent minds and independently working people. So yeah it works, it’s a great privilege and also a lot of risk as well, but it’s the only way that would work for us.

What do you make of the increasing presence of dance music in pop?

We think its great. It opens all these – I was just talking about the dubstep in America that changed the landscape completely. Before that it was all the euro techno stuff in America. Of course you can think about the music what you want – I don’t listen to the music very much – but I realised that it opens doors for us, for people like us. Because the kids listen to this kind of music. And I think that at the moment you can already feel that kids want to explore more what is there – and where does the electronic music comes from? And there’s great opportunity’s for acts like us who have been around for a while – and we do have a certain fan base – but also an opportunity to reach out to young people.