Max Graham Interview

Fresh from his musical hiatus, Max Graham marks his triumphant return with a tour and an upcoming album. Max took a few minutes to speak with us on what he was doing instead of making music, his outlook on the scene and why you can't just tuck him into one neat little musical genre.

What have you been up to lately?
I took a year off, opened an Apple computer dealer. I just wanted to do something completely different. I thought I could take the step away from music but it's really in my blood. I built the store in Toronto and left with my partner there, and I moved back to Montreal where I'm writing music full time again.

I started playing out again in December and my podcast is back. I've changed that format to be more radio friendly, instead of talking, kind of more of what Markus Schulz or what Armin is doing. It's more of a personality show rather than a DJ set. I've started playing out, producing a lot more, started playing with Jessica Jacobs again. We're gonna go to Markus Schulz's studio in Miami to record three tracks. I have a track out now that's on YouTube called "Sun in the Winter" with Neev Kennedy who's an Irish singer. The reviews have been pretty solid. Things are pointing in the right direction for getting back into music again.

Where have you been finding inspiration/what has been influencing you?
It's funny, I've been listening to a lot of different kinds of music because I find in dance music especially on the trance/progressive side it kind of sounds like everything has been done, every chord progression. I'm listening to a lot of different stuff - movie soundtracks, a lot of drum & bass. I still end up making the same type of music I've always made, the same sort of energetic, uplifting house music, but it's nice to have different sounds inspire that.

Where do you think the scene is headed?
That's a tough one - I mean it has changed a lot. It's gained a lot more fans on the commercial side, the trance has grown so big, but the underground is always gonna be the underground and the commercial stuff is always gonna be the commercial stuff... I think there's always gonna be that distinction. I see that the underground is diving a bit deeper again, and we've seen in the way that minimal and techno are coming back full force. But it's hard to say where it's going. It's constantly criss-crossing - that's the beauty of it, you don't really know where it's going or what's the next step or what's gonna evolve or the new producer that's going to come along that's just going to blow everybody's mind and you're going to find 20 copycats and it basically creates a new genre just from one or two guys. Deadmau5 is a good example of that, as a guy who came out of nowhere that has spawned copycats and created his own path within the industry. So that's constantly changing and that's the beauty of the underground house scene that's for sure.

I know how you don't like to allow yourself to be pigeonholed into a specific genre, but you've been around the block for awhile. Do you know how that happened? What was the catalyst for you to break free of being labeled?
I've always had the problem, if you could call it, on the artistic side, of not always playing what I make and making what I play. For example, I don't like to play three hours of the music that I make. If I have a trance hit, like Airtight was back in 2001, I'll show up and play 45 minutes of that kind of stuff, but two hours of different stuff. And back then, DJs were showing up and marketing themselves as a "trance dj" and they would play three hours of banging trance. And for me, I like to really mix it up, in and out, kind of like Sander or Danny Howells, who can play those different styles over the course of a night.

Unfortunately the guys who were running my career at that time, I didn't really know what I was doing, were really pushing me into the trance clubs, and I was showing up and starting out housey and building intro trance and people weren't into that. So I was a little bit not in the right clubs, but they were like "these are the ones with the highest profile, that's where you need to be pushing yourself." And I was like "I'm a musician, not a product."

I kind of had to take a big step back from the industry and that's why one year I make Airtight and the next year I make "I Know You're Gone" with Jessica Jacobs and then for a laugh I can make "Owner of a Lonely Heart." They don't all fit in one genre, they confuse a lot of people who are like "well, what is he? what does he do? where is he headed?"

And that's kind of worked against me, but from an artistic side of things, that's the way I have to do what comes naturally to me. I think I've been lucky to carve out enough of a career to keep going even while making such drastically different types of records.

Do you think that fans in the scene are too quick to judge what they like or might not like just based on what a DJ is labeled?
100%! I think that there's been so much fragmentation among the fans of each scene that if a DJ crosses over into another group of fans, the fans who have supported him will really lash out at him. And I’ve seen that happen a lot where if someone changes their style or goes more progressive or more techno, not only will fans say "ok, where he's just moving on, it's just something I’m not into anymore," they'll actually have a problem with it. And they'll kind of feel that he's abandoning these fans to get others. And that partly comes from the internet and message boards and the access the fans have to voice their opinion, which is great and I'm all for it, but you see a lot of that and that leads to a lot more fragmentation. And [as far as new fans just breaking in to the scene] you do see kids coming up going "I don't know a lot about the music, but this guy's famous and that guy's famous, I guess I like that kind of music." That's where Top 40 comes from. I don't think that a lot of people who listen to commercial radio genuinely like the songs, they just know that that's what popular, so to they say they like it just to fit in.

What's the last show you saw?
It's been awhile because I took the year off. Sander Kleinenberg was the last show I went to, in Montreal which was great. Sander's a good friend of mind, so we had dinner before, I went to the club, and then came back here, ended up listening to music with a few friends.

What's next?
On tour now, finishing up my artist album. The Sun in the Winter track is probably the first step in that direction, which is a progressive, trancey vocal thing. They'll be probably a few of those going on the album, and the album's gonna have some downtempo on it also, and that should be done in Spring and I'll be touring for the rest of the year. I'll be doing Cycles 2, and the podcast is in full force. I'm also redoing my website, because I let all of that go by the wayside while I went and opened the store.

Who are you listening to now? Why?
Guys that really catch my ear from a production standpoint, like Daniel Portman, Jerome Isma-ae, these guys are making records that fit my style perfectly. They're nice and chunky but have just enough melody to be a little bit different, a little emotional but they're still chunky club records. Which at the end of the day, no matter what, I always kind of get back to playing stuff that has some energy and has some kick. It's tough, there's a lot of trance people that I listen to at home that I don't end up playing out as much, Protoculture, Daniel Kandi, these guys are really trancey and I love listening to their stuff, but it's not necessarily what I would play, which probably adds to the confusion.