Third time's the charm for Martin Solveig. In the last six months, the French electro-house DJ/producer behind hits like "Hello" and "The Night Out" has been forced to miss two Boston gigs. First airline snafus kept him from opening for Madonna when her MDNA Tour came to TD Garden. (He produced much of her last album, including its lead single, "Give Me All Your Luvin'.") Then Hurricane Sandy dampened plans for a club gig.
But on Tuesday, March 26, Solveig will finally get his groove on at Bijou Nightclub & Lounge. Since MDNA dropped, he's been quiet on the music front, so we got him talking about what's on the way, what it was like to work with Madonna, and whether a Lady Gaga collaboration could ever be in the cards.
Last year's trips didn't work out. But have you been to Boston before? Just once, I spent two days in the area. I got a quick visit of Harvard, because a bunch of French students wanted to show me around. I met some amazing science students. It's probably the biggest [in name] campus in the world, making some of the best doctors. At the same time, the more you work — the more you need to go out and escape, right?
So, where's the new music? The last few years were about intense music and video making. I'm using this moment to catch my breath! This year I decided it [new music] was going to come out instinctively, not inside a big plan. I have a couple of new songs that I'm going to debut at Ultra Music Festival, and then I'll play them at Bijou, too. You'll be among the first to hear them!
Speaking of Ultra, what EDM trends do you see on the horizon? The styles are always evolving, moving and regenerating faster and faster. It's hard to predict what is going to be hot, but something missing over the last five years that I think will come back is real instruments: basses, strings, horns. I think organic instruments will come back and play ball, as opposed to electronic elements being 100 percent.
Pop stars don't get bigger than Madonna. Was she scary? Intimidating? Scary? Absolutely not. Intimidating? Of course — not because of who she is, but because of what she represents. You can't deny or forget the importance of this artist. That makes it a little but scary, but she makes it so easy in the studio to collaborate. You forget about it. I just say, very humbly, that I simply added another stone to a wall of work that is already huge. It's not going to change the overall quality of the wall; I just added another stone to it.
Do you get backlash from other DJs for working with pop acts? Not that I know of! [Laughs] People are always complaining and arguing that EDM shouldn't get mixed up with pop. That's ridiculous. Since the very beginning, with producers like Inner City and Lil Louis, there has been an intercourse between electronic music and pop music. The same story with hip-hop and rock. As much as I love electronic music, I don't consider it my life; my life is music. And I try to see it from a global perspective. Some pop artists like Madonna, Britney, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, the Black Eyed Peas, and many others in the last decade have contributed to the awareness of the global genre of EDM. It has made the movement huge, massive. Everyone, including the very indie guys, has benefited.
