There’s a version of the KAAZE story that reads like a highlight reel: a Tiësto co-sign, a home on Revealed Recordings, a catalogue that swings from techno to progressive house and back again without ever losing its shape. But sit with the Swedish producer long enough and a different story surfaces. ONe about timing that never cooperated and a sound that refused to be planned. KAAZE sat down with Deep Tech Magazine about growing up between two record collections, the collaboration that changed everything, and why he stopped trying to predict the scene.
WORDS: ROMÉE AVRIL VAN DER VEEN
Baby steps
KAAZE was raised inside it. “My father is a musician who taught me a lot of instruments and rock n roll. My mother was all into techno and disco, so those two worlds probably shaped me.” he stats. It’s a lineage that still shows: the rock-honed instinct for a big, physical hook, layered over a dancefloor sensibility that never fully lets go of the four-to-the-floor pulse his mother raised him on. The spark that pointed him toward house music, though, came from television rather than the family stereo. “I discovered David Guetta on MTV at a very young age and got my love for house music that way,” he recalls. Daft Punk followed soon after, though he’s quick to put that influence in context. “Surely they inspired most of today’s DJs, right?”
There wasn’t a single lightning-bolt moment that convinced him music could be more than a hobby. It arrived gradually, then all at once. “I guess when I understood that I could pay all my bills with music income was like a big wow moment for me,” he says. A refreshingly unglamorous answer from an artist now filling festival mainstages.
The Break That Changed the Timeline
By his own account, KAAZE’s early years weren’t defined by talent shortages so much as bad timing. “My struggle has always been timing, I think,” he says. “It’s so hard to predict and try to be on point at the right time with music and everything around it.” The shift came when he stopped trying to engineer that timing at all. “Once I stopped caring about strategy and timing, and leaned more into my intuition, that’s when things started to take shape for the better.”
That intuition paid off in dramatic fashion with his remix of “Maximal,” which caught the ear of Tiësto and became his true breakthrough. “That whole period was a very surreal time,” he says. “Tiësto was my very first collaboration in my career with anyone, and to have that moment with him was a crazy feeling.” The two went on to make “Rocky” together: a record born, fittingly, from an artist who’d just proven the value of not overthinking things.
Not long after came Hardwell and Revealed Recordings, a relationship that gave KAAZE something rarer than a placement: room to figure out who he actually was as an artist. “They gave me a position inside the team to shape myself and find my identity as an artist,” he says. “I’m forever grateful for their support, and I love them to death for their belief in me.”
A Sound That Refuses the Blueprint
Ask KAAZE to explain the melodic-yet-massive signature that’s come to define his sets, and he pushes back gently on the premise. “I don’t think too much about what I’m gonna do in the studio or what sound to make. It all comes from the heart, and I can’t fully control it,” he says. It’s a sentiment that extends to the pressure many festival-circuit producers describe feeling around genre expectations. KAAZE says he’s never really felt it. “I’ve never felt pressured into following any sounds or trends. I always try to just do my thing and what I love to do.”
That looseness is visible in the arc of his catalogue, which he sums up almost as a genealogy: “Techno, House, Progressive House, Rock House, Progressive House 2.0, Techno, and then today it’s a mixture of all of those sounds.” Asked whether he’s drifting back toward the underground or holding the mainstage line, he shrugs off the binary entirely. “I have no idea. I love to evolve as an artist as long as I put my personal little touch on whatever style I’m making. It’s all about having fun.”
Dad Mode
Touring at KAAZE’s level tends to come with a familiar set of vices, but his grounding mechanism isn’t the road, it’s what waits at the end of it. “My daughter keeps me grounded first of all,” he says. “Because of her, I want to always be 100% in dad mode when I come home, which means no parties, no drinking, and gym every day. I look at touring almost as a sport: to be ready and energised when I come home to my daughter.”
That relationship has started showing up directly in the music. His track “Invincible,” he explains, wasn’t built for a crowd at all. “I wrote it for my daughter, with her aura and personality completely in mind.” It’s a rare admission from an artist who otherwise makes no secret of writing for the room. “Most of the time I would say the crowd,” he says of his general studio mindset, “but sometimes I’ll make more personal tracks.”
Geographically, his favourite rooms have shifted over the years. Europe remains a given “it’s in our blood here,” he says, but Tokyo and, more recently, the East Coast of the United States have earned a permanent place on his list. “Always great energy there.”
What a Good Night Actually Looks Like
For an artist who’s played sold-out rooms across three continents, KAAZE’s definition of a perfect night is notably unglamorous. “It can be a lot of struggles and errors on tour, but when everything goes smoothly for my team and me, those are the best nights,” he says. A packed room is the bonus, not the baseline. “Then, of course, a sold-out show on top of that and we have an unforgettable night.”
On where the scene itself is heading, he’s optimistic rather than nostalgic: a notable position from an artist old enough to remember multiple “the golden era is over” narratives. “Some people are saying we already had a peak in the scene,” he says, “but in my opinion, we are living in the peak right now. So many genres and styles all over the scene. It’s amazing.”
Asked what he’d tell the version of himself just starting out, KAAZE doesn’t hesitate. “Be yourself. With music, with branding, the whole package needs to come right from your heart. Originality wins every time.”
📷 : Cover Photo / Courtesy of KAAZE
📷 : Additional Photo Credits / Courtesy of KAAZE