Paxton FettelTalks

Music

Born and raised in Denmark, Paxton Fettel began his musical career by experimenting with drums at the age of 5 and then moving through the spectrum, exploring almost every genre imaginable. It is only now however that he has found a place that he is comfortable and can begin to evolve his sound.

Paxton Fettel celebrates the release of his brand new, limited edition 12″ ep on Greta Cottage Workshop by giving you marvellous Ransom Note readers a free track to download. Not only that, we also caught up with the Danish Wonder to ask him a few questions.

The wax drops on Monday 17th June.

Hi Paxton. Firstly – congratulations on the new wax. Sounding ace. Were all of these tracks in the EP written together for the project?

All the tracks were written within a period of 6 months. I took a trip to my dads house and did 5 tracks. Permafunk is a bit different since it was released digitally on my previous Greta Cottage Workshop contribution, Out Missing.

I know Paxton Fettel is not your real name. Where did it come from and why not use the name your mother gave you? I should add here that Joe Europe is not the name I was born with…

Paxton is… Well, the world scares me a bit, which is why I found it obvious to hide behind a moniker to test out my musical output. I guess I thought I could just blame it on someone else if I sucked.

You say that you started out as a drummer right? How has this influenced your music and do you use live drums in your tracks now?

Playing the drums was my gateway to music, I’ve picked up piano, guitar & bass since then, all adding to my knowledge and understanding of how music works. But the drums will probably always have a special place. I’ve sampled my drum kit and used it plenty. It adds a certain realism to the sound having some room in there which is not just a reverb algorithm from a plugin.

Your music kinda rides the line between dancefloor orientated house music and spacious downtempo. When you start a track are you thinking it’s going to be for the dancefloor or the lounge from the outset or do you just start writing and see what comes out?

My writing process is very mood dependant. Some days I just wanna sit back and do some ambient work, other days it is a disco groove I’ve been dying to sample, whatever gets me there. Every track is a different story and I try to experiment and do things differently every time to learn as much as I can in the process. I don’t have a category that says “Dancefloor Sweepers” and one for “The Midtown 120 Blues”, I just jump right in and see where it gets me.

You’ve been working with Greta Cottage Workshop for a little while now, how did you hook up with them and why are they a good label to work with?

Greta Cottage Workshop came to my attention a couple of years ago. Their mixtapes are really high quality and I started out as a regular listener. Matt heard my stuff on soundcloud and asked me to hook him up with something of mine, I did the Skyflares EP for him and that’s how it started. The Greta crew has widened my horizon, sharpened my blades and keeps my quality control high. They’re the people who make you want to take the next step, it seems it’s my home and I’ve always felt that way with them. Good guys in it for the right reasons which I find rare in this vortex of beatport chart competition. We’re on the same page.

You’re based in Copenhagen right? Tell us what the scene is like in Denmark at the moment. Who’s hot stuff and who should we be looking out for?

The scene in Copenhagen is just as every other scene I guess, a lot of people doing stuff I don’t care about, and a few people working their asses off to offer some, to my ears, quality music. To highlight a few of my favourites: Taragana Pyjarama, Jesper Ryom, Natal Zaks, Theodor Clausen, 2bit crew, Beastie Respond, the list goes on. All proper talents offering a wide variety of different styles.

Great, thanks Paxton.