Totally Stockholm 1
INFATUATED BY THE ART Mr. Tophat on his love for
the art. And hats. Words: Rickard Tollstoy Photo: John Scarisbrick “My mother usually says that the difference between a good counterfeiter and a good artist is that the counterfeiter lacks heart. That’s true with music as well. You can hear it. Where there’s heart is where there’s a real artist,” explains Mr. Tophat. The Swedish dance music producer has recently released his new album This Is Pop. The title sounds self-explanatory but let’s call his brand of pop the more experimental kind. Anyway, behind the Mr. Tophat moniker we find Rudolf Nordström. Rudolf has his roots in Högdalen in the south of Stockholm where he grew up with artists as parents. Today Mr. Tophat has left Stockholm and peacefully resides on the island of Gotland. What was it like growing up with artists as parents? They have taught me that you need two things for success. Discipline and anarchy. The discipline side does, in short, mean that the shit gets done. But if that’s all you’ve got you end up like everybody else. That’s where the anarchy becomes useful. To not care at all. As long as you can pay the rent and food. You don’t make art for someone else – if you do, then I’d say you’re doing decoration or advertising. Artistry is a driving force; the art is my calling. I don’t know if I have it from my parents, but they have showed me that it’s possible to make a living from what you love. And they have also given me lots of love and security. From where does your fascination with hats come? When I was younger, I collected hats. There’s a connection to the roaring ’20s, a decadent and hedonistic decade. The hat is an incredibly sassy item of clothing. Elegant and full of history. Back in the day, in England, you couldn’t ask any gentleman to remove his hat, not under any circumstances. That gentleman rule has lived on, which was why the London drug pushers kept their merchandise under bowler hats during the early rave scene. The police couldn’t do anything about it. I suppose that law has been changed, if it wasn’t a tall tale in the first place… What was your thinking conceptually around your new album This Is Pop? 8 writing this album. Pop is very eclectic and I’m agnostic about genres, I just love producing. That’s what I’m sick of when it comes to the house and techno scene. I love it and that’s where I come from but it’s so narrow. In pop I’m freer. And regardless, I’m really happy with the album. You have previously worked with Robyn, and have done so again with this album. How do you two know each other? Robyn and Christian Falk had worked together a lot and when he passed away in 2014 it created a void for her. She knew how important Christian had been for me and found music that I had created with Art Alfie that she liked. She asked if I wanted to do a remix of Love Is Free which she wrote together with Christian. I did a couple of remixes and a couple of months later we created the Trust Me EP. She really comes from pop and her strength is that she’s so open. She’s not tied to any genre, she dares to be house, dares to be hip-hop, as well as pop. Pop is like a cape that can protect you and help you to say ‘I do whatever the hell I want’. That cape suits her really well. The concept is really ’the stupidity of pop’. The previous album Dusk to Dawn was a narrative of the night, from the sun sets until it comes up again. It had to do with life and death. Light and darkness. Musically it was like a comment on dance music. This album is my comment on pop. There is a verse, chorus format and commercial arrangements. Pop is just an umbrella term. What was ’popular’ on the billboard list 50 years ago wouldn’t be released today. What is pop really? That’s been an important thing in my internal dialogue when Who do you dream about working with in the future? I want to work with fun and interesting people who are open-minded and love music. I already work with some of them. Who’s that? Robyn, my dad, Jocke Åhlund, Linnea Magnusson, Art Alfie. But those are people close to me. I don’t have any dream collabs. As long as they share my love and passion. Love is the ingredient that makes it become what you want in the end. Love for the art is what infatuates the true artist.