Featuring collaborations with Joe Gill, Rudy and Ruben Haze (a very different, ‘indie’ side project Roganovic and Rudy have set up), the album is a journey through the mind and musical tastes of Dirty South the producer, inspired mostly by a life on the road and those he’s crossed paths with during his decade-long career in dance.
“I love it!” he unabashedly says of Speed Of Life. “Seriously, it’s taken me so long to do this and just the sheer fact that it’s finally out is enough to make me happy. Most of all, though, I love it because my mantra has always been to make music for myself, music that I would listen to and that personally satisfies me, and this album has ticked the boxes, so to speak. I criticise myself a lot anyway, even before people get to hear the rough copy, so when I say I’m happy with the result, I really mean it. Things always got in the way, though, I was always busy touring and doing live shows. At one point, it seemed like it was never going to happen…”
This served as a catalyst and a big kick-in-the-bum for Roganovic to finally make his plans concrete. Sick and tired of ‘talking the talk’, the producer took an interesting approach in setting his goal in motion – not, to mention an extremely risky one…
“I basically had to trick myself into doing it,” he laughs. “It was a matter of sort of putting myself into a trap. I’ve been making singles and remixes my whole career and it was a bit disappointing that I hadn’t got to do what I’d always wanted to do – which was an album. Not having enough time to do it was one thing, but on top of that I was genuinely just scared and anxious about the thought of doing it, so at first I started telling myself over and over that I was going to do an album… Then I started saying it in media interviews. Then I started tweeting it and announcing it on social media. Basically, I put myself in a spot where I had made all these announcements to the public and they would be able to hold me to it. I literally forced myself to do it, really.”
It wasn’t just about “tricking” himself into committing to a full-length record, it also came down to good time-management and careful planning. The rest, according to Roganovic, was up to the universe.
“It’s been one of those things, definitely – you put it out there to the universe and the universe gives it back to you in the form of inspiration. I could have had all the time of the world and I could have planned it perfectly, but if I hadn’t been able to come up with some really good tracks, it would have been for nothing. I was still touring while I was doing this album, but I made time for it. I had like 30 dates in the US at one stage where I stayed in places like L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia and New York and you can’t help but be influenced by those places. Everything around me – from conversations between people on the street, from hearing tracks on the radio, from watching movies, from the scenery outside the plane or car – everything seemed like inspiration.”
Rather than relying on a whole cast of guest appearances to help carry the tracks, Roganovic went the opposite direction, choosing to work with only two other artists, confident in himself that his songs could stand up just fine pretty much on their own. Featuring Joe Gill as well as Roganiovic’s close friend Rudy, Speed Of Life is Dirty South through-and-through.
“I produced the album all by myself,” he states. “The only ‘outside’ people were the two vocalists. I worked with Rudy quite a bit on the album because I’m used to it by now, I’ve worked with him forever. We’ve actually got a side-project coming out very soon [Ruben Haze] which is more based in acoustic, live instruments. I also worked with a guy from L.A. called Joe Gill who is also amazing. I guess working with friends makes it much more fun, it makes it more organic and much, much easier than it could be. You always struggle with a ‘favourite track’ when you’re talking about your own tracks, but on this album it would be the song Speed Of Life. It’s the title track but it pretty much sums up what the whole album is about.”
BY PEPPER SCOTT
