The Swedish D.J.s and producers Axwell and Sebastian Ingrosso, known lately as the duo Axwell and Ingrosso, hid in the immaculate bowels of the Apple Store in SoHo earlier this week, plotting their escape.
The chauffeured S.U.V. taking them to their sold-out show at Terminal 5 was still a few minutes away, but a crowd had gathered outside Apple’s back door — selfie sticks at the ready — following an earlier Q. and A. for 350 fans. “It’s not going to be chaos,” Axwell assured his partner, after a long negotiation in Swedish. “We’ll just go out and take some pictures.”
Ingrosso sighed. “I’m so tired,” he said, before forging ahead with a wide smile into the swarm of cellphones and outstretched arms, hiding his weariness like a child avoiding bedtime.
Both men had reason to be exhausted. After the 2013 breakup of their hugely successful D.J. trio, Swedish House Mafia, which had been early to the electronic dance music industry explosion, Axwell and Ingrosso are back and pushing themselves further into the mainstream.
E.D.M., now a bombastic, multibillion-dollar dopamine waterfall of pleasure, is “here to stay,” Ingrosso said, comparing it to the rise of the electric guitar. “It’s too big to be a bubble.”
But what the genre lacks are undeniable rock stars.
While Axwell and Ingrosso have thrived in Europe and on E.D.M.’s huge live festival circuit, they don’t have the name-brand fame that comes with traditional pop prominence. Swedish House Mafia was on its way, but the group called it quits just as the genre became huge; on its farewell tour, it sold out Madison Square Garden in minutes.
Now, to make up for lost time, Axwell and Ingrosso (minus the third D.J. in the group, Steve Angello) have signed with Def Jam, the home of Kanye West and Iggy Azalea.
Last Saturday, Axwell and Ingrosso — who have released just three new songs and plan to put out an album this summer — played to 80,000 people as headliners at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, which attracts their core demographic. On April 11 and April 18, the D.J.s will perform to a wider audience at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, where they sit just under Jack White on the big-name bill.
In between, Axwell and Ingrosso squeezed in a concert at Terminal 5, one of New York’s larger venues (capacity: 3,000), which qualifies as “intimate” for the group. Before the last-minute show, they convened in the corner office of the Def Jam chief executive, Steve Bartels, which the Swedes had colonized with fresh juice, kale chips and their own blasting tunes. Ingrosso acknowledged their relative anonymity in the United States — for now. “In Sweden, we can’t really walk the streets,” he said. “It was so smart of Daft Punk to put helmets on and save their identities for the rest of their lives.”
Axwell and Ingrosso, on the other hand, were clad in variations on the same luxe-casual outfit: expensive-looking T-shirts, tight black jeans, dark gray high-tops and tastefully long, effortless hair.
At 37, Axwell, whose real name is Axel Christofer Hedfors, is the smaller and more skeptical of the two, while Ingrosso, 31, is beefier, tattooed and hyper-enthusiastic. Both use slightly dated American slang as if they were lovable exchange students, dropping the occasional “phat” or “for shizzle.”
The two met through the small Stockholm club scene and made their names in the dance underground individually. But their combined sound, which incorporated populist elements of disco and singalong bands like Coldplay, went international.
“It was just like ‘boom!’ “ Axwell said of electronic dance music’s rising popularity. “We had so many things going for us that we only had to release a song a year.”
But playing to sold-out crowds with only a half-dozen or so original compositions got old, Ingrosso said: “We didn’t really commit to Swedish House Mafia so hard. We did a big thing, but it was loose.” Now, as a duo, “we wanted to do it for real.” With acts like Avicii, Calvin Harris and Ingrosso’s protégé Alesso rising to the top of the E.D.M. heap, the timing was right for a more focused effort.
After its anything-goes detonation, the E.D.M. scene is “a little bit more filtered now,” Ingrosso said, and fans “are more selective with what they like.”
Judging by live shows, they really like Axwell and Ingrosso. “Obviously we don’t expect a deep techno purist to appreciate our music,” Axwell said. “That’s totally understandable.” (At Ultra, the two punctuated their booming assault of bass drops with the all-too-familiar riff from Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”)
But while Americans prefer the “spring break” sound — all drops all the time — and Swedes like “more melancholy,” with some folk influence, Axwell continued, “Ideally, we are half and half.”
As for accusations that the group is selling out by dumbing down its sound, Ingrosso defended mass appeal. “Underground dance music — in the nicest way possible — it’s amateur,” he said.
Axwell and Ingrosso’s new songs are both gut-thumping and tuneful — featuring a fair amount of what Ingrosso called melodies “you are going to sing when you go to the bathroom.” The simplistic positive messaging can be almost oppressive on tracks with featured vocalists, like “Dream Bigger,” with Pharrell Williams, and “On My Way,” which includes the lines, “If I hit rock bottom/I’m gonna smile and dance with every step I take.”
Backstage at Terminal 5, the guys greeted fans, fist-pumped and playfully practiced karate moves, the adrenaline building. Performances, they said, were like a victory lap after years of fiddling with songs, despite critics who argue that E.D.M. performers do little more live than twist a few knobs.
“They don’t know what we do before the shows,” Axwell said. “A guy with a guitar might know how to play the guitar, but does he know how to produce a whole song?”
Ingrosso added, “The most important thing is not what we play, but the personality and how we interact with the crowd.”
As the thousands in attendance chanted in anticipation, Axwell and Ingrosso eyed the audience through a curtain. “Turnt up, turnt up!” Axwell said to himself as he bounded to center stage.
The two-hour set that followed included the duo’s new work, in addition to Swedish House Mafia favorites, with each familiar screech and thwack sending the sweaty crowd into a new frenzy. There was also a strategic drop of Toto’s “Africa.”
While the musical cues and visual accompaniment could be too choreographed, Axwell and Ingrosso were disarmingly goofy on the mike, even bumbling through classic borough call-outs. (Axwell managed only to cite Brooklyn, Long Island and “New York State” before moving on.)
In their dressing room afterward, the crowd of well-wishers included the group’s new boss, Mr. Bartels of Def Jam, himself a former D.J., and his teenage son. The D.J.s were soaked but elated, going over their favorite moments from the show as Ingrosso helped himself to a celebratory Corona. For the moment, a bottle of Champagne went untouched.
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