To have your song played by Swedish House Mafia in Madison Square Gardens, in Manhattan, New York, has got to be one of the coolest things you could say about yourself. Well – that’s the case with Hard Rock Sofa. Their song Quasar, which is out on Axtone records, was played at that show. We had a chance to fire over some questions for these guys, and ask them how they felt about it. Check out their answers below
Q: First off, tell us a little bit about Hard Rock Sofa. How did you guys meet and what got you into DJing/producing in the first place?
A: In 2005 we started off as a trio. All 3 of us (Alexander Shapovalov – producer / DJ, Denis Chepikov – producer/ DJ, Sergey Zuev – vocals) live in the same town, Smolensk. We’d known each other and been friends much longer before we organized the project of Hard Rock Sofa. The 2 of us (Alex & Dan) were djing in local clubs while Sergey was performing live with his rock band. As Hard Rock Sofa we toured a lot throughout Russia and Europe but not long ago Sergey Zuev left the project to pursue his own career of a lead singer in a rock ‘n’ roll band.
Q: How did you come up with the name?
A: We thought about it for a long time as we wanted it to be creative, interesting and original at the same time. In the early days of our career our house music was a little more influenced by rock and dance music of the 80’s than it is now.
Producing our tracks we used some live instruments like guitars, synths, old drum machines and vintage effects to make our house music have a slight resemblance with hard rock.
At that time we tried to make music that was good for a club audience as well as for listening at home on the sofa.
Q: You guys have played in the US, Europe, and Russia. What’s your favorite club or festival venue that you’ve played at?
A: All the clubs and fests where we played at are good, each in their own way. Lately we’ve been touring the US a lot and the show we enjoyed the most was the one at Amnesia club in Miami, Florida. Continue reading
