Naïve and careless: Kornél Kovács makes house music from the heart

Kornél Kovács and the Studio Barnhus imprint he co-founded with Axel Boman and Petter Nordkvist are responsible for putting out a wealth of interesting and intricately crafted records. Packed full of unorthodox melodies, with influences spanning pop to dancehall, the music exists in its own field, constantly shifting away from homogeneity, marking the label bosses out as a trio of Swedish house messiahs.

Kornél’s playful personality drives this intrigue in unconventional sounds. “As far as the daily operation of Studio Barnhus goes, we're a fucking mess, we're horrible. Our finances and organisation are a joke,” he tells us candidly. A tunnel vision focus on creating and curating fascinating music leaves little time to get bogged down in admin.

Tracing Kornél’s history sheds light on his open-minded approach. The Stockholm scene he grew up in was active, but limited by the nation’s moral panic and strict policing. This led to Kornél looking across Europe to feed his ravenous dance music appetite. The UK served as his foremost influence, and he became obsessed with drum’n’bass and jungle at the age of 10, taken in by how fresh it sounded to his keen, youthful ears. Even now in his lower-BPM offerings, the strong emotional content and focus on ideas over technical proficiency of his first dance music loves resonates deeply. He took up DJing at the age of 13, and from 18 to the present day he’s been doing it every weekend, developing into one of the circuit’s most idiosyncratic selectors.

As a producer, Kornél has made two of the past two summers’ biggest tracks in ‘Szikra’ and ‘Pantalón’, and now this August he’s taking things one step further with his debut full-length release ‘The Bells’. Across the album’s 10-track runtime Kornél retains his trademark liveliness and a keen sense of fun with samba samples and spacey disco synth stabs, but equally his personal stamp courses through the LP in the manner in which the sounds are twisted and warped, resulting in an album that thrills with its conflicting atmospheres. Check out an exclusive premiere of the title track and a q+a below.

Cities such as Berlin, London and Amsterdam are famous for their vibrant music scenes, but sometimes context and history can be restrictive. Do you think growing up in a city with a less traditional rooting in dance music contributed to the free-spirited approach of yourself and your Studio Barnhus partners?

I definitely think so. I really admire music coming from places like London and Berlin, often you can really hear that the producers grew up in the club. If you listen to the early dubstep tunes you can really hear that it was made for the soundsystem at Plastic People. And if you listen to a Berlin techno tune you're like, yes, Berghain, banger! Of course, we don't have places like Berghain or Plastic People in Stockholm so you have to make up these scenarios and fantasise about where this track could be played. We're definitely outsiders in that sense, and I noticed a lot of the producers that we signed to Studio Barnhus also come from outsider places in dance music all around the world. I do think that is liberating in a sense. When you grow up fantasising about raves and clubs, and it's such a distant thing that you're not sure you'll ever experience, then that creates a very strong romantic attachment to it.

The ‘Radio Koko’ EP came out on Numbers, and is your only full Kornél Kovács release on a label other than Studio Barnhus. Why did you diverge from your own imprint for this outing?

I'm a big fan of Numbers. I really like what they're doing. Around the same time we started Studio Barnhus, Axel also signed a record to Pampa and he's had a really nice relationship with them, and way before Studio Barnhus, Petter [Nordkvist, label co-founder] had a history as an artist with Border Community. So I think I was little bit jealous of them, that they had this home away from home, and I wanted something like that! I run Studio Barnhus and it's really nice to put your own records out, but it's also really nice to open the windows and get some fresh air in and work with other people. Doing something on Barnhus, then it's just me, Axel and Petter. It's just our little basement. It's nice to get out there and think about your music from another perspective.

Is the Puss label you set up with HNNY finished now that he’s quit DJing? And how is HNNY?

I just met HNNY for the first time in ages last week, for a coffee, walk and record shopping. He's such a nice guy, but we haven't been hanging out a lot lately. He's been away from Stockholm for a while, now he's back and working on new music. We definitely haven't quit doing it; it's just that there hasn't been a record in a long time. I guess it has a concept, which is edits, bootlegs, mashups. I don't think I or Johan [Cederberg aka HNNY] have been making a lot of music which is very suitable for Puss in a while. But if we do, then, sure. I mean, it is a bit of a hassle to put paint on your lips and kiss these fucking records as well, so there's that too. But I'm ready for a session, I want to do a Puss record, and I think Johan wants to do one too. It should happen.

Did you have a vision for Studio Barnhus when you set out?

We never sat down and decided a plan or anything like that. We always allowed it to grow organically. The label should be a representation of me, Axel and Petter. We like to keep people guessing. All the artwork looks completely different. If you see a new Studio Barnhus record in a record shop you shouldn't have a clue what it's going to sound like. Now that we're a bit more established that eclectic approach could become a cliché in itself, so now we're trying to counter that in different ways too. No plan, no big vision, no nothing, just the three of us and our friendship and our music.

Among the releases on Studio Barnhus there’s a Mariah Carey edit, a track that covers a Cher vocal, and earlier this year you gave away a dancehall remix of Taylor Swift’s ‘Bad Blood’ on SoundCloud. How much of an influence is pop music on your work?

Pop music is amazing and I can get the same enjoyment out of commercial pop music as I can out of the most avant-garde experimental stuff. I was definitely never a purist, and I don't think Axel and Petter are either. Although I think that sort of anti-pop purism is more a thing of a past, it was prevalent in dance music around the time we started Studio Barnhus, and back then that was definitely something that we tried to comment on and play with. Happy music is good music just as well as angry, complex or sad music is good music.

I find the interplay of textures and sounds on a track like ‘Josey’s Tune’ from your album really exciting. It’s immediately catchy in a pop-like sense, but also sounds slightly unusual and off-kilter.

I wrote the melody around the first year we moved into Studio Barnhus, seven years ago. I think I was just toying around with synths, trying to understand new machines and effects. I had this very naïve and careless approach that's a very good thing to have I think, which you start losing the more established and familiar you get with your equipment. I'm very happy that I've saved even these super crappy old sketches, melodies and beats that I did back then because it's a very fun process to go back to them and see if you can put them in today's context. Try to understand what you wanted to do back then, but now maybe you have the tools to get closer to the sounds you had in your head seven years ago.

I like that you say that it's catchy and off-kilter because that's something that I really like in music, when it has this sort of uncanny aspect. One of my great inspirations is Omar S, I'm such a fanboy. In his music you have these really simple, naïve melodies. No one can do them but Omar S, even though they sound so simple. That's something that really fascinates me. I like that sense that something is a bit wrong, a bit off, but you can't really place what. A friend of mine says that he thought my music was straddling the line between cute and menacing and I thought that was a good explanation of it because that sort of contrast and that uncertainty is something I try to convey in music, and also with the label and my DJ sets.

Your album is called ‘The Bells’, like Jeff Mills’ techno classic. What inspired that choice?

There's a track called 'The Bells' on the album, which has a vocal that recites "The Bells, The Bells". So the idea for the title comes from that. I thought it was a good title. It's also an Edgar Allen Poe reference, and it's a really nice word to say, round and beautiful, it looks good in text. And there are a lot of bell sounds in my music. I usually decide on a title when a couple of things like that come together, and it feels like a perfect storm.

Obviously I'm aware of the Jeff Mills reference and I find it pretty funny. I remember being really young and in a record store and this older, really established Stockholm techno DJ was also in the store and complaining to the clerk about a gig the past weekend. He was complaining about how young and uneducated the crowd was, that he played 'The Bells' by Jeff Mills and got no reaction. Like people didn't realise that it was the biggest tune ever. I remember listening to this guy like, what a fucking prick, what does he care?

You often use Hungarian words as track titles. Is this solely in reference to your heritage, or is there a deeper attraction to the language that you think fits with your music?

Maybe there is a deeper sense to it. First of all, I think it looks cool, like a weird alien language. Linguists consider it one of the most difficult languages to learn in adult age. I've been speaking it since I was a baby. A lot of my music has nostalgic meaning to me, a lot of the tracks released now have been around either as sketches on my computer or melodies in my head for quite a few years. They've become like old friends or secrets that you never share with anyone. The Hungarian language is also like an old friend in that sense, it's something that reminds me of my childhood, of my roots, my family, my parents. So I do romanticise Hungarian and Hungary quite a bit. ‘Szív Utca’ for example is the name of the street where my family back in Hungary have lived for three generations.

A lot of your music is sampled-based. How did you go about selecting samples for the album?

It's super random. I buy a lot of records, I download stuff all the time, I go on YouTube a lot. If I can be bothered I'll do field recordings. For me it's a natural way of making music. It's as natural as playing a synth or programming a drum machine. Except that you run the risk of getting sued! Which only makes it more gangster, I guess.

The artwork features a childhood photo of your sister Dora. Why did you pick this?

I just think it's such a great picture and I also really like the tradition of full face portraits as album covers. I was thinking about Nas’ 'Illmatic' when I chose it. It's also the second time my sister has been on an album cover. She grew up in Hungary whereas I grew up in Sweden, but she moved to Sweden about seven years ago. In the first week she got scouted on the streets and ended up being on the front cover for the new album from Sweden's biggest rock group Kent. They're basically the Swedish U2. So if you have a proven album cover model in your family then why not use her? I think it's a great picture, and I also think it relates to my music because there's a lot of conflicting emotions in her facial expression. She looks happy and cute, but also super scared, like something is a bit off. I thought that was a nice representation of the music, the whole straddling the line between cute and menacing thing. It has an almost Chris Cunningham/Aphex Twin warped quality, though it's a completely untouched, original analogue picture.

What more would you like to achieve with Studio Barnhus?

I'd like Studio Barnhus to be a label that could handle a big pop artist, while at the same time be a label that can keep on putting out super harsh noise records or a limited dancehall 7". The goal is to get a bit more organised and professional in terms of being a company, and also keep surprising ourselves. If we keep it interesting and surprising for ourselves, I think that will translate and people will get that.

'The Bells' is out on August 26 via Studio Barnhus

Patrick Hinton is Mixmag's Digital Intern. Follow him on Twitter here