Usually, I am always skeptical when I receive promotional material. I've experienced it too often: the excitement that soon vanishes and leaves me with music I really don't care about! But there are exceptions, and one of them happened when I received the latest album from Sasse aka Freestyle Man in the mail.

"Going South," the debut album from Sasse on the small Finnish record label Cliché (for a review check out the BASSics music reviews page) represents a superb piece of house music that leaves almost no subgenera untouched while it takes the listener on a trip through the jazz-, tech- and soulful house universe. I was so impressed by the quality and variety of the tracks on this record that I decided to hunt him down for an interview.

We here at UF wish Sasse all the best on his upcoming journeys through house music's unexplored territories. And before I forget, special thanks to Liz and Garo at Rooftop for setting it all up!

MG
December Y2K

The following interview was conducted by DJ MG in November 2000:

Where and when are you born, and how did you start with music?

I was born in Tampere, Finland in the year 1973. I started music when I found my parents records... No, really listening to the electronic side of music I started when the first wave of house hit the UK. We had some specialized radio shows playing the early club stuff which I taped and then tried to find the records. Eventually, it led to me buying some trashy turntables and a mixer. Then I spent some time figuring out how the guys at the radio could mix the tracks together. I think I spent most of my youth standing in my room behind the decks figuring out why the records are never in sync. It helped alot when after some time I could buy myself the first pair of SL-1200 and found the pitch...

The first equipment I built myself. It was an 8-bit sampler with a minute of recording time and no midi, just triggering by hand over the records. I tried out some ideas with this setup before I finally bought my first real equipment in '92, an used Ensoniq Mirage and a Yamaha sound module.

Do you still remember your worst and your best gig as a DJ?

The worst is always hard to tell... I actually think it must be New Years Eve a few years back. Me and my friends agreed to play at one of these massive New Years Eve parties for a serious amount of money. Everything went well but in our deep house room there were no people and it was cold and we were getting tired of the shitty people there.

Nowadays, thinking about it I would say "No, Thank You!" Actually, one of the best gigs I ever had was the after party after this horrible "rave." We played the New Years Eve after party in Kerma, a very nice club in Helsinki. It started at 5 and I think we continued quite long into the afternoon.

You also had a couple of radio shows in the past. How important was this work for you, and what are your experiences with this format?

Well, I actually still do some radio work. I have once a month a show on the National Finnish Radio (Radiomafia) and occasionally I do some one off mix shows over here in Germany. Radio is an important format because it is the only chance for ordinary people to catch the names of the records we are playing. And of course because in my youth the radio played such a major role for my musical education, I think it is important to keep the format alive and happening. And I still download alot of old mix shows from the great DJs around from the internet! It is so much fun checking out old tracks and discovering them again.

How was the house scene in Finland back in the early 90s, and has it changed since?

When we started doing parties it was of course a much more marginal group of people who attended the happenings. Nowadays, I think it's gone more mainstream with all this "hardhouse" and "whateverhouse." I don't really know what they mean with these terms. The original people from the scene are 99% gone and there's only the minimal group of us left who continued. For instance me, Jori Hulkkonen or Nu Spirit Helsinki started producing and some other people started record shops or labels. It's kind of sad because it's only a handful of active people, everybody knows each other since many years and there's no new talents coming out.

What means house music to you?

Love of music.

You released your first record in 1996 ("Freestyle Man EP" on Puu/Sähkö). Do you still remember the feedback?

Funny question, because just a few months back I found my copy of this and played it at a party. For me, it was a dream come true and of course I remember the nice reviews of it in some magazines. Well, I can only say that this record was due to some distribution changes and other bullshit 12 months late when it finally came out. So there was some serious waiting before I ever saw the final pressing. The nice thing is that when I still listen to it today I get the same feeling as when I got it the first time in my hand.

Your artist name is "Freestyle Man." Do you consider your music a free style, or are there any additional reasons why you chose this name?

Nah, I think some people in this business are too serious about styles and "If you do this - You cannot do that"-attitude. For me, music is just something that makes me feel good. I can make one day crazy techno and the next day smooth house tracks in my studio. I don't care what people call it. The name also came from this attitude, so it was a natural choice in a way...

You remixed "Lovelee Day" and "Funky People" by Blaze. How did you hook up with them?

From the first times I visited Germany I got to know the people behind the Playhouse label, Ata and Heiko MSO. These guys are still very good friends of mine and when they had a licensing on the "Lovely Day" they wanted also me to take part in the remix 12-inch. It was very very strange to get my hands on the master tapes of one of my all-time heroes like Blaze and it took some time before I could even think about touching them. I had this idea of making something way different from the original and I was quite pleased with both of those remixes. I mean, for me it was important to keep the original feel and just twist them totally around. I hope you understand what I mean.

How important was it for you and your music when you met Jimi Tenor and Severi Pyysalo?

Jimi and Severi are very nice guys and I hope we continue doing something together. In Finland it was very hard to find musicians who would understand where I wanted to take my music, and with Jimi it was sooo easy to work with...

Your latest album features a huge variety of different genres. Does this variety reflect your personal music taste?

Like I told you before, I don't have any problems mixing different styles together as long as it sound good. It probably would have been better (for the poor listener who only want to buy pure house albums for example!!) to keep it more in one style, but I couldn't care less. The album reflects all the different stages and styles I liked in the last 10 years, and that's probably why it turned out to sound like this.

Your tracks are incredibly deep. Why?

Hmm, that's something I cannot really tell you. I mean, it is somewhat hard to analyze why a groove turned out to be like it did. From the tracks which inspired me to start producing in the first place, 99% are more or less deep vocal house from the early nineties and they had quite a jazzy deep feeling. This music is still as fresh as ever for me! I still play alot of that stuff while DJing and they always sound good in the club, too. It is quite sad that alot of the music which is produced today and called deep house music has nothing to do with the thing I see as deep house music. Maybe Jovonn was right when he was asking "Where Did House Go?" back in the days...

My favorite track on your album is "Que Domingo Inquieto," a track of indescribable beauty. How did you come up with it?

I used to do alot of grooves only in my studio at that time, you know, just drums, some keys and a bassline. The meaning was to record some solos later if they still sounded good in a few months time. The backingtrack for "Que Domingo" was something which stood up from the rest of one studio session, and me and the label owner from Sähkö, Tommi Gronlund, thought about what to do with this killer backingtrack. It was the first track I tried this little percussion filtering on and it sounded so damn phat in a club. We met up with Jimi Tenor and took some studio time at a dirty old 24-track studio in Helsinki, and as he got the theme for the track on tape for the first time I was so happy!!! Then later Severi came in to record the vibes, he listened to the track once, said he liked it and went into the recording booth and did the whole solo in one go!! Amazing feelings were shared this night in the studio! I cannot describe the feeling of mixing the final version. I only experienced it a few times in my life.

Another great song is the Larry Heard-like "Images Of You." Is it a tribute to the music of Mr. Fingers?

Actually, the tribute to Larry Heard is a track on the second Moodmusic release (Morris Brown - Minerals [mood002]) called "One For Larry." I always admired Mr. Finger's music as the ultimate reference to anything in the house field. His music is so deep it makes me cry! "Images of You" I did one beautiful day in Turku in my old studio when I was really in love. Those times were very special.

You are now residing in Frankfurt, Germany. Why did you move to Germany, and do you like it there?

I had some good friends here already and it was a natural move for me because I kind of got bored with the Finnish scene. And being a producer in a country where the possibilities are limited is frustrating. Also, Frankfurt is very central and there are alot of happenings of different kind so I enjoy fully my living here. And there are a few great clubs to play in and to hear other DJs.

Does the title of your album "Going South" refer to your move to Germany?

No. The "Going South" track on the album is the track that made everything possible for me in the beginning; it was the track that Tommi from Sähkö got hooked up on when he listened to my first tapes, so it was out of respect to these times and to this track I wanted to call the whole album "Going South."

You hooked up with Marco Corola and Corrado Izzo, two well-respected techno producers from Frankfurt. Please tell me a little 'bit about this collaboration.

Well, after living a bit more than a year here in Frankfurt now, I can say it was well worth moving. We share the production facilities and work very closely with Corrado on my label Moodmusic as well as other musical projects. Marco is nowadays living in London and he's got his studio over there so we have alot of different stuff happening all the time. We have a good working environment and the atmosphere when we are in the studio or in the office is always good. The thing that we try to do is to make people more open-minded about what comes to house producers making techno records or techno producers making downbeat-records.

The structure of our organization is very loose so we can basically do a record straight when the mastertape is ready, and this gives us alot of freedom of experimenting with different ideas. Our pool of labels consists of all kinds of electronic music, be it techno, house, Electro or whatever, and we don't have any problems doing also other kinds of music in the future.

Do you think you will move more into tech house in the future?

Well, if I come out of the studio one day with a track which somebody calls tech-house, then Yes! I like some of the minimal deep stuff which came out during the last months but I prefer more musical stuff personally.

What else can we expect from you in the future?

On the Moodmusic label, we have some nice releases ready for early next year. I produced the full-length album from a guy from Finland who records under the name "Deep Sensuous Ensemble" (DSE), and that is something to wait for me I think... Very musical, alot of vocals and very warm sounding. We finished also some tracks with my longtime friend George Spruce some weeks ago and that will be something interesting too. It's also vocal stuff, something that I always wanted to experiment more with. I think the stuff with George is gonna be our ultimate respect to the old times when house music was for real!!

With Corrado Izzo, I continue the Bluekey project and there is a double pack ready with some more jazzy moments. We actually did this limited label called Loveandmusic where we released some of the Bluekey stuff and we will later make a proper release out of that too. With Marco, I did some tracks and this is a double pack which should be out now on the i220 label.

Other from that there are some new artists we want to introduce to the scene, but all this happens sometimes next year.

What is your favorite or most memorable release so far?

It has to be the first doublepack on Sähkö/Puu because the first release is always the most important for you. And the circumstances surrounding this release were so confusing because of all the delays and everything, so it is definitely the most memorable release for me.

OK, and at the end the typical question. Please name some people who inspired you and your music, and what is spinning on your turntables right now?

This is always the best part to name your influences. When it comes to house it must be John Robinson, Jovonn, Edward Golzman and his Bottom Line label, the early New York house labels like Kaleidiascope, GoldTone and Nott-us and of course Larry Heard and Blaze. When it comes to other music there are so many names in Jazz, Rock and Blues which influenced me that it is impossible to name only a few.

My favorite stuff right at the moment is of course the proper deep house labels like Hipbone, Giant Step, Spiritual Life, Chillifunk and the like. I also like alot the stuff from Mantis from the UK and of course AtJazz who is one of the finest producers out of England in some time. And in Germany there is Pete Kremeier aka Lo-Soul who I think I a very good producer and DJ.

Thanks a bunch for this interview!