A cheeky question: Do you make techno music?

Not real techno music. I did that 13 or 15 years ago. I got tired of the whole scene. Especially the German minimalistic sound, because I really missed melodies in it, and I really missed some feelings in it.

Your recent videos — Redefine and River in Me — with the shopping malls, sex, car crashes: do I sense a JG Ballard thing going on there?

No, actually not, because I don't know him! Is it the guy who did that movie Crash?

He wrote the notorious book the movie was based on.

Andreas Emenius is the main guy behind those videos, maybe that was his inspiration. I pretty much gave him artistic freedom to do whatever he felt was right.

Another thing I read into your music is that the release comes pretty much on the dyad spot, the golden section of the song. Is that intentional or accidental?

It's really just what happens. I try not to think too much about how I do the music. When I start working on a new album, I really want to start with a blank page.

You play a lot of instruments!

A little bit of bass guitar, guitar and drums. As a child I used to go to the piano and immediately play the songs I heard on the radio. I found that it was easy for me to learn the pop songs. I'm completely self-taught. I played in a lot of bands before I started doing music of my own. Blues bands, and some britpop style bands.

What's your home town called?

Vordingsborg. Small town, nothing to do. You could only play soccer, ride a scooter or do music. So I chose music! I really couldn't see any future there. I moved to Copenhagen when I was 19, to just play music. I wanted to play with whoever wanted to play with me!

How about your performance tonight — do you see people dancing in a frenzy or do you think they'll just bob their heads and behave very, well, Swedish?

(Laughs) I don't know, actually! Normally, we see people dancing quite a lot, but we have both some groovy songs and some listening songs. We have upbeat songs, some aggressive songs, and songs that are more melancholy and dreamy, more like soundscapes.

Is there a specific audio effect you find yourself using over and over again?

On this album (Fixion ), I use chorus quite a lot. Normally, many years ago, I didn't really like chorus because I heard it in the wrong setting, I heard it in some fusion jazz that I didn't really like.

There's a nice fat Cure reference in that old song of yours, Kink!

That's quite an old song, and to me it has more of an electronic, clubby sound, but even a lot of my early stuff is inspired by that simply because I've been listening to them since my early teens.

You recently got your hands on the Analog Heat. What is your impression so far?

I was actually, to be honest, totally blown away by it! Especially how it sounds. That is always the most important thing. One thing is that it's easy to use, but the sound is, of course, what it's all about.

Can you tell me some of its uses?

There are many, many uses. First of all on the drums, and on the basslines. On one of the basslines, a real Fender bass, that sounded really great with the 50/50 wet/dry setting. It really gave the bass some extra sub. I really like the EQ controls, you can set the treble and bass quickly. I've also used it on more kind of 303 techno basslines. That sounded really crispy. You can do so much with it!

One of your older songs, Prana, I love it when the hats sort of veer into the tinnitus range! Subtle, yet really, really crispy sound morphing there, on some very specific parts of the sound.

What I did back then, and what I also do with the Heat, is that I'm just playing around with the sound. Fooling around, trying stuff. What I really love with physical stuff, compared to plug-ins, is that there are a lot more happy accidents. You can do something by mistake - put too much drive on it, start a new track with the wrong preset, and suddenly you have a sound that you hadn't thought about!

Does the Analog Heat evoke a particular feeling?

Yeah! I really like when the sound gets high fidelity and low fidelity, I like those clashes, and I really like what the Analog Heat does. It makes your music sound dirty and crunchy while still keeping the transients and the presence. That is the greatest force of the Analog Heat. It's really fun to mix the wet and dry levels, and when you really need something sounding trashy, it's very easy to do it, but if you need something more subtle you can do that too. It sounds great on both the high end and the low end.

A real by-the-book question: Can you describe the Analog Heat using just three words?

It's intuitive, it's gritty, and it is lo-fi, but in the best meaning of the word. Sometimes things can sound too pure and too clear, and I'm always looking for plug-ins or hardware to kind of degrade the sound just a little bit. Lo-fi is not the right word for it, rather the hybrid between the lo-fi and the hi-fi.

Lastly, do you have any words of wisdom for all those budding musicians out there?

I think that would be always trust your gut feeling. That is something I have learned. It's very easy to get confused if a lot of people are giving you advice about this and that. Don't try to follow a trend.

Interview by Daniel Sterner