British/Norwegian artist Alan Walker has taken the world by storm ever since his debut single ‘Faded’ in 2015. The now 24 years old producer has a major following all across the world with his YouTube channel being the world’s 10th biggest music channel and his Spotify account being one of the most followed accounts. Having just come from releasing his EP ‘Walker Racing League’ and being back on tour, we had the pleasure of speaking with him before he closed the mainstage of SAGA Festival.
Hey Alan, how are you doing?
I’m good, I’m good. It’s good to be back here in Romania.
Of course, it’s not your first time in Romania. How does it feel to be back?
It’s been two years, almost, with not much happening so it’s great to be back. This is also one of my few shows that’s going on in Europe so it’s pretty exciting to be around, actually performing at a festival again.
What did you miss most about being on tour and performing?
Pretty much what I missed was being out there performing and meeting 1000s of people and just traveling around the world, so it’s great to be back on the road, almost the same old.
You just dropped your brand new EP. It featured tracks that had both your old and new styles. How important is it for you to keep evolving as you release new music?
Well definitely, like evolving within the music and style, I think that’s very important to you so you don’t withhold yourself within like one genre or style, because then it can also end up being very repetitive and that can also be, in long term, exhausting for the fans, listeners. and also myself. So I feel like it’s very good for me to also develop my sound further and to explore, see what works, see what doesn’t work, and sometimes go back to my old shoes and get experimental, a little bit here and there. But what I’ve been doing lately I’ve been really excited about.
Throughout the pandemic, you sort of slowed down in terms of releases and you’ve increased that amount in 2021. Did the pandemic affect your plans?
In 2020, I pretty much didn’t do anything musically, I think I had three releases, but by 2021 we just went on a rampage, really a song after song after song. So, the majority of the time during the lockdowns I was trying to mainly just focus on like getting as much music done and now I do those in 2021 we’ve just been launching and launching new music.
Did you save anything special for the return of live crowds?
Oh well of course I’m going to play like a variety of mixes, some old and some are new. Also, I will be playing my brand new single ‘Running Out Of Roses’ with Jamie Miller and, so yeah, I got a bunch of things for the startup and it’s going to be diverse and various, like up-tempo, downtempo, and then harder to kind of soft.
As you said this is not your first time in Romania, but it is your first time at SAGA. This is the also the first edition of SAGA and you are closing the last day of the mainstage. How does that feel?
It feels amazing. And again, I like being out on the road starting off with SAGA, pretty much feels amazing. I’m really, really excited to meet the Romanian crowd again.
Thank you very much for your time. Do you have anything you’d like to announce with our readers?
Well, I’ve got the ‘Walker Racing League’ EP that just came out, and other than that we’ve got much more things coming up in the near future so keep an eye out and listen to music. Thank you!
