Tom Trago has played a crucial role in facilitating the growth of the Dutch house scene, both through his own productions and his label Voyage Direct, which is cultivating a unique group of local artists and giving them a place to inspire and be inspired in return. Trago, who has worked on everything from film scores to hip-hop tracks, is one of the busiest names in the scene, constantly finding new ways to expand his musical repertoire and develop his sound. After finishing up at sound check at Metropolis, where he would be playing later that night alongside Stefan Goldmann and Ricardo Villalobos, we sat down with him at his hotel in Montreal to talk about where he gets his bottomless supply of energy and what something called Radio Bananas had to do with his career now.THUMP: You come from a family that seems to have really helped grow your love of music from an early age, but when did you get into DJing?
Tom: Probably when I started a fake radio show in the attic of our house, taping it on old cassette tapes, when I was about ten. I called it Radio Banana, because we had all these empty banana boxes up there. Then I got into skateboarding, and in the skateboarding videos there was always this underground music, so I started hearing punk and then later hip-hop tracks. I started to get really into hip-hop, finding and buying records, then I finally found this record store called Fat Beats in Amsterdam which imported underground hip-hop. And because I couldn't rap and I couldn't break dance, DJing was the only thing I could do to do with hip-hop, so I started scratching and really getting into that. I think that was around when I was 16, I bought my first turntables and started DJing at home and for parties. It wasn't till I had finished secondary school and moved to Amsterdam that I really started making money from DJing. It's also when I started taking music seriously once more. I went to jazz school, took up the piano again—my mom actually gave me the same piano she had bought when she was pregnant with me, the one I was taught on.Do you have a strict idea of where you want a track to go before you start working on it?
It depends on where you want to go, but I think it really blocks you if you've already said before you start making music that you want to head in one direction over another. But at the same time if you limit yourself your creativity expands though—if you say I'm only going to use piano, this one type of drum and this one bassline, you have to be more inventive with these elements. It's the same with cooking, if you have less you have to be very precise and creative, rather than being able to heap everything on.You seem to be continuously working on new projects and tracks—do you ever have writer's block?
I never had that. So I don't know, I can't answer it. I do have certain periods in a year when I'm more focused on DJing and consuming music, and other parts of the year when I'm more preoccupied with getting the music out of myself, but I've never had a period of like two months where I haven't wanted anything to do with music. I mean when I wake up, the first thing I want to do is hear music, I want to make music, I want to find new music—it's instinctual, an addiction almost. It's something I need, like water, like sun, like love. It's an essential part of living.What prompted you to start your label Voyage Direct on top of all your other projects?
It actually started because I had all these amazing guys around me with all these tracks that hadn't been released, or they didn't know what to do with these tracks. So at one point I was like "ok this is too much, I have ten tracks from ten different people, all super good." So it inspired me and I went to our mother label (Rush Hour) who does our distribution, and said "you know I've sort of become the epicenter of this community, the guy everyone passes tracks on to, let me start this label." And now you see this community growing, people are making tracks for the label, and there is beginning to be a sound and a real communal feeling taking shape. I feel so blessed to be catalyzing this process. All the cats on the label are doing really well as solo artists, and I feel that now is a special moment for Dutch underground dance music, I really do.What project would you love to work on next?
I'm super interested in contemporary minimal music, like Steve Reich and Philip Glass kind of stuff, I would love to write pieces like that and perform it with an ensemble of musicians. That's top of my list, I'm already working on it, but it takes a lot of time, as it's very advanced music and more of an orchestral composition. I'm intrigued with real musicians playing loops—so that it sounds like one continuous loop, but then there's this beautiful factor of human error, that disrupts that repetition.When you travel do you look for unique instruments or sounds that you can bring back and use in your music?
Yeah, I always do field recordings when I go away. Just record sounds on the street, or certain sounds that inspire me. For a long time I was obsessed with the sound of stoplights—in every country it's different, like the sounds in Australia are so different to Japan or New York. I used to record all these sounds—the ones for people who are blind—I found those differences so interesting. Whenever I visit a new country I buy an instrument that is related to the heritage of that country, shakers from Brazil, stuff like that. When I walk into a music store I can't walk out empty-handed. It's a big thing for me, collecting these instruments and also learning how it's played. It's so interesting that everywhere in the world people make their own sounds out of whatever they have available, it just proves how truly universal music is. It's part of all of us.What other art form would you like to be really good at one day?
Cooking, I like cooking a lot. I'm a really bad drawer but I am really interested in making bronze sculptures. I'm really interested in how that process works, that these bronze sculptures can stand the test of time so well—if you make something like that it will still be here hundreds of years later. I think that's also what interests me about doing art in any form, that you put life into something and if you are gone and the world moves on, that energy will still be there, and available for people to get inspired by.
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Tom: Probably when I started a fake radio show in the attic of our house, taping it on old cassette tapes, when I was about ten. I called it Radio Banana, because we had all these empty banana boxes up there. Then I got into skateboarding, and in the skateboarding videos there was always this underground music, so I started hearing punk and then later hip-hop tracks. I started to get really into hip-hop, finding and buying records, then I finally found this record store called Fat Beats in Amsterdam which imported underground hip-hop. And because I couldn't rap and I couldn't break dance, DJing was the only thing I could do to do with hip-hop, so I started scratching and really getting into that. I think that was around when I was 16, I bought my first turntables and started DJing at home and for parties. It wasn't till I had finished secondary school and moved to Amsterdam that I really started making money from DJing. It's also when I started taking music seriously once more. I went to jazz school, took up the piano again—my mom actually gave me the same piano she had bought when she was pregnant with me, the one I was taught on.Do you have a strict idea of where you want a track to go before you start working on it?
It depends on where you want to go, but I think it really blocks you if you've already said before you start making music that you want to head in one direction over another. But at the same time if you limit yourself your creativity expands though—if you say I'm only going to use piano, this one type of drum and this one bassline, you have to be more inventive with these elements. It's the same with cooking, if you have less you have to be very precise and creative, rather than being able to heap everything on.
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I never had that. So I don't know, I can't answer it. I do have certain periods in a year when I'm more focused on DJing and consuming music, and other parts of the year when I'm more preoccupied with getting the music out of myself, but I've never had a period of like two months where I haven't wanted anything to do with music. I mean when I wake up, the first thing I want to do is hear music, I want to make music, I want to find new music—it's instinctual, an addiction almost. It's something I need, like water, like sun, like love. It's an essential part of living.What prompted you to start your label Voyage Direct on top of all your other projects?
It actually started because I had all these amazing guys around me with all these tracks that hadn't been released, or they didn't know what to do with these tracks. So at one point I was like "ok this is too much, I have ten tracks from ten different people, all super good." So it inspired me and I went to our mother label (Rush Hour) who does our distribution, and said "you know I've sort of become the epicenter of this community, the guy everyone passes tracks on to, let me start this label." And now you see this community growing, people are making tracks for the label, and there is beginning to be a sound and a real communal feeling taking shape. I feel so blessed to be catalyzing this process. All the cats on the label are doing really well as solo artists, and I feel that now is a special moment for Dutch underground dance music, I really do.What project would you love to work on next?
I'm super interested in contemporary minimal music, like Steve Reich and Philip Glass kind of stuff, I would love to write pieces like that and perform it with an ensemble of musicians. That's top of my list, I'm already working on it, but it takes a lot of time, as it's very advanced music and more of an orchestral composition. I'm intrigued with real musicians playing loops—so that it sounds like one continuous loop, but then there's this beautiful factor of human error, that disrupts that repetition.When you travel do you look for unique instruments or sounds that you can bring back and use in your music?
Yeah, I always do field recordings when I go away. Just record sounds on the street, or certain sounds that inspire me. For a long time I was obsessed with the sound of stoplights—in every country it's different, like the sounds in Australia are so different to Japan or New York. I used to record all these sounds—the ones for people who are blind—I found those differences so interesting. Whenever I visit a new country I buy an instrument that is related to the heritage of that country, shakers from Brazil, stuff like that. When I walk into a music store I can't walk out empty-handed. It's a big thing for me, collecting these instruments and also learning how it's played. It's so interesting that everywhere in the world people make their own sounds out of whatever they have available, it just proves how truly universal music is. It's part of all of us.What other art form would you like to be really good at one day?
Cooking, I like cooking a lot. I'm a really bad drawer but I am really interested in making bronze sculptures. I'm really interested in how that process works, that these bronze sculptures can stand the test of time so well—if you make something like that it will still be here hundreds of years later. I think that's also what interests me about doing art in any form, that you put life into something and if you are gone and the world moves on, that energy will still be there, and available for people to get inspired by.