New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
DJ trio Swedish House Mafia reunite with new music, tour
DJ supergroup Swedish House Mafia, known for bringing house music to the masses with their arena shows, are ready to turn the crowd up with a new collaboration with The Weeknd and a global tour on the horizon.
The trio dropped a new song and music video on Friday, melding their thumping, body-rocking beats with The Weeknd’s dark cinematic vocals on “Moth To a Flame.” It comes as they are announcing a 44-date arena world tour in 2022 with stops in Miami, Las Vegas, Houston, Toronto, London, Paris and Madrid.
It’s a long awaited return for the DJs — Steve Angello, Axwell and Sebastian Ingrosso — who announced their breakup in 2012 after reaching heights that few other
DJs had and leading a wave of interest in EDM music with their grandiose live shows.
“I think time was the best thing that could happen to us,” Angello told The Associated Press in an interview from Stockholm.
With hits like “Don’t You Worry Child” and “Save The World,” they were the first DJ act to sell out Madison Square Garden and got top billing at Coachella, where they will return in 2022. The anticipation has been building since the three announced their reunion at a surprise set at Ultra Music Festival in Miami in 2018, but behind the scenes it was a years-long process of getting a new label, new management and new music. Known for being perfectionists and their slow pace of recording, the pandemic gave them the time
they needed as they worked in their studio in Sweden.
“We made more songs in the past two years than we did in the 20 years before that, which is incredible,” said Angello.
The opportunity to push boundaries again was the motivating factor to come back together and put aside differences that led to their split, said Angello, who remained coy on the exact reasons.
“Enough time went by for me to feel like I was missing something, right?” said Angello. “So like when you’re running 100 miles an hour, like you don’t have time to reflect. But if you let some time pass, all of a sudden, those things that, those things that tore us apart were kind of destroyed.”
Their 2022 tour starts on July 29 in Miami and runs through Nov. 13 in Tampere, Finland.