To take us back to the very beginning, how did you discover music and ultimately what fascinated you about the process of recording and producing so much that you made it into a career?
I had an older brother that brought ’80s hard rock and ’70s punk to our house when I was a kid. I was crap in school, felt different and started to get interested in odd music and watching horror movies. I discovered Roky Erickson in 1985 through a horror movie and then “13th Floor Elevators” and so on. In the ’90s, I was into ’60s garage rock and black metal. I think the punk scene with the DIY mentality was an eye-opener for me when it comes to recording. The death/black metal scene back then had the same kind of DIY mentality as well. In the ’90s, I bought a Fostex Portastudio on which I made black metal and weird rock music demos. The Fostex and other vintage synths and instruments I got my hands on were a perfect place to start and there my career sort of started without me knowing it.

Your style of mixes and productions all have a sense of raw, gritty energy. What do you think shaped your preference and style?
When I was maybe nine years old, I was in my Grandparents’ summer house and found the first album by The Who. I got it and I remember thinking it looked cool. I can still see myself the first time I put it on the record player. I thought the drums sounded so wild and raw and I had never heard anything like that. Looking back, that’s probably where I got my preference for how drums should sound – the open and singing toms, the distortion and the lively and not perfectly tight drumming style. So good!

You’ve recorded anything from indie to extreme metal. Is there one genre or sound you generally prefer? Do you tackle a production differently depending on the genre?
A diversity of genres is good, then I don’t get bored easily. I don’t think I tackle genres differently production-wise, it’s more about how the people in the bands are and how they want to work. I try to be responsive and research what they listen to and why. Of course, sometimes different genres demand their special microphones and techniques.

Obviously, to the general public you’re known as the drummer of Refused, but you’re also a singer and a guitar player, you’re involved in several music projects, you’re a published author and more. Walk us through all the different sides to David that may be new to some!
I was a musical kid and played all kinds of genres growing up, I sang in a choir and taught myself guitar when I was 10 and I started playing drums when I was four or five and went to municipal music school for drumming. As I started forming bands, it was natural for me to be the drummer, though I always wrote a lot of the guitar parts and lyrics as well. After Refused broke up, I made a bunch of solo records where I sang songs I’d written myself. Then I veered into more experimental stuff for some years and today, approaching 50, I basically do all of these things simultaneously. As I’m writing this, I’m on my way to Skopje to play at their jazz festival with this mostly improvisational orchestra of musicians from all over Europe. Oh, and a crime novel I wrote with my wife just came out in paperback in Sweden.

This EZX features your own kit, which was custom-made for the Refused reunion and designed to somewhat mimic the sound and energy of the drums on your “Shape of Punk to Come” record. Having played this kit for some 200-plus shows, what does it mean to you on a personal level and what did it mean for you to sample it?
This whole project was a lot of fun and the fulfillment of a wish or fantasy I’ve had for a long time, that a leading drum software company would put the same kind of energy into capturing more dirty, atypical drum sounds as they do recording an old sets from the fifties. Capturing my own set is part of that and it was very satisfying. I use these types of products mostly for demos and I’m never able to get the right vibe in the drums because most sampled drums are polished to the bone and often without much character, so you have to work with EQ and filters to get them anywhere near where you want them, if you’re trying to get the right feel for a raw punk song or old school death metal or a post-punk track.

The other three kits, what’s the story behind them and what was it like playing and sampling them?
Magnificent. I like some of these kits more than my own. There are so many people making the type of music that me and Konie make and we honestly almost never talk drum software because there hasn’t been products for us, and going forward I think we’ll go back to these sounds over and over again. The really weird old kit sounds so damn cool, it’s as if it was made for a mid-eighties Tom Waits record. And then the Hellacopters and Viagra Boys kits do precisely what you’d expect of them: they boom and creak and smatter like rock ’n’ roll was supposed to.