John Summit is an unstoppable force in EDM right now, but despite his huge success he still felt the pressure when it came to remixing 2008 classic, I Remember by deadmau5 and Kaskade.
Summit dropped the remix of his favourite dance track back in July 2023. He’s since worked with Kaskade again on track Resonate for his own debut album, Comfort In Chaos, which landed earlier this summer.
During his digital cover interview with MusicTech, Summit explained how he felt about collaborating with the two iconic artists. “Well, I was just thinking ‘I really don’t want to fuck this up’,” he answered, laughing.
“I was already connected with Kaskade because I did the remix for Escape ft. HAYLA [released by deadmau5 and Kaskade as Kx5], which is also how I got connected with HAYLA, which started this beautiful friendship and working with her. So then I think he already had trust in me, but then from there, it still took a while to really lock in the I Remember remix, because now I’m like, ‘Oh, this is so iconic, so historic, I can’t fuck this up!”
Elsewhere during the chat, Summit further explored his views on the importance of collaboration, and “getting new perspectives” on his work. Revealing how he finds people to collaborate with, he said, “I think you have to be fans of each other online first and be like, ‘Hey, I would love to work with you’. Then it’s easy to be like, ‘Let’s get in the studio together!’
“A pet peeve of mine, especially when artists get big, is that they just get thrown in the room with other big artists, and then it almost seems like a manager tried making that song happen, not like there was an actual vision to it.”
With that said, Summit doesn’t always find it easy: “The amount of times I’ve asked people to hop in the studio and it doesn’t work is like, 90 percent of the time. Because, when you’re a touring artist, your schedules and stuff are so busy. So that’s why I think for what I do, doing albums and writing in the winter is best, because that’s when all our schedules go down.”
Comfort In Chaos is out now. You can also catch John Summit on tour this September through to February 2025.
