That’s exactly how Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso, and Steve Angello earned their stripes as three of dance music’s most gifted minds for the better half of the previous 20 years, with Swedish House Mafia’s first-ever album taking a collective leap forward into that forenamed, inevitable progression that brings their pre-reunion identity up to speed with more modern times.Īfter one walkthrough of Paradise Again-which has a helping hand from Desembra, who takes home production credits on 16 of 17 tracks-it couldn’t be more apparent as to why the 2019 version of “It Gets Better”-which we ended up receiving anyway-was overhauled into the form that made the final tracklist. And while the quartet of pre-album deliveries-” It Gets Better,” “ Lifetime” with Ty Dolla $ign and 070 Shake, “ Moth To A Flame” with their new Coachella partner The Weeknd, and “ Redlight” with Sting-didn’t necessarily give anyone a singular roadmap as to where Paradise Again was headed creatively, they all make complete sense in the context of the project as a whole. Just like with Hardwell‘s recent reinvention, the reunion was never going to be an echo of the same formula they had used before the split, and we got a taste of that through the IDs they scattered across their 2019 sets. We’d already become well accustomed to the fact that Swedish House Mafia were understandably moving on from the sound that epitomized dance music exactly a decade ago.
And after billboards with their emblematic three dots started popping up just three months later-with both the bombshell announce of Paradise Again and its first two singles trailing closely behind-everything seemed to come together. But it felt like the answers that we’d searching for were suddenly inbound a year and a half later when news broke that the Swedes had swapped out Ron Laffitte for Sal Slaiby as manager, subsequently leading to Columbia Records being replaced with Republic Records.
Beyond the trio themselves, no one actually knew that was happening the public perception had been that they’d simply shut the blinds to the outside world in the time following their final 2019 show in Saudi Arabia. And after the COVID-19 pandemic slammed the brakes on whatever blueprint they’d drawn up following their short-lived live run in 2019, Steve Angello put the idea of constructing a full-length album into play, the one mountain they’d yet to conquer considering Until Oneand Until Now were both compilations. On their trip from Sweden over to Miami, they’d only packed two unreleased tracks in their bags-which were created for the sole purpose of deploying through their Bayfront Park reformation and now “ live in the internet“-pointing directly to the fact that “it’s Swedish House Mafia for life this time” was anything but an empty promise.
Paradise Again wasn’t even a thought in the back of anyone’s minds when Swedish House Mafia reconnected in the very same spot that they’d disbanded in a half-decade prior. We’re not going to sit here and retell the entire story of how Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso, and Steve Angello crossed paths in Stockholm in the 2000’s, decided to merge into a formal trio-sans Eric Prydz-and went on to rule the era that was dance music’s golden age.
Swedish House Mafia‘s debut album is finally here.Ī year ago, would any of us have realistically believed that sentence? Even with Paradise Again currently sitting right in front of us and considering everything that’s led to this moment since July, it still doesn’t seem real.īut how did we even get here? And by that, we’re talking about the time between Ultra 2018 and today.
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