What?s in your bag, Matoma?

Known for uplifting productions that blend together genres and dance across everything from hip-hop to funk to house, Lagergren’s not only seen commercial success with his original works, like recently released single “Sunday Morning,” but is often sought after to collaborate with heavy hitters such as Jennifer Lopez, Noah Cyrus, and Enrique Iglesias.Growing up, Matoma had every intent of becoming a music teacher instead of a touring artist. Now, Lagergren finds his days occupied by packed tour schedules and studio sessions with some of music’s biggest names. We had Lagergren dump out his bag for us to get a peek at what’s necessary to maintain sanity when tour life is everyday life.Have you been traveling a lot lately?On this trip I’m away 12 days and I’m doing six shows, so it’s not too much. My brother came up to me and said, “Tom, your music is starting to sound really nice. He’s one of my best friends.What do you like to shoot?My girlfriend [laughs], nature, the traveling process. But with the sound quality, the difference is easy to hear.I use them when I work seriously. So I have, like, a library of almost two terabytes of sounds I’ve recorded.Are you playing all these instruments?So when I was sampling instruments I was playing each and every note. Then I started recording, producing, and composing my own music.Okay and then we have...Herman the travel companion. So every time I’m sad when I miss my girlfriend, I just take out Herman and I look at him and I start smiling and thinking about her.Herman is the most well traveled little stuffed monkey that ever was.Yeah, I think I’ve been in 80 countries with him.And then I have my glasses. It also has cool functions, like it shows your heart rate, and it tells you if you’ve been sitting too much.I have to say I love that you have an actual book.Yeah I usually bring them every time I travel. He dedicated his whole life to the police force, and the case he got jailed for was a case he was working on, but he couldn’t talk about it, because it was one of the biggest drug cases in Norway.[Looks at phone] Oh wow, we’re number two on iTunes in Finland.