WhoMadeWho’s Big Moment: Inside the Danish electronic trio’s unmissable festival

On an expanse of white sand just outside of Lisbon, against the backdrop of jutting cliffs and beneath the oranges and pinks of the setting sun, 10,000 people have gathered to have an experience. It’s the end of the first day of the two-day electronic music festival The Moment – this time, a collaboration with YARD festival – and the event’s founders, Danish electronic trio WhoMadeWho, are about to take the stage, assuming their positions under a massive moon-like orb, dressed in well-curated looks courtesy of online retailer Zalando. But before they walk on, pick up their instruments and compel the crowd to collectively lose their minds, the band embraces.

“When we play live, there’s always a picture of us hugging – a three-man hug,” says Tomas Barfod, one third of WhoMadeWho, when I reach the band in their Copenhagen studio. “It’s not something we actually talked about, but we do it every live show,” his bandmate, Jeppe Kjellberg, reclining comfortably in a chair nearby, adds. “It would feel very awkward if we didn’t do it. But I would vomit if we would say ‘This is our ritual’,” Tomas Høffding, the third member of the band interjects, playfully. “Before a show, it’s just a thing we do because we need to.”

Founded by WhoMadeWho as an extension of their ethos – feel-good dance floors, groovy, instrument-led electronic music, a lineup of artists who are more often than not personal friends of the band – The Moment has been steadily expanding since its first iteration in Copenhagen amidst the pandemic.

This edition marks its international debut in collaboration with Lisbon’s beloved Yard Festival, introduced as a two-day add-on event. The festivities began with an unforgettable dinner by chef Paulo Carvelho at the stunning, Instagram-worthy Palermo Castle, followed by DJ sets from talents like AIRRICA and SAMM, all set against panoramic views of the city. Day two featured a sun-drenched lunch aboard a dreamy boat party, setting sail with good vibes and music flowing all afternoon, followed by an open-air concert at the scenic Sandy Mountains. The lineup included standout sets from LP Giobbi, Bedouin, and of course, WhoMadeWho themselves.

You often hear tales of discourse within a band; an ongoing battle of egos that festers into bitterness or jealousy, ultimately leading to a break-up. This is not the case with WhoMadeWho. In fact, these guys seem to just really enjoy one another. Made up of Barfod on drums, production and various DJ and synth setups, Høffding on vocals, bass and “a lot of other instrumental stuff” and Kjellberg on vocals, guitar and production (in case you’re wondering, they call each other by their last names to avoid any Tomas-related confusion), this is a band that’s been going strong without a major altercation for 22 years, through seven albums and hundreds of DJ sets and live shows. It tracks that their pre-show moment, planned or not, would be a hug.

Let’s get something out of the way: that earworm of a name. Ask where the name WhoMadeWho comes from and the trio will start with a collective cheeky response that indicates this question has popped up once or twice over the past couple decades. “I’m not gonna do that one,” says Høffding, smiling, when asked the classic ‘what’s with the name’ question. “I walked out of a couple interviews for that one,” jokes Kjellberg. “I’m happy to do it,” says Barfod, taking one for the team. “I had some years where I didn’t want to do it, but I found the energy again.”

The tale goes that once the fellas assembled, drawn to the studio by mutual musical interests and good vibes with the vague plan to start a band (all three men were already playing music professionally, in other bands), they got a record deal almost immediately – off the edits produced from just one night of jamming in the studio. “Basically, we got the record deal so fast, we didn’t even have a name,” says Barfod. The label wrote to them several times, imploring them to come up with something. “In the end, we saw this ACDC record called Who Made Who and were like, ‘That looks quite cool and it might not be too famous’,” he says. “It turned out to be quite famous, but we took over the hashtag anyway.”

From that very first studio session, the mission statement was, as Høffding puts it, “Let’s make a band where we play house music, but with real instruments”. These days, it’s that and more, pulling in elements of indie rock and techno, disco and funk, always with a driving 4/4 beat that gets people moving. “It’s a mixture of a lot of things, actually,” says Høffding, noting that the lyrics, too, tend to have an emotional resonance. “In some ways we’re kind of unique, right? Hopefully. I’d like to say we’re creating our own blueprint somehow.”

Though the three men didn’t come together until they were in their late 20s, the members of WhoMadWho have notably similar origin stories. “We are country boys,” says Høffding, who grew up in Roskilde. Barfod and Kjellberg, meanwhile, grew up in Næstved and Kerteminde respectively. “They’re different places, but they’re still kind of the same,” notes Barfod.

All three men have music in the family. Barfod’s dad ran a music school (“He bought me a drum kit when I was 10,” he says), Kjellberg’s dad had “dreamt of being a jazz musician” and actively pushed his son towards music. Høffding, meanwhile, is a descendent of classical composer Finn Høffding, who came to prominence in the 1920s. Still, it took a while for their instrument-happy parents to come around on the DJ-ing side of things. “I had 10 years of hard explaining,” says Barfod, who grew up obsessing over Detroit techno and Chicago house music and digging for rare vinyls. “But now they kind of understand it when they see our live shows.”

While WhoMadeWho might play over 100 DJ sets in all corners of the globe in any given year, real heads know that to truly soak up the experience, one ought to catch one of their 12-ish annual live concerts. There, music is only half of the equation. The other half is the visuals. “When you have a concert, you have a lot of different frequencies to work with. The music we have down, but then we realised that how we dress and the stage design in general, it’s such an add-on that if you don’t have it, you actually have only half a concert,” says Barfod. “You can actually make this sort of fairytale vibe onstage.”

At The Moment, the guys wore sculptural, high-end streetwear selected from Zalando’s wide offering. Clad in Stamm and Diesel, MISBHV and Feng Chen, the looks stood out against the backdrop of the white cliffs, visible even from the back of the massive, undulating crowd. “We like working with shapes because we often have these LED screens behind us,” says Barfod. “And then having big shoulders or wide pants adds to the fairytale.”

Though the notion of more-is-more costuming was there from the very beginning (at first, the guys would scour thrift shops and pick out the loudest and funkiest pieces on the racks), it took some years to arrive at today’s more refined aesthetic. “For the first ten years, we’d dress up but the music had to speak for itself – we were a very entertaining live band with a lot of crazy shit going on,” says Høffding. “These days it’s more emotional, and we try to create beauty as well.” And it certainly resonates; look out in the crowd at a WhoMadeWho show and some revellers will have tears in their eyes. Others have the band’s logo or lyrics tattooed on their bodies.

This was especially true at The Moment, which exceeded even the highest expectations. “We dreamed about this moment for so long and when it arrived it was more beautiful than we imagined,” the trio tell me over email just after the festival. “The energy, the magic, the sunlight. 10,000 happy people. This wasn't just a moment – it was a feeling we will truly always cherish.”

Offstage, WhoMadeWho look like the sort of effortlessly cool guys who have been playing in bands all their lives. Think Palace long-sleeves and Kitsune dad caps, 032c hoodies and Solomon sneakers. Given their penchant for niche streetwear, teaming up with Zalando, both for their stage looks at The Moment festival and the wardrobe for this photoshoot, felt entirely natural. “Zalando carries a lot of our favourite brands and, in general, the connection to fashion is important to us. It’s something we’ve been taking seriously these past few years,” says Barfod. When I ask the band who is the most fashionable, both Høffding and Kjellberg immediately point to a grinning Barfod.

All three members of WhoMadeWho are fathers two times over. When the group isn’t jet-setting from DJ set to live show (“This month, I’m over the Atlantic four times,” says Barfod of their gruelling tour schedule), they’re at home in Copenhagen, juggling family life with studio sessions. “It’s a balance, because music is just so exciting, part of you wants to do it all the time, especially when you’re in the album process – I think we all have to stop ourselves,” says Høffding, whose children have already begun showing an interest in music themselves. “Personally, I would like to have twice as many hours in the day. That would fit me perfectly.”

Packed schedules aside, things seem to be functioning well in the WhoMadeWho universe. Better than well, in fact. Not only have they built a fervent fan community, vibes inside the band are higher than ever. So, what’s the secret to a frictionless band? “Even though we take up a lot of each other’s time, we also set each other free,” says Kjellberg, noting that from time to time band members can “tap out”, recharge, catch up with family and come back stronger than ever. “And the musical chemistry is so strong.”

While their sound and look may not be especially Danish, there is a certain Danishness in the democratic, live-and-let-live nature of the band itself. “The initial idea is we’re not old friends, we’re three people meeting from different corners of life,” says Høffding. “We didn’t have any ideas of how it should be or where it should go. Even though it’s our job now and we’ve been together for so many years, we still have this basic idea that it should be a liberal, free, open space where you can be yourself.”

Things are going so well, in fact, WhoMadeWho sees no reason to stop. “I want to get old in this band. I think it would be really cool to be an old band, stumbling on stage, with a beard,” says Høffding as his bandmates nod in silent agreement. “But again, it’s open. If it crashes and burns in two years or if we do it until the day we die, time will show and I think we’ll all be fine either way.”

Shop all the looks worn by WhoMadeWho in this story here.