There's been a lot of talk about Paul van Dyk lately in the media. From his retribution snippets on Madonna to interviewing himself on Rolling Stone, this man never fails to have something to say on his most beloved passion, electronic music. Championing for the respect electronic music deserves in the music community, he has always pushed the envelope and brought new music and sounds to the table. On April 3rd, he continued to do so with the much talked about release of his new album, Evolution.
I have met and talked to a lot of people in the electronic music industry and their involvement with scene varies, but what I enjoyed drawing from talking to Paul was his eternal dedication to the music and emotion that goes with it. I know the sincerity in his statements because I have myself gone through this emotional journey since the day I started listening to electronic music as a child. It gives hope to those listeners who believe in the music that there are still giants out there who have not lost their way.
Evolution features work with both newcomers and established figures in the electronic music genre. Arty brings in more of his influences from his "Alpha 9" moniker to the track "The Ocean," which for me was a pleasure to listen, revisiting the days when Arty's track "Come Home" would open up Ferry Corsten's Once Upon A Night Tour. Plumb, another one of my childhood favorites comes in to work with Paul on the track "I Don't Deserve You". Gaining popularity as vocals in the trance community is Adam Young. A few years ago, Chicane had reached out to him for the track "Middle Distance Runner." It comes as no surprise that the lead singer from Owl City would interest Paul in a collaboration. For those of us who have been involved with the music for a while, the album comes as a nice refresher of older days with a healthy mix of newer talent and some big room sound.
This mix of old and new led the way for my questions for Paul, drawing a little from his past and now from his present. I have to say I was left oddly satisfied with his responses, eloquent and appropriate for someone who has had a major hand in electronic music's history. My only hope now is that the younger generation of artists who are coming onto the scene take a leaf from his wizened book and keep carrying on the love for a genre of music we have carried thus far.
- How is Germany?
Very good thank you very much.
- I had the pleasure last night of listening to your Evolutions album in 8.0 surround sound. Sounds very good and of course the bass hits very well.
Thank you very much that was actually the purpose of it.
- Did you create it with the intention of surround sound or did you do it in stereo?
It's pretty much like the way how I produce things obviously. First of all, it's just a musical piece and because of the equipment I use it automatically comes out as a sort of like surround element. And then obviously in terms of the mix down for the CD and mp3 and all that it becomes obviously stereo.
- Wow very nice I got experience the full quality of it! You were supposed to release it March, how come it was postponed until April?
Well the thing is, it is a worldwide release so therefore as an example in Germany, we release records on a Friday. In America it comes out on Tuesday. So in order to bring everything as close together, and you know, have a worldwide simultaneous release, it needed to be a little shifted. But I think it was still okay to do so.
- Well you know, you got the suspense going so now we're going to be doubly excited for the release. You collaborated with the young producer Arty on "The Ocean," would you say that you guys approach producing differently? Have a different process or methodology?
Well we definitely have a different approach to what sounds and towards how we bring things together. The thing that is more important is that we share the same passion for music and the same sort of importance that music actually has to us and you know, also if you take a track like "Sun after Heartbreak", which is another piece that I've been working on together with Arty, we are absolutely free and willing to leave our musical home turf and incorporate drum and bass elements and stuff like that because for us it's about the music and not about the genre limitation. I think this makes it special in a way.
- Arty is coming from a new generation that learned very differently how to make music than say you did. The thing is the way someone like Arty learned about making music it was never really a challenge for him in say creating sounds for an example. I remember back in the day we kind of had our big fat electro sounds, we had to create them ourselves and be really creative. I remember basically a guitar lead putting it into a guitar distortion then touching the loose cable and shortcutting it enabling that sound and getting this really hard of sounds. So we had to be creative in creating them, but these days you just open up any given software synthesizer and you know there you go, there you have your sounds. It is somewhat different but at the same time, it always comes down to the fact whatever you have at hand, you have to be creative with it and this is the most important part. This is what makes somebody like Arty shine through amongst others.
- Would you say your album would be the marriage of old and new, bringing in old artists that you've worked with before, was that one of your goals?
I wasn't really going on that path on an analytical scale. I don't really believe in sort of marketing driven corporations where the manager tells you "oh you should work with that person!" because it's good for your look or good for your image or for the bank account - I don't believe in that. For me, the important thing is that we share the same passion for the music itself. And obviously there are phenomenally talented "shooting stars" in our scene as well as much as people that I worked with before so it is kind of a combination between that generation and the other generation. Of course it is also across genres - there are people from the rock world, from the normal pop world all the way into left field sound arrangers.
- How did you go about choosing this particular group of people you collaborated with for this album?
Every collaboration has its own little story in a way. There needs to be a connecting element really. With Arty as an example, when I heard of him three/four years ago for the first time, I started to play his music in my radio show and in my set. We met in Moscow and we met in Berlin. We knew each other and it was pretty clear we gotta make some music together. The same with Adam Young from Owl City. I also met him like three or four years ago a little bit later he became this big pop phenomena with "Fireflies" and we stayed in contact because he is a big fan of electronic music. I think someone like Sue McLaren is one of the most beautiful voices we have in our music genre and I was looking for something special, for artists that really can bring something to the music, rather than the popular name and top 40 radio.
- Do you not want to be labeled as simply a trance artist because your album and your music is taking new directions now?
It's not really taking new directions now I mean listen to all my previous album you're probably going to have a hard time something that's stereotyped trance music. You can read into an interview I gave back in '94 you will already hear me saying that I am not a trance dj because for me this is what electronic music or why electronic music is so interesting to me is because it is the whole wide world of sounds that you have at your finger tips that you can be creative with. This is what interests me and this is what I think is really exciting about this musical genre. Therefore, I've always been working with pallets of different elements on my records before many of these artists started with those big synth sounds. You can listen to stuff I have done in 2001 and find those big fat synth sounds. The big sort of fusion between house and trance music. I think that back in '96 so for me this all not new, I've been merging elements and vibes and styles with each other in order to create something that actually is unique rather than just following the given path.
- How come you decided to move your radio show from Sirius XM to I Heart Radio?
I believe that the mobile world is actually moving towards I Heart Radio much more than Satellite Radio. Everybody has a mobile device in their hand and this is how we are going to listen to music - I mean we already do but more so. We are not going to run around with little satellites in our hand.
For me electronic music was always about breaking the boundaries on the creative sound as much as using the latest technology and I just believe in the concept of I heart radio much more than in Sirius XM is doing these days. It was a decision that was made with the philosophy of electronic music in mind.
- Do you listen to music a lot on your phone and what channel do you like to listen to the most?
The thing is I really have to say the problem we have, as an example in Germany, we just started with Spotify. We're somewhat behind in having those online radio channels and all that compared to America. We don't even have satellite radio over here, but the thing is, I seriously believe in terms of technology, satellite radio and all that especially on mobile devices will die out rather soon. The only place where you're still going to have it is probably in your car, but not for much longer. Smartphones are taking over the command system in the car and it's not going to last much longer. Your mobile gives your favorite music, favorite TV, favorite news channel, your favorite everything you need. If you want to go to a restaurant, you ask your telephone. We already have that with the iPhone but I believe it will be much more the case than it is now especially with you guys in America having the 4G network. Technology wise it is absolutely going to be the future compared to satellite radio.
- You've said you picked up electronic music from the radio but how about the clubs back when you were younger?
In the first years I couldn't go to any of the clubs, that was exactly the problem that I had because I was living in East Berlin and there was the Berlin wall and all the clubs were in West Berlin. The only way to listen to my favorite music was listening to the radio. Then when the wall went down, I went to all the clubs and I became the biggest fan that electronic music ever seen.
- In Poland however (also during the Communist reign) would still play electronic music in the clubs.
Poland not far ahead, but East Germany was much more of a dictatorship, and much more strict than Poland. Don't forget that back in '82 Solidarnosc movemement in Poland liberated the whole country. When that happened in Poland, it was getting even tighter in and more fucked up in East Germany.
- Now in current day Germany, what conditions make Germany such a mecca and flocking ground for producers? You have the likes Seth Troxler and Guti and many others who choose to pursue their "musical education" there as opposed to the rest of Europe.
I think Berlin has a very sort of like special vibe in this world because of how the city is governed, it leaves a lot of space for creative people to really have a chance in the way to actually live here and still develop their creativity. I think even the financial pressure, you know Berlin compared to let's say New York, London, Chicago, Detroit is rather cheap to live. Therefore, there is not that much financial pressure and you can instead of making sure you do this job because you need to earn the money, you can another job that enhances your creative output. I think this is something that actually creates a rather special vibe in this town and because of that a lot of creative people are attracted to Berlin and that also means of course it's becoming an ever-drawing melting pot of creative people over here.
- Recently you've been getting a lot of coverage in the media - Rolling Stone, Billboard. How did interviewing yourself - that idea come about?
I really have to give credit to the people from Rolling Stone, it was originally their idea to do it and then we obviously tried to figure out how can we make this possible and we kind of developed an alter ego: one is the real me and the other is kinda the mean journalist that actually the ever-same question to different journalists. It was quite a funny thing to do so, because I had to give all the answers first and according to that I had to ask myself.
- Work backwards basically. After Ultra, I have to say I agree with your comments on Madonna's question on stage, but to play devil's advocate isn't she just being Madonna? Fifteen years ago she was talking about burning crosses and sex books, isn't this just being herself?
The thing is, when she was going on about burning the bible or cross, she was trying to basically stir some controversy in a certain part of the society. But standing in front of 50,000 young kids chanting out, proposing to use drugs, I think this is a very different quality. It's not about starting controversy, this is something really really wrong on so many levels. One thing I really have to say as well, even Madonna said so that she was really influenced by electronic music, I have to say I don't really see that. She made her way of pop music and used somewhat modern sounds sometimes but that didn't really have anything to do with electronic music. I really have to say as well, when we started with electronic music, it was quite a long fight until people understood that we are not all drug addicts and we actually are artists and we do is a cultural art form. Meanwhile we have the possibility of giving grammys to electronic artists, meanwhile we have the possibility of electronic music being seen as a real musical genre and then Madonna comes and puts herself there in order to connect herself with a younger crowd and talks about drugs. This is just really really fucked up.
There is one thing to stir up a controversy and the other thing is telling people "You should really have your molly now."
- You've been involved with many political movements on a national scale, but how about working towards making the electronic music industry politics free. Making it about music and the people and not promoter vs promoter or promoter vs DJ - would you ever see yourself working towards that?
Well the problem is, looking at how things developed in the last years, it became more that. It used to be more really about music, more about being real. It became more business oriented industry in the last two three years. It's not really much I can do as an artist, to be honest, it's more that the audience thinks "Is it really worth paying $500 for a ticket for a festival?" This is something that's going on and if you look at Winter Music Conference has become, it is something that's very different from two/three years ago. It's not much that I can do, this is much what the audience really should do. They should really think "Is this something I'm listening to for the next month and listen to hip hop or to this, or am I a real fan of electronic music? Do I really know where this sort of music is coming from? Am I interested to see where it is going to?" This is the stuff that goes down to your question, in order to have a politics free momentum. There are still a lot of DJs and colleagues that there is nothing but respect, there is no business issues between us. That's really what you should be looking for then.
- Time to let the audiences know then, because it has become a bit too rampant. Thank you for your time, it was a pleasure talking with you.