Armin Van Buuren Stereosonic Exclusive Interview
How many DJs are simultaneously household names and credible underground heroes? The Netherlands’ Armin van Buuren is among few. The power trancer, who’s consecutively won the title of the world’s No. 1 DJ, is a regular visitor to these shores. Now Armin is anticipating Stereosonic 2011, his first Australian festival tour in a while. And he has some buddies on the bill. “I’m really excited to see BT – and, of course, Ferry Corsten is a good friend of mine,” Armin enthuses. “I actually just did a track with him called Brute. It was a No. 1 on beatport a few weeks ago!”
Born in Rembrandt’s old hometown of Leiden, Armin, long fascinated by computer music, unveiled his first masterpiece, Blue Fear, at 19. The DJ began empire-building early. In 2001 Armin launched his radio show, A State Of Trance (ASOT). Today it attracts millions of listeners globally every week. Plus he’d develop Armada Music, recently releasing the Aussie tyDi’s Shooting Stars LP. Indeed, Armin’s entrepreneurialism has always been about exposing the music he loves or facilitating the careers of other producers. He’s evolved artistically, too, presenting a number of ‘artist’ albums, the latest Mirage. Incredibly, this overachiever finally completed his law degree in 2004, although he’s unlikely to ever need a back-up plan.
Armin is currently promoting the fifth volume in his Universal Religion mix series, which, coincidentally, takes in Brute, together with his techy Stellar as Gaia. “Universal Religion is a concept I started back in 2004 – it’s a deeper trance concept. The idea behind Universal Religion is to actually do a mix in front of a live audience. For the first time, this [edition] is a double-disc – so it’s two CDs mixed live in front of an audience in Space Ibiza. So there’s no edits… you can really hear the crowd. It’s just how it is. I really tried to capture the vibe of my sets in Ibiza.” This year Armin also proffered a lavish ASOT package with mixes from himself and prestigious colleagues like Paul Oakenfold and Cosmic Gate to mark the 500th broadcast of his radio program. (He played a sold-out celebratory ASOT 500 show at Sydney’s Acer Arena in April.)
Armin only just issued a Mirage remix compilation (with contributions from BT, Avicii and Dash Berlin), yet in interviews he’s already being quizzed about his fifth album. Does he feel pressure to constantly yield projects? “I’m not gonna lie – of course, you do feel pressure when somebody asks you for new projects. I always wanna deliver the best. On the other hand, there’s things I can say that I’ve done – I feel less pressure in that way. When I reached No. 1 in [the] DJ Magazine [poll] in 2007, I did feel a lot of pressure when I finished the Imagine album. But when I won it the third time, I was like, I’m never gonna win it a fourth time so I might as well just have fun in the studio and create Mirage. Little did I know that I even won it for the fourth time! So I just try to not focus much on awards or anything in the studio – I try to have a lot of fun and follow my passion, which is clearly still trance music.” Armin has ventured into the world of DVDs, and the video game market, encapsulating the stadium trance experience for the armchair shuffler. Of all his endeavours, he’s proudest of the ambitious Armin Only – Mirage Blu-ray/DVD, which, he notes, has sold well in Oz.
Armin is an eloquent ambassador for trance. He’s consistently challenged misconceptions of the music – and joined the dots between trance and progressive, house, electro, techno and minimal. Lately Armin remixed David Guetta’s Usher-featuring R&B/house/trance hybrid Without You. So what, then, does he make of major American urban acts rapping – or singing – over trance riffs? “I saw it coming when Puff Daddy visited one of my shows back in 2005 at Amnesia in Ibiza,” Armin teases. “I don’t know what to think about it. I think it’s just a matter of music diversifying. If you look at the history of music in general, The Beatles looked up to Bob Dylan and started using the Moog synthesiser – everybody thought they were crazy. I think something similar is happening right now. Hip-hop was sort of stuck in its own sound and they started looking to other genres to get inspiration – and right now that’s dance music. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing. I don’t think you’d see me with a hip-hopper very soon, but what is a good thing is that a lot more artists are open to working with electronic dance music. In fact, a lot of pop records or even rock records are now produced in a dance music way because of the impact that dance music has – so that is something you could call an achievement.”
Armin has collaborated with the occasional pop star, Sophie Ellis-Bextor singing his Not Giving Up On Love, co-written by the Nervo sisters. And he has been asked to produce superstars. “Yes – a lot of it I’ve turned down,” Armin admits. “I try to focus on my trance thing. But my motto is, ‘Don’t be a prisoner of your own style.’ So what I really try to do is focus on my thing and who I am, but also be open to other styles. I think it’s important. I don’t think you should expect me to do a track with 50 Cent, but you have to be open to it. If somebody has a good idea, no matter if he’s 50 Cent or a singer just two houses away from me, if the idea for the song is great, then I think you should do it.” Above all, Armin appreciates that music must continually evolve. As for his own listening habits, he digs ambient music, citing The Future Sound Of London’s Environments 3. (His childhood hero is Jean Michel Jarre.)
Fans can count on witnessing a spectacular-within-a-spectacular when the Flying Dutchman headlines Stereosonic. “I’m bringing my own VJ and my own light guy and my own sound guy to Australia to make sure we have everything in place,” Armin reveals. “I have a timecode-based show but, then again, I don’t prepare my set in a way that I know exactly what I’m gonna start with and what my middle record will be and what my classic will be and what my last record will be… I just look at the crowd and then I decide where I go with my set. If people wanna hear a two-hour energetic, instrumental, uplifting trance set, I can play that, if people wanna hear all my big hits, I can play that… I’m not coming to Australia just for me, I’m coming to Australia to play for the people – and for my Australian fans, because it’s important to say. I want to give the people a great time, without losing my main focus and my main sound.”
Words: Cyclone