- We came in just in time to attend today's keynote speaker, Paul Van Dyk. Contrary to yesterday's keynote which was a speech, this one was an interview by Gary Smith who works as a journalist for Billboard, MIDEM News, Daily Telegraph, Five Eight Magazine and ADE.
Things started off with a round of applause for Paul van Dyk who had just taken over the crown as the No.1 DJ in the Top 100 DJs Poll from Tiesto the night before. Congratulations to Mr. van Dyk for being the world's #1 DJ from today! Having been in the top 10 for the past 7 years so he was certainly deserving of it!
Van Dyk certainly is not a newcomer but has been involved in this scene for about 15 years -- both as a DJ and as a producer -- having had his music signed to a relatively small label in the beginning. After going to court he now has the full publishing rights and ownership of his back-catalogue so will able to release them on his own Vandit label.
Things goes smoothly. It seems like Paul has a lot to tell us. He's excited. As he answers questions about what his favourite country, club and own self-produced track are, Van Dyk's answers imply that he's simply happy doing what he does and cannot really choose a favourite. Smith tries to lure Van Dyk into the obvious, asking: "What do you want God to say to you at the gate?". While we expect him to answer: "You all did it for an angel???", van Dyk cleverly avoids the answers that are too personal.
Either way we were glad to hear that he's also here for those of us on Earth: "For me it's still about the party, the crowd and the atmosphere. If I ever start losing the connection with the crowd I will stop". Van Dyk admits a lot of things have changed over the last couple of years. While music sales went down, Electronic Music in Germany is rising. "Everyone loves electronic music there", he says. He expects it will take over the lead from rock music in a couple of years.
He certainly hasn't forgotten the important places where he has played as a DJ and those that helped him to shape the scene. From Gatecrasher in Sheffield and Twilo in NYC to E-Werk in Berlin, time flies and things have changed. "All the ravers are gone now as well as the spirit at a legendary place like Twilo. It's now called Spirit".
At that point a cellphone rings somewhere in the room. While everyone including Paul looks around, Paul's wife unexpectedly speaks out from one side of the stage and says: "It's your phone Paul!". Paul answers humourously: "Probably it's my mother". Then she answers: "Actually it is your mum!". Everyone starts laughing and can't stop with the incident happening like it was perfectly planned by Paul himself. So besides being a serious person and a good businessman he seems to have a good sense of humor as well...
The phone incident is a perfect moment in the interview to ask Paul about gadgets like phones and iPods. "Actually, I am no gadget guy and I don't know why", Van Dyk admits. Instead he borrows his wife's iPod and relays an anecdote about a phone given to him with one of his tracks as the ring tone. Unable to figure out how to change it he stopped using it as a result of finding it quite embarrassing. Yet despite not being a wonder at technical things, these days he hardly deejays with vinyl but instead brings two laptops and around 300 Gb of mp3 files with him on tour.
In regard to the Internet and the distribution of music, Paul says, "It's exciting because there was no legal way to get this kind of music on a digital format before and now you can just buy it everywhere online. People should not be complaining about illegal downloading in the past cause there was no alternative to downloading legally!".
The Internet gives Paul some pressure as well: "It's difficult to do something unique every time". He recalls a story about a long set he played in NYC some time ago. "The day after I played in NYC the complete tracklisting of my set was already online!!!".
Nuff said!!!
From NYC to that other important city: Berlin, which seems to be even hotter these days. "Yeah, I love Berlin and I still live there but so many things have changed in the city over the last few years. It's infected with a kind of laziness at the moment. It's very cheap to live in Berlin and there's always something to do. It's kind of worrying when I call my designer and he's at a cafe somewhere again". To name another city I would say Barcelona is really cool right now".
Van Dyk says his music has changed over the years just by bringing in more elements into the music but without making compromises. At the moment he's in involved in the process of making a classical arrangement of 16 of his tracks with an orchestra consisting of more than 50 musicians. It won't be for an album but for a one time live performance combined with electronic elements, just like a concert. We are excited and curious if he's had to make a compromise around this time or not.
With some time left on the clock there's some time for a quick Q&A with Paul van Dyk:
Favourite word: Home
Least favourite: War
Inspiring: Life
Turns you off: People commenting on us and what we do. We give so much.
Favourite noise: Barking of my dog
Least favourite: When this goes on too long
Favourite saying: Follow on to your dream
What would you do if you didn't have this job: A chef so fat I couldn't sit in a chair!
Nightmare job: Sorting screws as a kid
What would you like God to say to you at the gate?: Well, he better talk to the people alive on the planet!
After another round of applause the second day of the Amsterdam Dance Event continues with more panel discussions, workshops, meetings and networking. Another of today's topics that caught our attention was a talk show that looked into the world of mobile opportunities and new media developments in a no-nonsense way. It was also presented by long-time ADE attendee and music lover Gary Smith (Billboard/MIDEM News) who'd just interviewed Paul Van Dyk.
Divided into two parts: "Ring My Bell" about the role of ringtones from a musical perspective and "Concerts On My Phone", it was entertaining but without groundbreaking. It is expected ringtones soon will be used as an instrument to promote new artists, but that isn't really surprising us since they're derived from what happened with music in TV commercials. Streaming media on mobile phones is done already here and there, but to really get it off the ground will take a while. The technology needed to do it large scale is different from the current networks.
Time for something completely different and being interested in technical toys we decide to checkout a workshop about MASE, a new Multi Angle Sound Experience. To explain what it is let's put things simplisticly: imagine a stereo ping pong delay. Replace the idea of two speakers with any amount of speakers so the delayed sound will bounce around in a squash ball fashion. Now drop the idea of a delay effect. Imagine you can attach any sound in a mix to the squash ball and you can have up to eight balls to attach sounds to. MASE is software that makes this happen while a hardware controller enables you to control the squash balls' actual movements.
Made for live performances you can tell the software about the speaker setup of the venue played. Although aimed at DJs and producers it might well be that a new breed of musicians will dedicate themselves to control multichannel 3D sound movement. It was a pity they only had two speakers so we couldn't hear it. Currently the developers (Muzieklab Brabant, NL) have a prototype they are actually using for live performance but unfortunately we missed the live show at one of the ADE's official venues in the night program. Imagining the experience is difficult since we already have enough sounds bouncing around in our heads already.
Friday evening we were fortunate enough to have a bit of luck. Before suffering from conference overkill at the end of the day we stumbled into a canal cruiser tour boat at the doorsteps of the conference venue. The boat turned out to be part of the ADE program and came with a nice female DJ behind the decks and some other nice ladies who prepared us a cocktail before we fully boarded.
Almost immediately the boat headed for an unknown destination which turned out to be a dropoff point near the 'Leidseplein'. More good luck again! We had planned on going to a somewhat remote location called "Wilhelmina Pakhuis Cafe" but not before checking out if ADE's opening speaker's money was where his mouth was.
ID&T recently opened a club called Studio 80 at the Rembrandtplein and walking over from our drop off point we figured there would be enough opportunities for dinner. Dinner wasn't anything worth mentioning, but the programming at Studio 80 could definitely not be accused of being commercial. Names like Quazar and Eric de Man's live band, Handel were more 'less underground'compared to what 'Fantasia' had offered last Thursday, but hey it's ID&T!
Quazar were as good as they always are and Handel turned out to be fresh sounding apart from being a cool act. There was some nice bass and vocals from the girls while Eric showed he'd really mastered the art of playing live. Pity the venue was almost empty, but it was still early. Since people seemed to be coming and going as they checked out this club we thought it would take a while before something like a party would develop so we decided to head for "Wilhelmina Pakhuis Cafe".
Taking a tram to Central Station, from there it turned out to be a longer than expected walk. Though located in a newly developed area this club managed to have a sort of 1980s bunker warehouse atmosphere of its own. The line up promised no bigger names than Steve Rachmad and Vince Watson but the live performance by Rude 66 was alone worth the walk.
Electronic basslines straddling the line between acid and punk, energy-radiating drums and live female vocal screamscapes filled our heads making us want to dance, as the crowd did. Vince Watson took over with another energetic live set and under the name Sterac Electronics, it was Steve Rachmad who closed the night with a softer than expected DJ set.
Photos: Michel Mees
Special thanks to Pieter van Adrichem.