What happens when a bass head interviews Armin van Buuren about trance? Actually, something pretty magical.
As a bass head, Im used to interviewing bass artists and producers in similar veins of music, and as such, the topics can sometimes become quite repetitive; realistically, the bass music world is pretty small. But when you put me in a room with someone like Armin van Buuren, whos been in the music industry for 20 years, founder of Armada and A State Of Trance, one of the biggest DJs in the world, Im going to have a lot to ask.
My interview with Armin came two days after I saw hisArmin Only set at the Forum in Inglewood, certainly one of the largest productions Ive ever seen for a solo DJ performance. Beyond the five-hour set time, the entire night was marked by incredible theater production and acrobatic performances from dancers on stage, as well as appearances from a variety of guest vocalists, many of whom were featured on Armins latest album,Embrace.
Though I arrived nearly two hours after the show had started, it was still well in full swing, with the massive swell of chords behind Adagio For Strings playing as we were finding our seats. Live trumpeterEric Vloeimans was on stage holding a note, while a ballerina danced behind him, telling an intense love tale and from there, the night continued to inspire.
I met up with Armin at the office of his theater and production designer in Venice on Monday, and we spoke about many things, as candidly as possible. With him, I didnt want our interview to be some regurgitated questions from a notepad on my phone; it ended up being a 30 minute conversation in which I learned a lot.
Check it out below.
Armin: *laughing* Yeah no of course. Im all for freedom of speech and freedom of opinion.
Armin: Well it depends on what kind of show you want to see from me. I mean if you come to A State of Trance (ASOT), obviously its pure about trance, its more about the melody, more about the classical Armin sound I guess. Armin Only for me is Id say like Christmas Dinner with Armin Van Buuren. Who doesnt want to have a Christmas Dinner?
If you look at my history, Ive never been just about trance. Even though a lot of people call me just a trance DJ, and if you want to put a label on my forehead, please put trance on there. But Ive never looked at just one genre or style, I like to mix it up, I like to be creative with the term. Some trance fans hate me for it, but I like to be a little more eclectic. Not so much for my fans per-say but also to keep it exciting for myself. Im a big dance music lover, I love a lot of bass stuff. Im a massive drum n bass fan, I love techno, you know? I think at the end of the day well all die techno DJs. *laughing* I mean, my studio partner Benno [de Goeij] always says we start with trance and we end up making white noise because were old. *laughing* Its probably very true. You know, what I try to do with Armin Only is try to go to the next level you know? With the production, the show, I think that there is a lot of undiscovered territory between the world of theater and the world of dance music.
Armin: Yeah well its, you know, I think there is a next level in dance music to be taken. Obviously its about the music, and the music is the most important thing, but I think you can enhance. We can learn a lot from the world of theater and live performance. I dont want to say that all of a sudden dance music has to be played live by live instruments, but you can really enhance a performance by having good choreographed singers, dancers, visuals, lasers and everything else coming together. So to me its a great creative set up. Financially, it was the worst decision ever, too. *laughing* But creatively its inspiring to work with people that dont come from dance music at all. For example, the trumpet player, Eric Vloeimans, if you Google him youll see that hes one of the worlds most renowned trumpet players.
Armin: Yeah! Hes extremely talented. He comes from a world of a lot of jazz musicians, he plays with classical acts. He never does anything with dance music, at all. If you google him youll see that he has a massive name to hold up. He played with a lot of great jazz musicians. It shows you also that Im a massive fan of jazz music and I want to try and incorporate the sound of the trumpet into my sound. Which is sort of, uncharted territory. Its kind of exciting to go out of your way a little bit. Not to say Oh look how cool I am, Im trying new things. Its more for keeping it exciting for myself, because it is very You know, no matter what musical genre youre in, its very tempting to just stay within your own safe path and a lot of these DJs do that.
Thats not criticizing them, thats fine. If thats your way, thats great, but for me I cant do the same thing over and over again. So for me, trance has never been this [puts hands close together] or this [spreads hands far apart], it has always been very varied. Theres very different tastes in trance music, just like there is a lot of different tastes in bass music you know? You might like the one artist in bass music, you might not like the other types of bass music, so yeah its just trying to give people a little more. Its definitely very different from a normal DJ set, like I played at Create at the after party, thats just me with a bunch of music and two decks. Great, love that, and I will always keep doing that, I love the old school way of DJing, but with Armin Only Im trying to move forward.
Technologically, you know we designed this whole time code system, which is the back end of this. Its still freestyle DJ sets, so the show you saw, of course, the individual tracks were choreographed and they were planned, but when I play those tracks its still random. So the set I played in Oakland was different than the set I played at the Forum. Im not playing exactly the same set. So that makes it exciting for me, it makes it exciting for the crew, like if someone gives me a stick with a track five minutes before the show I want to be able to play it. I think thats the essence of DJing. So its exciting to try and find a mix between pre-programmed stuff, like obviously the intro is pre-programmed, but still theres live elements to it, theres the classical ballet, theres the trumpet and theres the live snare roll. I find it exciting to try and see where the the two worlds can meet.
Armin: Yeah not for this show but I use them a lot.
Armin: Well I actually toured for two and a half years with the Myobracelets, it was a great experience because you can control the lights with that, and its fun to point at people out in the crowd. Now I use the drum computer, the Pioneer, to add drums to my set which is exciting, and we have the time code system.
Armin: Uhm I really like the collaboration between me and Vini Vici, I never thought that the psytrance world was so specific and its almost like a religious way of producing like I only heard about that in the world of hardstyle, I mean those guys that are real hardstyle producers, they can probably talk to you about kick production for about four days non-stop. Its all about the kick, hardstyle is about the kick. Its not even the low end, its about the mids and the way it has to be distorted and the way it has to be just right and in the psytrance world its even more
So one of the most exciting things is that even though Im forty years old now and in the industry for twenty years Im still learning every day. You know working with Eric Vloeimans, jazz trumpet player, or working with Kensington, a rock band, they come from a completely different world. You know I was in the studio in Miami with Kensington, you know, mixing Heading Up High and we went from mixing dance stems to drums, and how to crossfade that. It took a year to mix that track, just to get all the parts so that everybody was satisfied; so the band, the management, my management, you know the producer that I work with. Its incredibly satisfying to sort of constantly also as a producer reinvent yourself and I think that is the most fun that I have had in my career since last year. You know being in LA, working with a lot of different artists and working with a lot of different people is just inspiring, I find it very very inspiring.
Armin: No there have been DJs that have had similar high numbers. I wanna stress that Ive never done it as a competition.
Armin: Its more like every week I find inspiration from these new tracks that I find online and you know it used to be vinyl. When I started the show it was all vinyl. Now its online and Soundcloud and all that. I told myself Im not doing A State of Trance just for the sake of high numbers. Every week theres a track that inspires me. And now, actually finally enough, I went back with the radio show to do its original formula. I missed doing that.
A State of Trance radio was actually fired from the radio station it was on at Episode 186 because they moved into a different direction with the radio station, and thats when I started doing Ableton mixes which is back in 2003 when Ableton was still in 2.0 or 3.0. So I was one of the first to do that and I really loved it. I thought it was great because I was able to do the radio show in different languages, but I missed the connection with the music because basically what I was doing was: I was skipping through the tracks and I was only listening to the beginning and end of every track to mix them. I missed listening to the entire track, mixing them live, sort of have that live radio feel and now everybody does podcasts in Ableton. Which is fine, nothing wrong with that again, not criticizing but I dont think thats making radio, at least in my mind.
You know making radio is actually doing everything in one take to me, you know live mixing and those sorts of things. So I built my own radio studio, and I opened it last week in Amsterdam, custom built radio studio for A State of Trance which also includes visuals. So from this week on, every week, youll be able to watch ASOT on Facebook, Youtube and a bunch of other channels for free. I think thats the next level in radio, in visual radio and also I want to go more in detail with the specific tracks Im playing. So whether its an album special or just a new release with a big artist, Ill try to get that artist in the studio or have them Skype in and tell us something about the track so you know its next level for a radio show.
Armin: Very difficult. Its an unbelievably big undertaking. First of all, we rehearsed for three weeks in Holland in a very very big hall, because we built the entire stage just for rehearsing. So every individual track was rehearsed and thats what I learned from [my theater director]Jos Thie. He actually lives here, its very rare that you see him but hes a very famous TV director and knows nothing about dance music. He comes from the world of theater production. He did massive theater productions. And to get him involved, and again hes not a dance music fanatic, he doesnt know anything about dance music, but to have him look at my world and have him be like Okay so you want a singer right? You want a singer to perform? and I said Yeah.
And weve all seen those DJ sets where theres a vocalist that just awkwardly walks in, theres a mic thats plugged into the DJM-900 and then the singer starts singing, its like uhhhhh You know you dont really want that. I think what you should do with a live vocalist and this is what Jostold me, if you want to do a live performance or anything it almost needs to be better than the vocal coming from the record. I mean why would you do it live otherwise? It has to enhance your experience listening to the song, right? Otherwise you can just play the original track because it sounds better. Its already recorded so why the hell would you do it live? But I really learned that people do appreciate vocalists singing the song live and trying to interact with the crowd and its so much fun to do with that.
Armin: Well that was a big part of it. We really thought long and hard about how we were going to do the stage design because I was in the Forum with the Intense show and we had a completely different stage, but the idea behind the stage obviously is that the crowd embraces me. Because thats the catwalk so.
Armin: You know, this is also about learning from Jos. Shows like these are more about the individual moments rather than the entire set. So if Im in a club or at a festival, Ill play a set, a coherent set, so a set that tells a story. Ill build up BPM wise, key wise, Ill try to have some surprises obviously but theres some form of flow to your set which is what I try to do as a DJ. But with the Armin Only show I still try to keep that flow but its more like, if you play a crowd that big and you play for that long, its really hard to keep the attention from the crowd. Their attention span becomes really short.
Armin: Thank you and well I guess mission accomplished! It was always my dream of discovering this sort of uncharted territory like I said and I think Im not saying this show is perfect but I think that this is a way that dance music could be headed. Trying to keep it more exciting for the crowd than just playing the tracks. You know, really enhancing those particular moments for example with the intro or with Adagio, I mean that was a drone that goes on for 2 minutes and 10 seconds and theres a drone just laying there in D sharp that just goes and then theres a trumpet player going over that and I talked long and hard with Jos and with Sander about that and I was like Am I really gonna do this? Am I really gonna have a trumpet player in a dance music show for 2 minutes and 10 seconds and a ballet?
But everyone gets the story, thats the funny thing.
We kinda wrote it on the spot when we were rehearsing because that wasnt a thing. I just wrote a drone and I put a break in the track and I put the drone there and then Eric started playing this beautiful trumpet and when he did that the first time we were all like Wow this is a magical moment, and then we had this little story that we he starts playing Adagio he turns his back to the dancer and the dancer sees that he doesnt want her anymore and its kind of this love story and everybody gets it! People were like That was really moving, and its a very simply story but because its so small and so little the effect when the beat drops back its like BOOM! You know? Its because its so simple you know? So going from really small moments and really trying to find that emotion, I guess thats what we really all want from music right? And a normal DJ set doesnt really give me the opportunity you know? Like if youre playing at Ultra or EDC or any big festival its not really possible to just have a trumpet player playing on a drone for 2 minutes. *laughing*
Armin: Yeah! So this show gives me more creative freedom in that sense.
Armin: And what was happening I mean its really strange, I mean the track is called Adagio for Strings and we did it with a trumpet, its not called Adagio for Trumpet. *laughing*
Armin: When I started writing for this show, obviously its based on my last artist album Embrace and yeah, you think about How am I going to do a 4-5 hour show around this album? How am I going to keep that interesting? So I just started to write a lot of music, new music for this show and try to come up with different ideas. Half of the ideas didnt even make the show. Its a big Actually I dont even have an idea what the hell Im doing with this show. *laughing* But its just, Im just trying to do what I do in the studio. When Im in the studio Im just trying to make something that I want to listen to. Because you know what, when Im making music theres no people there. Its just maybe some guys Im working with but theres no crowd there. So you never know if what you think or hope would work actually works in reality. Thats also the reason why and why Im coming back to radio, why Im so happy I have my radio show because actually I think it gives me an advantage over the rest. If you do a radio show, you get to test your music, not only for your own ears but also thanks to social media people actually talk back. I find that magical.
Armin: So I get to use I get to use your ears! Like if you were a trance fan youd listen to the show, I get to use your ears. And no matter what you mean like we all have a right to say this song is shit or this song is great, but you know it happened a million times that I got a song song and I was so excited about it and Id go on air and say this is the new song by such and such, its so great, its my tune of the week and then the week after it doesnt even get 2% of all the votes, and the other way around as well. Sometimes I get a track, I listen to it and its by some big artist thats hot right then and Ill listen and be like Im not really digging this and I play it and the listeners go Oh my god this is so great! So when you read those comments you kind of start to understand that track better. Im not perfect, sometimes I really have to see those comments online and sort of interact with my fans.
Armin: Yeah. Every week still, to this day. Every week theres a track that I go I mean, its the most boring answer you can give to an answer but I say always the tracks on my radio show. Other DJs inspire me man, I mean now especially, now that Im forty, I get so inspired by twenty one and twenty two year olds. Last year in Miami every single DJ was inspiring me. I went to Martin Garrix, I went to Oliver Heldens, I went Armand Van Helden, and all these DJs have such different approaches and I find it so exciting and so refreshing. I think that at the moment you have no reason to be negative about dance music, even though some of it is commercial. I think even though we have this bit of dance music on the radio and its commercial, there also is this massive underground that is flourishing and its so great. I mean twenty years ago it was completely unthinkable to have a festival with multiple genres and now its like you can listen to bass or drum n bass or whatever you want. Its a festival for you and I think that its phenomenal! I mean theres not a lot of dance music thats out there that I dont like.
Armin: Exactly! Thats my point, especially within the trance scene right now there seems to be a group of people that are very negative and they claim they can say what is trance and what is not and its basically if its not what they like then its not trance. Im like excuse me, are you the one that decides that? Also, trance is so broad, it used to be this and now you have the Arty stuff, the Above and Beyond stuff, which is fantastic. Then you have the Dash Berlin sort of EDM-pop kind of thing which is also phenomenal I think. Then you have Simon Patterson and Bryan Kearney, the more like tech-y psytrance kind of stuff, then you have the uplifting stuff that they call Orchestrance with the massive breakdowns and all the emo stuff, which is also fantastic. I want ASOT to be the home for all these sub-genres. Im not trying to exclude somebody or say this is not trance and this is not trance. If you think that Im not trance, fine, then Im not for you. Great, youre the customer so youre always right. But for me, everything I play is trance or dance music or whatever so I dont really want to I never look at Beatport at just in the trance genre, I also look at techno. Sometimes theres an amazing Remember that rack Oxia Domino or something which is also on Compact? Which is another techno label. Its almost a classic trance record when it was labelled techno. Thats what I mean though, music gets exciting if you cross that border and try to get out of your safety zone and open up a little bit.
Armin: Oh wow thats very cool! Yeah Gareth has always been very much on the forefront. I know Roxanne and Gareth well, and Ive always been a massive supporter of Gareth, hes done a lot of good for the scene. To be honest, I think of Saving Light, I even played it at the Forum, I didnt expect it to be number one but I think its great for trance. But you know I find sometimes, Beatport is not necessarily representative for whats happening on the dance floor. Maybe Im silly, but sometimes I feel theres no charts out there that are representing the dance floor adequately. I look at the Beatport top 100 and if I play any of the top 30 tracks my crowd would leave. Not to say its good or bad music but you know, I feel that the top 20 or 30 is not one hundred percent representative. It does mean something of course.
Armin: Yeah, 1001tracklists is important, I find that more representative of whats going on on the dance floor than I do with Beatport. But then again, having said that I love Beatport for its interface, for the fact that I can get WAV files there. I hope it will never die, because Beatport is amazing and it saved my life so many times. *laughing* You know, really I think its an amazing website and I think what those guys are doing is phenomenal. I just wish that we had a chart that was more representative of whats actually happening on dance floors.
Armin: Yeah but I mean it does say something. I know DJ Mag gets so much shit, and to a certain extent I can agree with the comments, but having said that I think what is good about any award show, charts, DJ Mag, whatever; what is good about it is the fact that we talk about it. That debate is needed in the scene very much, because even though you may not agree with the results of DJ Mag, I think that if you see a DJ that comes into the DJ Mag top 10 that you dont know, he must do something right. Yes, there is a lot of cheating going on, but you cannot cheat your way into the top 10, theres no way. There must be some truth to it. Maybe the numbers are not correct but it does say something. I do think its good for dance music because it does point a lot of attention to new talent that is coming up and it does really say something about the scene, whether the charts correct or not.
Armin: Yeah for me its a whole revival of the 92, 93 sound, and hes a phenomenal producer and amazing guy.
Armin: But yeah, it feels like that whole sound is coming back again, its just amazing. I think everything that is happening is amazing in that sense.
Armin: You know what, heres a bold statement. I dont really think that you can speak of dance music anymore. Because if you look at the top 40 right now, almost every track is produced in a dance music way. So, my statement is that electronic music has spread like an oil stain through all genres of music almost.
Most music is produced in a dance music way or a sequence. Most kicks even in rock records now are processed. You know, I find it very difficult to state. Im very interested in this, I like to read a lot of biographies, and if you look at for example lets take the Beatles. They started to involve Moog synthesizers on Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and this was a very important moment in time. Why? Because at that point in 1964 the synthesizer was regarded as a devil-ish instrument. You know it wasnt an instrument because it was electronic and it wasnt real, it was not a real instrument so the fact that the Beatles had the guts to incorporate a Moog synthesizer on Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was at that point in time a very essential point.
Heres where Im going: fast forward to this time and what theyre basically doing is theyre trying to involve unconventional instruments into their sound. This has always been essential for any music development, so my answer to your question is what does the future for dance music hold? I think its mixing and merging. I mean bass or trap music comes from, you know I hear elements, clear elements from jungle and two step. You know the two step sound from the late 90s, early 2000s in the UK. Speed garage, you remember that sound? So all these production elements, all these new sounds that are coming, theres these wiz kids that make the most amazing plug-ins that make the most amazing sound. Ableton is made for the birth of dance music.
So what you see is that technology has always had a massive, MASSIVE, influence on the development of sound.
Take Skrillex for example, without Ableton there would be no Skrillex, or the sound would be very different at least. Ableton has just opened so many doors for so many producers which is phenomenal, I think. So, my point is that I think in the future dance music will be mixing and merging and the development of new techniques has a massive role in that. So if you look in the KVR audio, the website, you see all these new plug-ins that are coming and they will have an effect on the sound of the future. And what I find exciting about trance music is if you look at I dont know many about other genres or styles but what I find exciting about trance music is that you can really see these eras in trance.
For example, in 2007 minimal became really big, and you saw that the trance producers were trying to incorporate the minimal sound into their tracks. Right now, whats really a trend in dance music is that a lot of DJs are trying to involve the impact of a psytrance produced track into trance. So a lot of the psytrance tracks, a lot of the trance producers look at psytrance because psytrance is so minimalistically produced compared to uplifting trance that the impact is a lot bigger because the kicks are not that long, you know sometimes in a trance track the bassline and kick are really fighting especially in a big room and then theres 3 notes of bassline so what you hear in a big room is this one big noise but in psytrance all the bass noises are a lot shorter, its like really short, so you can really hear right now in trance and a lot of trance uplifting producers try to copy that impact that a psytrance track has and I think thats amazing. Theres a development happening right here and right now. So thats just an example of what I think will happen in the future, theres just going to be a lot of mixing and merging.
Armin: Well Im super excited for the big show that Im doing on the 12th and 13th of May, Im finally doing the Amsterdam Arena which is a stadium and Im super excited about that. I hope people will appreciate the new radio show formula that Ive got going on and I hope you guys will let me know and tune in every weekend, and even if you dont have time to tune in live you can always go to Facebook or YouTube and watch the episode. Ive got a lot of new stuff coming up and Im excited and I hope to see you guys somewhere. Also, thank you for all the support weve had. Guys like you are becoming more and more important, its great. You guys are really influencing the scene which is very good I think.
All images viaAlive Coverage, Marc van de Aa
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What Happens When A Bass Head Interviews Armin Van Buuren About Trance [Exclusive] - Your EDM
