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WANTTICKETS INTERVIEW WITH MARCO V
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While less well known in the US than certain of his compatriots, Marco Verkuijlen has become a sensation in his native Holland and throughout much of Europe. While international success has come relatively recently, his musical voyage began extremely early through experiments with a tape recorder at the tender age of ten. He then began DJing at the age of 14, a few years before the invention of pitch controls on turntables!
In '96 he became the resident DJ at "De Danssalon", the largest club in Eindhoven (Holland's fifth biggest city), and before long the club had the most renowned Friday night in the whole country!
In recent years, his DJing and production skills have taken him across the globe to play in front of an ever-growing fan base. A point reflected by his being ranked 26th in the world in last year's prestigious DJ magazine poll.
Wantickets caught up with him at the Techno-fest "Dance Valley" at this year's Miami Winter Music Conference and took some time out of his busy schedule to give him a thorough grilling in a language that isn't his own. Thankfully, his English was rather better than our Dutch! This encounter revealed a good-humored man deeply in love with the music.
Wantickets: It's well known that you started DJing at an early age, but how old were you when you first started producing?
That's only 8 years ago, when I was 26-27. I wanted more than only DJing. I bought a few [pieces of] equipment. It was never my intention to do some records. I just wanted to do something more with music than only DJing. So for me it was just for fun. And then after six months I released my first record!
Wantickets: You've remixed some real classics. Did those tracks have special meaning to you?
Yeah! I'm not so in to remixes. I'd rather put the energy in to my own tracks, than remix. But if you can do a remix like Cafe Del Mar or Future Sound of London [his remix of Papua Nu Guinea], you can't say no.
Wantickets: Your remix of "Cafe Del Mar" became a huge hit. The original has to be one of the greatest trance tunes of all time, but it's not very hard by today's standards, it's quite mellow. So how did you go about turning that track into something that retained the feel of the original, but took it to a new level?
First of all, it was already remixed [the Three in One remix], but I only put another beat, another drive under it - the typical Marco V drive and beat - and all the rest was on top of it. It was almost the same arrangement, so it's not that much special. I just kept all the best of the original and added a new drive under it.
Wantickets: What do you enjoy more: DJing or producing?
I can't do one without the other. I have to do both. If I never was a DJ, I couldn't produce like I'm doing now. I like to play and I like to DJ. But the best thing is to play your own records. You get the most satisfaction if you're playing your own records and it's going well.
Wantickets: Your style crosses several boundaries, especially between techno and trance and is definitely on the harder side of things. How did you develop that style? Was it gradual, or in you from the beginning?
My problem is I like too many styles of music [laughs]. I like Techno, I like Trance and Progressive. I also like House, and everything, but I can't do everything! I have to keep that away. So I try to stick to Trance and Techno and I try to mix that a little bit.
Wantickets: As a DJ and producer, what do you do to avoid becoming too narrow in your focus and to prevent yourself from falling in to one narrow pigeonhole?
I think it is because I don't like only Techno, or only Trance. I can't go to just a Techno party or a Trance party. I want to have more kinds of music, more styles. In the early days when the House thing started all the DJs just played nice tracks and didn't want to be a "Techno DJ" or a "Trance DJ". I've always played the music I liked, I don't like this and I like that. I play my set. That's what I'm doing now. I'm not doing anything else from what I did all those years before!
Too many people now want to want to be put in a box. You're Techno, you're Trance, and even if a Techno DJ likes a Trance record they wont play it!
Wantickets: Did your track "Godd" provoke any negative reactions?
I could see some over-sensitive people being offended by the lyrics, particularly here in the US.
You didn't hear my new track, it's called "C:\del *.mp3".
Wantickets: That's the next question!
Godd was "well yeah…" for some people, but I did explain it. It could have been other words. They were just nice rolling lyrics. It had nothing to do with God or anything, but the lyrics sounded good on the track. But a few countries wouldn't play it. Like they couldn't play it on the radio, and this and that.
Wantickets: Do you just make your music and not care what people think?
After "Godd" became a hit, I felt that I wanted to please my crowd and I was busy in the studio together with Benjamin [Benjamin Bates, his producing partner] trying to do what people expected from me. It really didn't work well. Then my A&R guy told me, "Just go back to what you did before. Make music that YOU like and don't care what other people think."
So, that's how my next track came about. Some people like it, some don't! But it is difficult, if you've had some success you want to keep it going, and you're trying to please the people who are already supporting you. But you don't have to do that. If you lose some people, you'll get some more back.
Wantickets: Moving on now to "C:/del *.mp3". That did cause a certain amount of controversy. I know you've said that it wasn't meant as an anti-piracy statement, but what DO you think about the current copying technology and its effect on the music industry?
Maybe for some labels it's fairly hard, but we're selling more records than we did before, because my music is being heard in countries where it would never have been heard before, if there wasn't MP3s. Like I was in Kuala Lumpur, and they can't buy vinyl. But now a lot of DJs are going to those kind of countries and playing gigs because of MP3s.
The people who are really fans order my records on the Internet. We sell a lot of records on the Internet. So we're selling more records than ever before. But, it's true that for compilations it's fairly bad. There are a lot of DJ sets worldwide, and I think it's nicer to have a DJ set than a compilation. It's better to have, say, Tiesto live. There's so many live sets available on the Internet, so that's a lot of competition for the compilations. But even before, in Holland, we had a lot of problems with piracy of CDs, even before MP3s. Compilations didn't sell that well because everyone was buying cheap pirated CDs.
Wantickets: Before the electronic dance scene began, Holland wasn't particularly well known at an international level for its music. That seems to strangely contrast with the number of world-class dance music producers and DJs that have come from your country. Can you explain that?
No [laughs]! Actually, I think Belgium should be much higher on the list than it is now, because Belgium has been busy with Trance much longer than us. So we stole a little bit from them [laughs]!
Wantickets: While those in the know here in the US are familiar with Marco V, you've yet to spend much time DJing over here. Can we look forward to you amending that situation in 2003?
I have a very busy schedule [laughs]. I do like a lot to play in England and I have such good gigs to play there already. I'd like to have more American gigs, but it's hard to come over for just two days. I don't have the name to fill a club on say a Sunday or a Tuesday. People say, "Go and do a tour in America", but it's easier said than done. I can only play clubs on a Fri. or Sat., and I have to fly in and then fly back. Also, I have to have my studio time.
My focus now is to play more in the same club regularly. Pick a few cities, a few clubs and try to go there four or five times a year. I think you can more easily build up a fan-base that way.
Wantickets: Do you have any plans for a follow-up album to "Confusion"?
Yeah, but if you have pressure the best doesn't come out of you. So I don't want to have any pressure. There's going to be a new album, but I don't know when. Maybe this year, maybe next year, or the year after that. I have to collect new material.
Wantickets: Marco V. Thank you very much!
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