sunday april 19 / 2009

ASOT 400 thank you note from Armin
Hi everyone,

I’m sitting back at home right now, recovering from what may have been one of the best weekends in my carreer as a DJ. The reactions to the celebrations for the 400th edition of A State of Trance were bigger than in my wildest dreams. It seemed like everything came together and I’m deeply touched by all the support from fans all over the world. What started out as an idea for an intimate party in a club, grew out to three massive events in three countries with actually creating an online radiostation for 72 hours only. It’s was fantastic to see how massive the repondse was to the video- and autofeed.

It really showed me once again how big the love for trance is around the world. It creates a special atmosphere in the clubs that clubowners and bouncers describe as “the easiest crowd to work it”. Everyone seems to be there for the music, which is the same vibe I got from the people who turned their livingrooms into clubs just for these three days. The forums, twitter (#1 topic for a few days) and chatrooms showed us a little of what was going on.

Even though not everything went a 100% smooth with the videostream, I think you still got a good impression of the vibe in the clubs and backstage. Even though Internet is now part of our daiy lives, it’s still developing and sometimes I did get a little bit the feeling of “pioneering” because the Internet is not 100% ready yet everywhere for such a big stream of data, but from what I understood most of you did get a proper audio feed and a lot of people were able to see us.

One thing I really noticed is how cool all the DJ’s were I invited. Nobody had a big ego or demanded just blue M&M’s backstage. Everyone was just hanging out with huge respect for eachother, listening to eachother sets, discussing gigs, software and music. It made me feel incredibly happy and proud to be part of this world we call electronic dance music. It was truly special!

I really owe a massive thanks to the huge team of people that made this all possible. First of all our sponsor SEAT, All the clubs (Butan, Godskitchen and Maassilo), Alda Events, DLP, Dance Foundation (Lennart & Paul & crew), Gavin Kingsley from the radiodepartment, Raymond Garnier & crew (crossmedia ventures), everyone at Armada (esp. Ruben de Ronde), Gijs Alkemade & crew, all the radiostations that joined us, all the DJ’s for their fanastic guestsets and mixes, all clubbers, websites and forums (Trance.Nu, Tranceaddict, Trancefix, avb.forum, irc chatroom #Armind & #ASOT400 etc etc), and everyone I may have forgotten. You know who you are.

See you at ASOT450!!

Love,

Armin