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Decent PVD article...
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| Swamper |
Taken from http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_...eat/vandyk.html
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All about Paul
Paul van Dyk is sitting on top of the electronic-music world
BY RYAN WATSON
Where most DJs are content to simply "take you on a journey," Germany's Paul van Dyk takes you on a trip. A run through his newest record, Out There and Back, provides a glimpse into the mind-warp that fully realized trance (or "electronic dance music," as he prefers) can induce.
True to its name, Out There and Back begins with a stratospheric liftoff. Then you're out there somewhere, rushing hard at the beckon of a sophisticated hand controlling the constant reinventions of melody, slight changes in tempo and synth swells diving and soaring over the 4/4 propulsion, returning only when the 73-minute epic stops spinning. And it's a wonderland that's not brought to you courtesy of other people's records -- van Dyk's releases are written, produced and engineered by the man himself, and creatively fuelled through his double duty as one of the world's most sought-after DJs.
"If I ever stopped DJing because of age or getting tired of travelling, I would still make music in the studio, but my style would change somehow," van Dyk says. "It's the power of the interaction with people coming back to me, and I create music from that. If that's ever subtracted from the equation, things will be different."
There's no sign of disruption on the horizon, as van Dyk is at the peak of his game, both as a DJ and producer. Residencies in Ibiza, at Gatecrasher and New York's Twilo and the recent triumphs of being voted Best Music Maker (over Fatboy Slim and Paul Oakenfold) by DJ Magazine and Man of the Year by Mixmag attest to his lofty position, which was solidified with the release of Out There and Back last summer. Considering these accolades -- and the reception his two previous albums 45 RPM (1994) and Seven Ways (1997) enjoyed -- it would seem an Atlas-like weight was on van Dyk's shoulders to deliver with the "difficult third album."
"I felt relieved that Out There and Back finally came out," he remarks, "because I'd been splitting from my other label [German outfit MFS] and it was pretty rough. I was frustrated and very depressed and didn't want to have anything to do with the music business anymore. My wife and the people who surround me told me I should concentrate on what I love doing, which is making music. I felt really free in my mind not having any pressure when I went into the studio."
Unbeknownst to the public, van Dyk had completed an entire album, The Avenue of Stars, during this legal tug-of-war, but he wasn't and still isn't permitted to put it out. The album was shelved in 1999, but it was only after the boardroom wrangling had been sorted out (and van Dyk established his own Vandit imprint) that work begin on Out There and Back. Meanwhile, Avenue remains in legal limbo, though it may eventually see the light of day as a curiosity à la Prince's Black Album or in piecemeal form.
"I'm pretty sure it's not going to come out next, because I've developed further," he explains, "and for my audience it would be a new album that sounds like a step backward, considering it was recorded between Seven Ways and Out There and Back. The next album I put out, I want to progress from Out There and Back, but some of the tracks may show up as remixes at some point."
Until the label-separation anxiety incurred with his split from MFS, Paul van Dyk was an artist who could do no wrong. His first big hit, 1993's remix of Humate's "Love Simulation," came only a year after his very first single was released. His status has only grown from there, with a slew of European hits (each one bettering the last) peaking in 1999, when he scored a No. 1 with "For an Angel."
Picking up where he left off, "Tell Me Why (The Riddle)" -- a collaboration with St. Etienne from Out There -- did well enough on these shores to give him a beachhead toward North American acceptance. In light of all his accomplishments, van Dyk makes a point to differentiate his wheat from the chaff littered among the clutter of pop-chart successes.
"I must have a commercial element," he insists, "otherwise you can't explain why I sell that many records. But that's not the issue of the quality, though. There's bad pop music and there's good pop music and it's always been that way. If you look at Depeche Mode, which I consider a great band, it's basically pop music, but it's something very different from Kylie Minogue. The same thing goes on in electronic music. There's a similar difference between my music and other dance music."
Growing up on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall prevented van Dyk from going to clubs and buying records, but it couldn't keep out the radio waves coming from over the border. Western stations brought not only helpings of DM and Kylie, but also the important early influence of the Smiths and New Order, and later, house and techno sounds from America. Envisioning van Dyk as a teenager, alone in his bedroom with the radio on, we get a portrait of the artist as a young man imbibing that all-important "X" factor that has made him one of the premier electronic artists of the moment.
"I was looking for the same thing then as I am now, something honest and intense, something that grabs you somehow," he says. "Listen to an early record from Ron Allen from New Jersey and you'll see what I mean. He did a lot of stuff that was extremely deep when, at the same time, the stuff coming out of Detroit was just energy-driven noise. It had a soul to it. And my impression of the word soul isn't oversize singing divas -- it's what you have, what I have, what every human being has."
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| dj |
| nice catch on the article Swamper....I agree PVD is the dj of the moment. He produces great tracks and also his live mixes are kick ass!... |
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| breakdown |
i think its pretty sad how people bother to diss him sometimes tho..
to me, therez noone else who plays a good variety of music, keeps the crowd perfectly happy, and doesn't do n e thing particularly annoying.. so yea.. |
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| tu_face |
PvD is like one of the greatest trance acts to have existed. But im sorry, his newer stuff is no-where near the quality of the older stuff (b4 he moved labels). Somehow the label shift must have commercialised him too much. His live sets an stuff are as wicked as ever though... its just his tunes that have pansyfied...
Peace |
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| breakdown |
even tho he has a habit of playing the same tunes all the time, he doesn't go with the rest of the big trance jocks.. and he's kinda heading into hard house-techno region these days with his sets..
his production i admit has gone totally commercial..
i thought his best stuff is like Visions of Shiva stuff.. and remixes for Tilt (Rendezvous), Denki Groove, just anything in the pre-1998 time.. |
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