RS: How did you choose the songs for Politics of Dancing 2?
Paul Van Dyk: I just choose the stuff that I like the most and the tracks that I believe, when they have their proper official release, are going to be huge.
RS: Very cool. How did your experience on the Rock the Boat Tour affect this CD, or did it?
Paul Van Dyk: No, it didn’t actually, because it’s two different things. The title of the CD was a connection between the music I do, the popularity electronic music has and the responsibility I have as a person, as a representative of electronic music to push boundaries. Not just on the creative level with the music, not just on the technological level with the equipment I use, but also on the fact that I travel around and I see so many things that are wrong. It is the responsibility of us and the so-called Western World to make sure that all the other people that live in very, very devastating circumstances aren’t forgotten.
RS: Is “The Other Side” about a specific person or a more general feeling?
Paul Van Dyk: Both, in a way. The inspiration came when the tsunami hit Southeast Asia and the next thought was there are all those different religions and they all believe in something else. But there's one point where they all sort of unite, regardless of what you believe or what your religion is, you hope that the person that you lost hasn’t suffered so much and that the person is somewhere where they feel good, where they feel safe. Some people call it heaven, some people call it paradise, and I just called it the other side. The other side, for me, means as long as you do not forget the person, as long as you hold the person in your heart and in your soul, this person’s going to be with you and all the wisdom that person had is going to be with you and support you in the right moment, and this is what I believe in. If you're going to see that person at one point, I don’t know, because no human being knows. I don’t know if there is an afterlife. This track is about being fully alive.
RS: Wow. It’s hard to get back to talking about technical questions of mixing a CD when you reveal such spiritual inspirations in your music. The songs on those CDs, did you mix them live or how were they mixed together?
Paul Van Dyk: Actually the technical concept of Politics of Dancing 2 was the same as the first one. I don’t really like normal DJ-mixed CDs because for me it’s all about interaction as well. You cannot capture the atmosphere of a club night on a CD. So the technical concept actually is combining me as a DJ, producer, remixer and as a musician. I extract all those tracks and then put them back together in a different way than they originally were and basically produce them together, so it’s a very different way of putting it together.
I build each segue with the drums from track 11 and the bassline of number and maybe some keyboard strings from track 5.
RS: Is this related to the way you're DJing live now with a laptop as opposed to a CD or a record?
Paul Van Dyk: Yes, absolutely. When I play, I have two laptops with me – one running Scratch Live by Serrato and the other running Ableton. They’re connected with each other and they can interact with those systems. It’s absolutely amazing what you can do, especially when you have the ability of a sequencer program re-editing the track while they are running and doing crazy stuff. As I said before, electronic music was always about breaking boundaries on all levels and using the latest technology as part of it.
RS: Speaking about this new technology, what ringtone is on your phone right now?
Paul Van Dyk: Just a normal ring. I’m not a big fan of ringtones, to be honest, because it violates my idea of the art of music.
RS: Because it’s just a small section, or why is that?
Paul Van Dyk: Yes, because it’s something different. If you download, as kind of a reminder, a little piece of your favorite song, I don’t mind that - that’s fine with me. But I don’t like those replayed little beep, beep, beep, beep melodies sort of thing. That’s not music and it doesn’t actually support the creative background of the track and of the artist that did the song originally. So I’m not really a big fan of the ringtone mania thing, and I actually just have a normal ring-ring tone like a telephone ringtone really.
