On an ice cold Thursday night in Denver, my photopgraher turned interviewer, Tony McKendry, and I had the pleasure of meeting with Dutch brothers Sjoerd and Wouter aka Showtek, at Beta Nightclub:
——————————————————-
Brett – Thanks for sitting down with us tonight guys, and welcome to Colorado!
Tony – How are you guys feeling about you set tonight? Have you played here at Beta Nightclub before?
Wouter – No, this is the first time.
Sjoerd – Yes, it’s been a while actually.
Brett – So you guys are coming off some really big collabs, Tiesto, Bassjackers… etc. Are there any artists out there that you really want to work with in the future?
W – We get asked this in a lot of interviews and we mainly say Knife Party, they have a great sound. We have our own sound, but their sound mixing-wise, technically is amazing
S – We are studio freaks, we know what we like. Skrillex would be great of course, and there are so many people outside of the scene, like singers that we’d love to work with too.
W – Yeah, but EDM wise, we’ll go with Knife Party.
S – I think Dada Life has a good quality sound as well, we met them in Korea once, and we really dig their sound. We told them that we like to listen to them when we make music for inspiration and they were like ‘no way, you’re fucking kidding, we listen to you when we produce too!’ So that was cool
W – We definitely have the same edge on our music, a little rougher than the normal stuff, different, its great.
B – You guys come from a Hardstyle background but the House scene here [in the United States] has blown up… How does this new American market differ from the European?
S – In the Netherlands, in Europe in the 90’s and here it exploded, I think our first show was in Chicago in 2006, but our first big show was in LA in 2009 and then starting to come up, but not as crazy as the last 2 years, it was like Boom, it exploded! But, the good thing is people are really into it here, they are really energetic and here they really love to party. They love to party in Europe, but its not as new anymore, so it’s still great, and its always surprising when you go to new areas, it feels like we’re just getting started. We needed that new challenge, because we toured across like almost every club for the last 12 years, we’ve been around for a long time.
W – We’ve always wanted to do something like this collab with other artists. Do a little more, in a good way, mainstream sound for a bigger crowd. With the hard stuff, we realized over the last two years that we had this ceiling above our heads we couldn’t really cross, then suddenly this whole EDM scene blew up… where people didn’t care what genre you played as long as you had a cool set. And I think it doesn’t even matter what genre you play anymore, the most important thing is that you have your own sound. And so we could finally take a step, to do something more than what we used to, because the scene is booming here and Asia. And with like Cannonball, which is going crazy at the moment. We definitely found our way in the scene, we’ve forked up four Top 10 Beatport hits with the last 4 tracks we had.
B – Since you guys have been around so long, you’ve got to have some crazy stories from touring, any you’d like to share?
W – Well we have good and bad crazy nights….
B – Well, how about the good crazy?
S – 2011 at EDC, we went to this after party in Vegas with Tiesto, it was like 9 am and we were still going strong. We were riding around in an 80 person limo with like 35 people going to clubs, after parties, strip clubs, everything… and it was amazing.
W – that’s actually a funny story because that year at EDC it was actually the start of our new Career, we were there with Tiesto. We partied so hard for 3 days, hung-over the whole time, but it gave us so much new energy in the studio. We were kind of stuck on the hard stuff; like yeah, we had top tens and played sold out solo shows but we needed a new challenge and that was a great change in our career and from then on it just got crazier and crazier. Our set at EDC was mind blowing.
S – Then we had a really crazy night like two weeks ago in Hong Kong, we went there with KLM airlines, and we were sitting in our seats talking to one of the stewardesses; she asked us what we did for a living, we told her we were DJ’s and all that and she asked if her and her friends could join us that evening, so I gave her my number because she was a nice girl. I get a text later that evening asking if she can bring the whole KLM flight crew and we ended up partying with them until like 7 am; we went to an after club, got kebabs at a great kebab place, it was really crazy.
B – Awesome, so to switch gears a little bit, is there anything you guys are really looking forward to in the future you can share with us? Any songs, remixes or collaborations?
S – We have two new tracks coming out on Dim-Mak in 3 weeks. One of the tracks sounds like Cannonball, it’s called “Slow Down’, it’s a new track we finished a year ago, but we listened to it now and thought “we’re better now, lets do it again” so we made it more 2013. The other one is called ‘Crunk’, the title says a lot, it’s a crazy track, it’s more of a car track though, you have to know it, its not a big hit-hit, but we wanted to do something different
W – We just want to show people what we are capable of, its not a big, Top 10 hit but it’s a great track in the car or at home.
B – It’s interesting that you mention that, the idea between a club track and a “car track”. Does Crunk break the traditional club track formula if there is one?
S – It’s true, its always a formula, it always works, like with pop music and stuff, but with Crunk, it drops in really hard as well, it goes crazy, it’s different, it has a different feel, its just nice to make music for in the car or on your IPod.
W – To me its like, the standard ingredients will always work for us, but for us it’s always cool to show people that we can do different stuff too. When we do an album we’ll probably have like 3 or 4 cannonball-type bangers, but the rest will be much more experimental…
T – Well we’ve got time for one more question. I have to ask, what is your guys’ absolute favorite place to play?
W – Well hopefully it’s Denver!
T & B – Definitely Denver.
W – We had a great show in Houston last week, we always have a great time in Glasgow, every time we go there, its always crazy.
S – its hard to describe, though, like picture a big venue with one light on, no lasers, no nothing, just loud music and crazy people and its all about the music and Singapore Club Zook is amazing as well, we came in like 2 weeks ago and the whole club was chanting Showtek…Showtek…..Showtek and we couldn’t wait to start, so instead of a one and a half hour set we decided to play like a 3 hour set instead because they were just going mental. But yeah I hope Denver gets added to that list tonight.
B – Awesome, thanks again, any last things you want to tell your fans?
S – If you want info about any of our new stuff, cause theres a lot coming out, go to our Showtek facebook page at facebook.com/showtekofficial, also showtek.nl is our official website.
Your EDM would like to give a big shout out and thank you to Showtek for the champagne and their time!
Make Sure to check out their soundcloud!
