Tiesto: How to Just Be number 1

Talking to Tiesto about his successes is a curious mixture of humility with a bit of Dutch courage thrown in. He’s obviously a man who has put in the hard yards and earned his stripes on the decks and in nightclubs around Europe and across the globe. “I never expected to be number one on there (the DJ Mag top 100 poll), I mean 5 or 6 year ago I wasn’t even on it!” he muses. “It’s good to get to this spot two times in a row because once, you know, people might still think it’s a fluke but two times in a row, I think that makes it solid!” he laughs.

To prove he still has what it takes it home as well, Tiesto was recently awarded the Order of the Oranje Nassau in Holland, the Dutch equivalent of being knighted by the Queen of England. So should we maybe be calling him Sir Tiesto now I ask? “Yeah definitely,” he laughs, “The Royal family love music actually. When the prince got married, in January 2002, I played at his party!” Obviously the Dutch Royal Family isn’t quite as conservative as the English. Well with the obvious exception of Prince Harry who, lets face it, really puts the rest of them to shame.

Discussing his recently released album, Just Be, Tiesto doesn’t mince words describing what he set out to achieve with it. “It’s a real dance album and very close to what I do (in clubs),” he plainly states. Tiesto is a man obviously firmly committed to delivering the goods and sticking to his guns: “Well I am known as a DJ who fills the dance floor. So I said ‘Well I can make some kind of alternative break-beat album or rock album and team up with I-don’t-know-who.’ But I think what people have come to expect from me is really well produced dance music. It’s pretty straightforward – I’m not going to cross over into something else. I am on top of what I do at the moment.”

He’s not kidding when he talks about being absolutely and utterly on top of what he is doing at the moment. The singles from Just Be, Traffic, Love Comes Again (with BT) and Adagio for Strings have been monster hits for his Magik Musik label. Tiesto touring schedule, as well, is racking up the frequent flyer points like nobody’s business, playing everywhere from his residency at Cream@Amnesia in Ibiza, through regular gigs in Canada, Japan, USA and of course Australia. “I just feel like I am absolutely in the zone at the moment,” he adds, “It’s like everything I touch turns to gold!”

While Tiesto’s success might sound kind fairy-tale like the reality is that he put in his hard yards early on. He launched Black Hole Recordings with his business partner back in the first half of the nineties and began vigorously promoting, producing and selling his own records in Holland and around Europe. It seems as though in the current global market, to achieve a truly internationally based, mega-star status in the dance music industry, a DJ almost always needs to be a top-class producer as well as a first-rate deck technician. Tiesto whole-heartedly agrees, “I think it always has been like that. No one really thought about it at first. If you look at some of the old school top 100 DJ’s, like Paul Oakenfold, Carl Cox, they made big tunes before they became such big DJ’s.”

Now that he has made his name as a globetrotting, track-slinger, Tiesto has set his sights on becoming a more profilic producer. “I am going to have a break in September/October,” he relates, “I am going to take some more time in the studio and spend more time at home to focus more in production. I want to produce a lot more records actually.” I asked Tiesto whether he really considers himself a trance DJ or whether his sound has its own unique quality. “I think that I am a trance DJ but not as people normally would know,” begins Tiesto, distancing himself from some the proponents of ‘Wanker Trance’, “I have my own sound, I think, the sound of Tiesto. It’s mainly trance music but not the completely cheesy riffs, you know, it’s got more of an edge to it. I think its trance with an attitude.”

It was this belief in his unique style and taste that led Tiesto to form the sub-label Magik Musik under the umbrella of Black Hole. “Black Hole became so diverse with Techno and Club Music and all kind of different styles, it really didn’t feel like my own label anymore,” he explains, “I wanted something so that people who were looking for a real Tiesto sound could just look for Magik Musik records. All the records that I release on that label I really like myself and play out myself. So that makes it much easier to find the music I play.” Today Magik is a hugely popular label in its own right with aspiring junior Tiesto’s dropping Magik tracks with gay abandon across trance-happy Europe and the rest of the globe. This is the Tiesto brand, the Tiesto sound, the Tiesto phenomenon that is showing no sounds of slowing down.

Black Hole now focuses on developing new talent as well as releasing music from a larger variety of genres. One artist to look out for on the label Tiesto has an eye on in Mark Norman, a curiously entitled duo comprising DJ’s Mark de Jong & Norman Lenden. He tips these guys as the next big thing to come out of Holland and advises trance fans to watch out for their releases on Black Hole and any DJ gigs the pair give.

Dutch people, Tiesto assures me, are fiercely independent. He thinks this will again have strong reparations for the Dutch team at Euro 2004 and said this when I asked him why the team is so well reknown for being a petty infighting group seemingly more intent on arguing than bickering, “Yeah exactly but that’s typical Dutch though! Every person is very individual but that’s with everything including soccer and all sports. DJ’s as well, yeah! I mean there are some really great DJ’s from Holland but they don’t collaborate with one another. It’s more like everyone has his own little thing going on. It’s just the way we are. We want to take care of everything ourselves.” Well when you have the Midas touch like Tiesto, who can blame him?

Tiesto’s brand new album, ‘Just Be’, is out now through Bang On!

Smirnoff ICE, inthemix.com.au and Technics would like to congratulate Tiesto for taking out the top spot as Australia’s most popular international DJ in 2004. To check out the full list, of international and local DJs, head over to the inthemix50 homepage HERE.