At 29 years of age, Armin Van Buuren certainly hasn’t wasted much time in making his musical mark on the world. It’s been ten years since his groundbreaking productions, including the industry-shaping anthem Blue Fear, first began to make their way into the ears, minds and record boxes of the world’s dance music elite, and barely five years since his globally broadcast radio show, A State of Trance, made its humble first appearance on ID&T radio in his native country, the Netherlands. To say that this affable Dutch musician has made something of a name for himself since then would be a rather gross understatement – indeed to many, Armin Van Buuren isn’t just a name as far as melodic dance music is concerned – it’s the name.

As a DJ, Armin Van Buuren regularly headlines the biggest music festivals and fills the finest clubs in the world, earning the respect of both his fans and his peers for his ability to keep crowds happy, even when playing 9+ hour sets or appearing as the only DJ of the entire event, as was the case with his recent Armin Only world tour. As a composer and producer, his countless original productions and remixes have been instrumental in shaping the direction of 21st century dance music; his open-minded, borderless approach to music of all genres has seen him working on collaborative projects with artists as varied as esteemed classical pianist Jan Vayne – the collaboration described by Vayne as “classical becomes pop becomes jazz becomes trance” – and former Genesis frontman Ray Wilson. As one of the figureheads of Armada Music, one of the industry’s most prolific and respected record labels, he has helped bring some of the most influential records of recent years to the ears and attention of the world. On the eve of the release of his upcoming A State of Trance 2006 double CD compilation, ITM caught up with the intercontinental heavyweight champion of melodic electronic music to find out the inside story.

“It’s amazing, really, how big it has all become. I’m sitting here at my desk in the Netherlands, and you’re all the way down in Melbourne, Australia, wanting to talk to me about my music,” Armin muses, and despite the fact that once more I have caught him at an early hour, the enthusiasm in his voice is readily apparent. “When you think of what it is that I actually do, I mean,” he continues. “Really, I find great music, or great music is given to me or introduced to me, and I share it, I pass it on for others to enjoy.”

Armin’s unique approach to sharing the music that he loves has garnered him legions of fans from around the globe. For as long as he has been DJing, he has actively encouraged his fans to let him know which tracks are their favourites, using this advice as guidance in selecting which tracks to include in his radio shows, DJ sets and compilation CDs. One of his most recent releases, the double CD A State of Trance Year Mix 2005, neatly compiled nearly one hundred of his weekly ASOT radio show’s fans’ most highly regarded songs – as determined by a series of online polls – into two 80-minute mixes.

Yet despite having become such an impressive and influential musical identity, Armin Van Buuren remains both refreshingly grounded and remarkably humble. “’God is a DJ’ – I absolutely hate that phrase,” Armin laments. We’ve been talking about his fame, his persona behind the decks, and the DJs-as-gods rhetoric that seems so prevalent in some corners of the dance music community. “I’m a clubber myself,” he explains. “If I weren’t playing as a DJ, I’d still be in clubs and listening to dance music just the same. I’ve never liked the fact that DJs are standing up higher than the crowd. I suppose at the bigger events there has to be some of that, but I’ve never really been comfortable with the whole concept of DJ worshipping.”

Exploring the topic a bit more, I ask Armin about how his on-air, retail CD and live performance popularities intersect, and the extent to which the fans from one sphere overlap into the others. “I suppose you could say that, just because sometimes after I’ve finished playing a certain percentage of people walk out, that I should pat myself on the back for that, but that’s not how I see it,” Armin replies. “Perhaps eighty percent of the music that I play is familiar to those on the dance floor, but I’m also a bit of an exception there because of my radio show. If you look around you anywhere that I’m playing, you’ll see that you’re surrounded by people that simply want to go out, to dance, to have fun and to have a good night. They may know my name, they may have heard my music before, but when you come right down to it, for a lot of people, they just want to go out and have a good time no matter who’s playing.”

We discuss the overlap between his live sets and his radio show playlists further. “I certainly don’t make any secrets about what’s in my record box,” he says, “and I’ve never played a particular style of music to be popular! I’ve always believed in the music that I like. I also believe in what I call the ‘armchair raver’ society. I’ve even made a little jingle for my radio show for them!” Having missed the jingle, I ask Armin for some clarification on the ‘armchair raver’ concept, and he laughs. “Trance is very much alive on the dance floors of the world, but it’s not exclusively music for nightclubs,” he explains. “It’s also music that can be listened to at home or even at work with headphones on, right? This is something that my listeners and my fans have made very clear to me and something that I’ve tried to put a significant focus into with my radio show and my compilation CDs, this idea that there is a sizeable number of listeners that don’t necessarily go out to a club listen to my music, but instead listen at home or wherever they happen to be. I call this group the armchair raver society, and they’re very important to me.”

We discuss Armin’s varied audience some more, and the topic turns to one of his most recent releases, Who Is Watching, which with two separate sets of remixes has seen success both as a progressive trance track and as an electro-house track. I comment on how well his most recent foray into the house scene has been received and the surprise that it garnered from some quarters, with even well known German latin-house DJ Gadjo calling it “an awesome bomb” and joking that he was becoming a trance DJ on his promo reply sheet. Armin laughs. “It was a bit of a fluke,” he admits. “I didn’t consciously move to a more house sound – I mean, it wasn’t like I said ‘ooh, Angello and Ingrosso are really popular, let’s make a record like that’ or anything, but it’s really worked out quite well. Paul Van Dyk is still playing the Remy and Roland Klinkenberg remix, while Deep Dish is still playing the Oliver Moldan mix, so yes, I’m very happy. That’s the great thing about my armchair raver society, too – they’re very open minded to a lot of different music, and so Who Is Watching has been very well received by them, too.”

I ask Armin if, given the success of Who Is Watching, he has considered producing more house music under a pseudonym, as some other trance DJs have recently done. While acknowledging that he has used pseudonyms in the past, Armin is quick to stand behind the name that he has built for himself as an electronic musician. “When I make a record, it’s going to have my name on it. If you don’t like my name, or you think you don’t like the style of music that I make, then fine, don’t buy it,” he says. “As an artist you must always be moving forward. I could probably make another twenty tracks just like Communication, but for me as an artist I want to always be moving forward to something new.”

Having noticed that his A State of Trance 2006 double CD compilation has one CD labeled as “On the Beach” and the other as “In the Club”, I ask Armin about how he balances his club material with his ‘armchair raver’ material, about the concept behind the album, and about how he came to select which tracks were to be included on the compilation. “The first CD I’d like to think of as a sort of Café Del Mar by Armin Van Buuren,” he explains, referring to the ubiquitous melodic chillout compilation CDs based on the “sunset bar” of the same name in San Antonio, Ibiza. Rather than basing the CDs on a particular club or beach, Armin explains that in creating the two mixes he wanted to capture what he described as “the sound of summer 2006”.

And just how did Armin decide which tracks were to make the cut? In the end, it was between him and his well-traveled 60GB photo iPod, onto which the finalists were loaded and carefully considered for a number of weeks. “I had about 80 really good tracks in my iTunes, all up,” Armin recalls. “I kept listening to them all, thinking ‘ok, which ones am I going to select’, keeping in mind the kind of CD that I wanted to put together. I wanted to create the sort of the CD that listeners could take on holiday with them, while still keeping it danceable.”

We delve a bit more into the technical aspects of the mix, and I ask Armin to provide a bit more insight into how the tracks that appear on the compilation compare to the original versions he’d been carrying around on his iPod. “I would say that at least half of the tracks that are in these mixes have been edited or changed in some way by me in order to fit the mix,” he explains. “The first track on CD1, for example, Mike Foyle – Shipwrecked, the entire introduction has been created by me based on a few different elements that Mike Foyle had sent me – an introduction, a chillout version, and so on.”

As we continue the conversation, Armin is quick to point out how fortunate he’s been to have been able to work so closely with the original producers of the tracks on his compilation, and how in many cases the original artists have furnished him with sub-mixed components of the original tracks in order to better allow him to seamlessly integrate each track into the compilation. “It’s been great to have this flexibility, but to me it is also important to find the balance, in that I remain true to the original tracks,” he says. “As DJs, we depend on producers, for without them there would be no DJs. This respect, both from the perspective of artistic integrity and from the perspective of intellectual property, is absolutely vital to me, and it’s something that I take very seriously.”

We chat some more about the increasingly blurry divide between production and DJing, and I ask Armin if he has any advice for aspiring DJ/producers looking to make the leap to the world stage. “Two things,” he begins. “First, make your own tunes. I can not stress this enough. You have to be able to make a good record, and it has to be signed and released in several countries. You don’t have to be in Holland or England – the internet connects us no matter where you are – but you have to be producing, remixing, making tunes.”

“Second thing, don’t just copy what is already out there. I get sent loads of demos every day, and to be honest they all sound the same. The same big riffs, the same predictable breakdowns, it sounds like stuff we’ve already heard. If you want to succeed, you need to do something a bit different.”

Bringing things a bit closer to home for the final few minutes of our conversation, I ask Armin if he has any reflections on his recent tour through Australia four months ago. “It was great,” he enthuses. “I can see that trance is still very much alive in Australia – and there in Melbourne, I’m very happy that my radio show is on KISS FM every week. Sales of my DVD, Armin Only: The Next Level were very good, and I’ve always been very happy with my support from Australia. I’ve been through Australia every year since 2000, and it’s always been such a fun place to play. This time around I spent some time in Byron Bay, did some diving, stayed at a very nice resort, it was great. Rest assured you’ll be seeing me again soon.”

A State of Trance 2006, mixed by Armin Van Buuren, is available locally through Central Station/MRA. It’s in stores now.