Dutch duo Bas & Ram recently made it to a rather impressive milestone in their career, a landmark made all the more impressive considering the sometimes fickle nature of dance music crowds. Known in the trance scene as one of the most revered hard trance production outfits, Bas & Ram celebrated 10 years on the scene, and as they explain to Angus Paterson, they’ve got no plans to slow things down over the next decade. They’re touring Australia over the next few weeks for Transmission so ITM caught up for a chat.
How has 2007 been for you so far?
This has been a very good year so far, I (Bas) got married in January in India, so that is an excellent start. Our Party TranceSetterZ is doing very well, it is becoming one of the most popular trance parties in Holland (www.trancesetterz.nl), with DJs like Eddie Halliwell, Marcel Woods, Dave 202, Talla 2xlc and many more playing. Also our productions are doing good, and we are playing at many big parties and festivals, as well as some very cool small clubs. We have been booked for Dance Valley and Decibel outdoors this summer.
You guys recently celebrated your 10th anniversary of working together in dance music. How does it feel to reach such a milestone?
This was a very special moment for us, we realised that we have been working and having fun together for so long, and we had so many good experiences and adventures true the years. Also it is cool to see how far we have come from starting out together as the residents of the club TranceBuddha (RIP) from 1995-2000, through to now, where we play at all the good parties and festivals. To celebrate we made a big party where the entry was free, and about 2,500 people showed. That was a night to remember for us!
Does your passion for dance music grow greater when you grow older, or was it stronger when you first started out?
Our passion is still very big for music, we live and breath music… our whole life evolves around making and playing music for the people. Our taste has evolved true the years; before we knew each other we were already into electronic music, so both me and Ram listened for hours and hours to the musical evolution in the 80s. What became, in the end, house music. In this period we also liked old skool hip hop. Even though we did not know each other, we were on the same brain wave. From the beginning of the 90s both of us became completely addicted to house music, what became later all the different styles that we now today. Already from the beginning we liked the trancey sounding tracks, the name and style was not yet born but we tried to put them next to each other, so we where trying to hypnotise the people at the illegal underground parties. In 1995 we came together, and from the moment we met we discovered that we loved exactly the same music and had the same passion, especially about playing for a crowd and getting everybody in to a trance!
You’ve been involved in dance music for a very long time but you’ve never visited Australia before. Why has it taken so long for you to reach our shores?
We have no idea! Our style of music is popular in Australia, but maybe because it is far away? Australia is very high on our list of countries where we still want to go to. Also Japan, USA and Dubaim, and some others. We are very happy to finally make a tour of your country.
What have you heard about Australian crowds and its dance scene from your colleagues who have toured before?
What we know about the Australian crowd is that they come early and that they party hard. They come to dance and want to have contact with the DJ. Some colleagues told us that we can compare them a little with the UK crowd, where they also come to the party very early and where there is a lot of energy on the dance floor.
What sort of music can fans expect to hear in your sets?
Of course a lot of hard trance, but also some tech and some electro influences will be in our sets. In Holland, tech trance is at the moment what we play a lot, of course we pick the melodic harder tech trance and mix it with hard and Euro trance. Also electro influences are coming in at the moment, we just mix it all in to an energetic blend of rhythm. We will also play some classics of ours, and maybe some stuff like Arome, S.H.O.K.K. But mainly, we want to let the Australian crowd hear the newest music and surpise them with some nice tunes and wicked mash ups!
Bas & Ram play Transmission in Sydney and Melbourne this weekend:
Fri May 25 – Metro, Melbourne
Sat May 26 – State Sports Centre, Sydney
marky g says...
when is Bas