Fair to say, not many 24 year old lads from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast would have their heads quite as clear as tyDi. From winning Brisbane’s DJ Wars at 16 to his current standing as one of the luminaries of Armin van Buuren’s Armada label, his credentials already run deep. So, how has he remained such a grounded and easy-going interviewee? We talk shop with the producer about the perils of Twitter, his new album Shooting Stars and why you can’t keep him tied to trance.

Being 16 when you started, was there a particular DJ you listened to a lot?
I remember when I was 16, I was listening to a lot of stuff by Armin van Buuren at the time.

So he was sort of your idol and now you are doing world tours with him. How crazy is that?
It is crazy. I’ve never really had an idol DJ as such, but it’s crazy that the guys I was listening too like Armin and Paul Oakenfold, all those big DJs that I used to really look up to and who were exactly where I wanted to be four or five years ago. Now I play at their clubs around the world and tour with them, and make music with them. That is definitely something that feels pretty cool.

Are they now people you call friends? Like can you just call up Markus Schulz, for instance, and say ‘hey…’
They are all very busy guys. Markus Schulz is on Skype all the time and I can call him up and see how he’s going. He’s a very friendly, down to earth guy and I run into him a lot at various shows around the world. Paul Oakenfold, he plays a lot of my music and I play at his nightclub at Las Vegas called Rain.

Armin is probably the busiest of them all! He’s now a dad, and married and still touring the world. He’s the biggest DJ in the world, but he’s still nice enough that if I send him a new track, he’ll always let me know what he thinks of it. Yeah, it’s cool. It’s always nice to run into these people around the world and they are all very genuine, down-to-earth people.

Do you go to festivals you are playing at together and tweet each other?
I’m a total Twitter geek! There isn’t anyone that I don’t talk to on Twitter. It’s ridiculous. I’m addicted to Twitter. I think it’s dangerous.

I did an interview with Drop The Lime and he gave a brilliant quote about tweeting, “The boobs will twitter themselves”. I thought it was very poignant as you can get into a lot of trouble with tweeting…
You especially have got to be careful with drunk tweeting. That’s the one that gets me sometimes. After a few red wines and them I’m out on Twitter spilling my emotions to everyone. And there’s 14,000 people reading my useless crap from home. But it’s fun. I like to vent through Twitter.

So, you were voted Australia’s number 1 DJ in the inthemix50 for a couple of years running and you’re now number two. Is there any rivalry there, or do you not really care?
These days I hardly play in Australia, all my shows are over in America and around the world. This year I didn’t even ask anyone to vote for me, I was lucky to get number two again. I’m thankful that I’ve got such a fan base; I honestly didn’t think I was going to get number two. These sorts of polls require a lot of pushing your fans, and asking everyone to rally up and support you. I didn’t really do anything this year and still got the support so I’m over the moon about that.

The ITM poll is a really important thing for my career and is always a good sign I’ve got fans. I mean, these days I’m focusing on my music and my new album, and going overseas. So where I polled this year is huge. It wouldn’t have broken my heart if I came number 10 but I’m really excited to get number two.