Paul van Dyk may have made his name as a trance artist, but his interests and skills extend well beyond the genre. Now, he’s demonstrating how far.
With his new VENTURE X project, the German pioneer is eschewing genre purity and simply playing what he thinks sounds best, with an upcoming tour finding van Dyk fusing progressive, trance and techno.
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“I try to stay curious and open-minded about new sounds, artists, and labels – always have,” van Dyk tells Billboard. “Different aspects of music, its genres and colorations of sound have always been part of my sets. With VENTURE X I take this approach even further, the set will be defined by itself.”
These VENTURE X shows launch on February 17 in Toronto, with the tour then hitting New York City, Montreal, Pontiac, Denver, Portland, San Francisco, and Austin. On the road, van Dyk hopes to satisfy audiences “in a way they didn’t know was possible. I do believe electronic music enthusiasts deserve more than a top 10 dance chart set played from a USB stick.”
For the tour, van Dyk’s setup will feature instruments, computers, and sequencers, a set that “enables me to find the right level of energy at any given moment throughout the set, as everything is basically live sequenced and played. And while some fans can get prickly about crossing sounds, he’s got “no worry that genre purists will be alienated, quite the opposite. There’s so much great music out there and my job as a DJ is to introduce it to you. That’s how I see it, at least. Otherwise, I’d feel like a jukebox.”
Indeed, genres hardly matter as van Dyk, who’s been making music for three decades, points out that genre names, sounds, and meanings keep changing anyways. “When I started DJing, all electronic music was called techno…. What was called progressive house some 20 years ago, would probably be called melodic techno these days. There are amazing releases on Drumcode that could easily fit in the trance genre and sometimes what is called techno sounds like chill out to me.”
VENTURE X’s call to arms anthem, itself not falling into one tidy genre-box, is also out today (Jan. 27.) It finds van Dyk collaborating with progressive house duo Weekend Heroes and singer/songwriter Christian Schottstaedt, who together deliver a dark voyage of a track that serves as the project’s thesis statement
“I like the proggy, deeper stuff, but with a tougher approach as you can hear,” van Dyk says. “[Making this music] feels very natural and organic.”
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