Interview with Sander Van Doorn

We’ve had plans to speak with DJ/producer Sander Van Doorn since we crossed paths at Tomorrowland in Belgium this past July. The award winner, globe trotting,  superstar will be rolling into town this Friday night to play at Rumor so we had a few quick questions for him before once again catching him showcase his skills in the DJ booth.

Independent Philly: Why did you choose the Surname Van Doorn to DJ under?

Sander Van Doorn: Well, my actual surname is Ketelaars so I did make a decision to go with Van Doorn. Just sounded better than Ketelaars, easier to remember I think.

IP: It’s been a year since you released your last album, do you have any plans to release one in the near future?

SVD: Yes working on it now, but no release date in sight. Maybe the end of the year, but letting it flow naturally so we’ll see what happens.

IP: What other projects/tracks are you currently working on?

SVD: I am part of the Halo 4 remix album which is very exciting. That is out in October.

IP: Who’s another DJ/Producer that you’d love to collaborate with that you haven’t had the chance to work with?

SVD: Moby.

IP: Is there an up and coming DJ/Producer who is currently below the radar that you think deserves some attention?

SVD: I think Julian Jordan is one to watch.

IP: You have an upcoming show in Philadelphia on September 21st at Rumor. What can your fans expect from a Sander Van Doorn set that have never seen you in person?

SVD: Will be very high octane, be ready!

IP: What’s the largest crowd you’ve ever performed in front of?

SVD: Not totally sure, I think around 150,000.

IP: If you had to choose between DJing, Producing, and Remixing, which would you do exclusively?

SVD: Producing for sure.

IP: Tell us something that would surprise or even shock our readers…

SVD: I worked in my brother’s aluminum shop before I got my first DJ gig.

We’re looking forward to catching Sander Van Doorn at Rumor this Friday for their one year anniversary party. If you’d like to join in all of the fun we highly recommend purchasing advanced tickets.  See you there Philly!

Tomorrowland 2012: Independent Philly Goes International

We’ve been very busy over the past two-plus years bringing you concert and festival coverage from Philadelphia to Miami, California to New York (and much of the rest of the United States).

After hitting major U.S. festivals like Coachella, Ultra Music Festival, Global Dance Festival, Electric Daisy Carnival, Firefly Festival, Sweetlife Festival, Camp Bisco, and many others, it was time for a new milestone. In late July, we took members of Independent Philly’s coverage team to Europe to cover the world’s largest Electronic music festival, Belgium’s Tomorrowland.

After arriving in Brussels and taking a few days to adjust to the time difference, we boarded a series of trains and buses that would eventually drop us in Boom, Belgium. The trains and buses were jam packed with fans heading to Tomorrowland, lugging tents, backpacks, cases of beer, and just about everything else you can think of.

After a bit of confusion we finally found the media area and checked in on Thursday, July 25th. After stowing our gear and meeting members of the media from all over the globe, we headed across the road to Dreamville (the camping village of Tomorrowland) for the opening party. The production value for the opening party alone was larger than many full-scale events in the States. As we  watched tens of thousands of international party people dance in front of flaming fountains, lasers, smoke machines, and a gigantic tent and stage set up, we knew the next three days were going to be special. We just didn’t fully grasp how special it would be.

Friday was the first official day of Tomorrowland and the gates opened at 3pm (Saturday & Sunday began at noon). There would be plenty of time to appreciate the world-class music over the next 72 hours so after entering the festival we decided to take in the visual aesthetics of Tomorrowland. The stages (especially the Main stage which is over 150 meters long and weighs over 150 tons) were on another level from anything we’ve experienced before. The huge storybook on the Main stage opened for the first time during Thomas Gold’s set on Friday and stunned everyone with a face (made out of words) that spoke to the crowd. The Main stage had flame throwers, cyro-blasters, fountains, and many other incredible special effects.

From the hot-tubs over looking the Main Stage to the giant Ferris Wheel that scraped the sky behind the Carl Cox/Paul Van Dyk/Dave Clarke stage, from the swimming pool on the lower VIP deck to the Church of Love on the hill-top, there was endless visual stimulation. There were fairytale creatures, gigantic bubble-shooting mushrooms, swings, and fireworks.

Multiple food and beverage tents dotted the vast landscape of Tomorrowland. There was standard food like pizza, fries, and burgers as well as fresh fruit smoothies, kebabs, BBQ, Chinese, Italian, Tapas, and beyond. There were beer gardens, mixed drinks, fresh mojitos, and bottle service in the VIP areas. The food and drinks weren’t cheap, but they were decent.

The weather was Schizophrenic for all three days to say the least. It would be hot and sunny one moment, and down-pouring and chilly the next.

It soon became clear that above all else, Tomorrowland would be defined by the fans. Party people from countless nations, the majority of whom represented their homeland with flags (or flag adorned items), came together in glorious fashion over the three days in Boom. We met amazing people from all over the globe. It was a melting pot on a grand scale. The chance to share such a special festival with people from all over the planet made the experience greater than we’d ever imagined. It was like a fairytale.

Once you got past the sights, the tastes, the smells, the people, and the electricity that hung in the air, Tomorrowland was, of course, all about the music. The talent level was so vast, and the stages numbered so many, that it was literally impossible to see everyone we wanted to catch. Sometimes we had to listen to just 15-20 minutes of one DJ/Act before rushing off to catch 20 minutes of another. In the end, it was worth it. And of course some sets were so good, we couldn’t pull ourselves away no matter who else it meant we would miss.

We took in so many different acts (some of whom, admittedly, we can’t even name) but here are some of our daily highlights (in no particular order)…

FRIDAY: Fatboy Slim, Bloody Beetroots, Thomas Gold, Zedd, Felix Cartel, Carl Cox, Gabriel & Dresden, Above & Beyond, Alesso, and Trolly Snatcha.

SATURDAY: Martin Solveig, Hardwell, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Nervo, Swedish House Mafia, Porter Robinson, Paul Van Dyk, Sven Vath, Jeff Mills, Laidback Luke, Swanky Tunes, Superman/Batman/Spiderman (which turned out to be a triple tag team by Laidback Luke, Chuckie, & Martin Solveig), Pendulum, Goldie, Yves V, and Dave Seaman.

SUNDAY: Steve Aoki, Dirty South, Sander Van Doorn, AN21, R3hab, Cassius, Pete Tong, Fake Blood, Eats Everything, Green Velvet, Dave Clarke, Richie Hawtin, Steve Bug, Josh Wink, Joachim Garraud, Chuckie, Gareth Emery, and what we considered the best set of the entire festival, the three-hour triple tag team between DJ Sneak, Derrick Carter, and Mark Farina.

It’s rare, if at all that we say this, but there are no words, or even pictures that can fully capture the magic of this festival. The one and only way to truly experience Tomorrowland is live and in person. We hope that if you haven’t had the chance to do so before, you will in the future. You can view our expanded photo gallery below (click on thumbnails to enlarge):

Interview with Gotye

Thirty-two year old Walter “Wally” De Backer takes his stage name, Gotye, from “Gauthier”, the French equivalent of “Walter”. He’s released three albums, won numerous awards, released a five-times platinum single (U.S.), been remixed by some of the biggest DJs on earth, has over one million fans on Facebook and legions more across the planet. In August, he will be kicking off a world tour with stops in Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia . So what hasn’t Gotye done? An interview with Independent Philly…until now.

Independent Philly: You released “Somebody That I Used to Know” just about a year ago. Since then it’s reached #1 in 18 different countries. How has that one song changed you life and career over the past 12 months?

Gotye: It’s made me even busier than I ever imaged I could be before, but in a good way. It has brought challenges that I relish, and it also seems to have resulted in my being confronted by myself, or responses to myself, my body…especially with face paint on it, seem to be inescapable on the web. So, that’s one peculiar change.

Independent Philly: You used some crazy instruments that perhaps a lot of people haven’t heard of before when creating your last album “Making Mirrors”. Can you tell us a little bit about some of them?

Gotye: One of my favorites is an electronic organ, a Lowrey Cotillion that was released in 1981. It’s not necessarily particularly different from other electronic organs  released around the same time, but it does have a series of really idiosyncratic sounds on it that I have a really soft spot for, which is why I incorporated so many of them and even built a whole song around, which is “State of the Art”. I do things like sampling music boxes, hiking manual vibrato on them by shaking the box itself, to wobble the sound wave acoustically into a microphone, and then re-sampling that and turning it into a melody. I was sampling things like the bamboo chimes that people find in Indonesian shops, which just kind of shake it the wind and create a soft little bamboo flutter outside your door, but I actually sampled them as an instrument using a little Casio device. Yeah, so things like that are the more interesting things. Oh, and then of course there’s the musical fence which people are fairly fascinated by. It’s actually a big fence in the outback of Australia, which I actually stumbled across when I was touring with my other band “The Basics”, and it’s these five big strings on a wooden fence that you can sort of play like a massive bass guitar.

IP: You’re scheduled to kick off your world wide tour next month (coming through North America beginning in August) with a five piece band, what’s it been like rehearsing for the tour thus far?

Gotye: I’ve been adding all new arrangements to some of my previous records, adding some more variation in the steps to be able to play more like an hour and a half, hour and forty-five minutes. Been getting new visuals worked up, I worked with a bunch of really talented animators, and I’m just hoping that the set will be more dynamic even than the stuff I was doing the last time, which is fairly broad, covering stuff off of three different albums and going a different direction with different tempos and styles. So I’m probably trying to have things that even sort of push the bottom end sub-frequencies a bit more and have more straight ahead tempos, but I also think it’s stripped back a lot more and has become more intimate and personal.

IP: Out on the road you play live with a band without the aid of a lot of backing tracks. Does this ever make you nervous? 

Gotye: There are a few backing tracks, not every background vocal is done by someone in my band. Some of them are different versions of my own voice even. But yeah, almost everything is played live by us on drums, guitars, keyboards, and even many of the samples and synthesizer sounds.  And me and my band work very hard to play all of those sounds so there is the possibility of error I guess…which is one of the key things lacking in some electronic music, which actually might be really amazing audio/visually to experience but sort of lacks that potential, I don’t know, it lacks that possibility and potential for a different feel every night, which actually makes it more human and makes it more fallible  which I think is one aspect of live music which is actually really good, and is a good thing to learn how to incorporate into a live show.

IP: What can your fans expect from a Gotye live show that have never seen you perform before?

Gotye: For the folks that haven’t trolled very far online on my Youtube and Vimeo pages, then they’ll see a whole bunch of really great animated visuals–I’ve had a bunch of really talented animators put together for different songs–they’re an essential part of the show. I think a lot of the arrangements have a better energy sometimes than on the record, because we’re playing them live and there’s a bit more variation and some of the things that actually work in a certain way on a record because of the loops and repetitive aspects and kind of sample aspects on the record actually, they have a different energy, maybe a better energy live, because we’re playing them, as humans.

IP: What are a few items that you absolutely wouldn’t want to go out on the road for your tour without?

Gotye: One would be, or a number of them would be these Novation Launchpads which are these sample trigger devices that me and Tim use in the band quite extensively to lay and trigger various sample sounds. Another would be a thing called a Mallet KAT, which is like a MIDI control made by an American company which is like a large, electronic berimbau. I play that quite a lot which actually really suits me because I’m a drummer/percussionist mainly, so it’s a good device for getting a feel for triggering sample sounds. And gee I don’t know what else, oh, a bowl of fruit, end table, and a bed.

IP: Tell us a little bit about some of the opening acts that are going to be accompanying you on the tour…

Gotye: I’m a huge fan of all of them, which is great. It’s really exciting to be getting ready for a tour with some of your favorite bands that you’re going to be playing with. Jonti is a young guy from Australia who I think is easily one of best, young producers in Australia. The few records that he’s put out are really kind of magic, psychedelic, hip-hop, pop kind of stuff. He’s fantastic but I haven’t really seen a bunch of what he does live, so it’ll be a real treat to see how he does his thing as a solo artist. Chairlift are one of my favorite bands in recent years. Their second record is total gold and we saw them play live on our last tour, and it was a fantastic show, so I can’t wait to play with them. Missy Higgins has become a friend and we’ve done some shows together before so it’s going to be good to travel to parts of the United States with her. Zammuto, formerly of The Books,  will also be playing a few of the shows. All bands well worth checking out!

IP: Would you like to give a shout out to your fans who are eagerly awaiting your upcoming tour?

Gotye: Sure! I’d really like to see them at the shows, and maybe after shows. So if people are free I think you should come check it out; it’s going to be a good show!

IP: You were born in Bruges, Belgium before moving to Australia. We’re going to be heading over to Belgium next week for the Tomorrowland Festival and we were wondering if you could give us any pointers on Belgian culture?

Gotye: Tomorrowland? Cool, I’ll have to look it up. Belgian culture, well I’m going to go through the obvious things of the lifestyle. You’ll find plenty of great beers, served slightly warmer than you’re probably used to but also far stronger, often with 9 or 10% alcohol content and higher. But a really immense variety, well worth testing out. Belgium’s always been renowned for its incredible chocolate. Let me see, what else? Something not a lot of people sometimes discover in Belgium, it can be hard because obviously there’s a language barrier, but there’s a really fantastic history of  comic books, in a very different style than say the American pulp comic book history. It’s interesting just going to a comic book store and seeing the plethora of different characters that have been popular over the years in Belgium and then across into Holland and France. Yeah, it’s worth checking out. One of my personal interests, there are a couple of characters I’ve been following since I was a kid. I’ve been reading in Flemish and following their stories. You probably know some like Tin-Tin who have become world famous since they were translated into English. But yeah, checking out what they call a “strip book store”–it sounds kind of seedy, but it’s not what you think it is–that’s worth doing.

IP: Finally, could you tell us something about yourself that would surprise or even shock our readers?

Gotye: (laughs) Well I don’t know how surprising it is but for the last ten years while I’ve sort of been doing my Gotye project and self producing and releasing records, I’ve also been playing in another band called “The Basics”. It’s a three piece rock n’ roll band and there’s lots of soul and early rhythm & blues inspired types of stuff, and we do stuff like driving thousands of kilometers in a van around the outback in Australia, playing in aboriginal communities, and playing like four-set shows night after night for many weeks in a row. Which is not a musical journey I think a lot of people expect having heard bits of my Gotye music, so yeah, something worth checking out, my other band called “The Basics”.

We can’t wait to catch Gotye when he makes his way up the East Coast in late September. Now he’s just somebody that will put on an amazing show.

North American Tour Dates In Full:
Aug 22             Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks (w/Missy Higgins & Jonti)
Aug 24             Chicago, IL @ Charter One Pavilion (w/Missy Higgins & Jonti)
Aug 25             Milwaukee, WI @ The Riverside Theater (w/Missy Higgins & Jonti)
Aug 26             Minneapolis, MN @ US Bank Theater at Target Center (w/Missy Higgins & Jonti)
Aug 28             Edmonton, AB @ Shaw Conference Center (w/Chairlift & Jonti)
Aug 29             Calgary, AB @ Stampede, Corral (w/Chairlift & Jonti)
Aug 31             Burnaby, BC @ Deer Lake Park (w/Chairlift & Jonti)
Sept 1               Seattle, WA @ Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival (w/Missy Higgins)
Sept 2               Troutdale, OR @ Edgefield Amphitheatre (w/Chairlift & Jonti)
Sept 4               Los Angeles, CA @ Greek Theatre (w/Chairlift & Jonti)
Sept 6               Berkeley, CA @ Greek Theatre Berkeley (w/Chairlift & Jonti)
Sept 14             Kansas City, MO @ Berkley Riverfront Park (w/Chairlift & Zammuto)
Sept 16             Cleveland, OH @ Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica (w/Chairlift & Zammuto)
Sept 17             Columbus, OH @ The LC Pavilion (w/Chairlift & Zammuto)
Sept 18             Detroit, MI @ Fox Theatre (w/Chairlift & Zammuto)
Sept 20             Toronto, ON @ Molson Amphitheater (w/Chairlift & Zammuto)
Sept 21             Montreal, QC @ Jacques Cartier Pier (Old Port) (w/Chairlift & Zammuto)
Sept 22             Boston, MA @ Bank of America Pavilion (w/Missy Higgins & Jonti)
Sept 25             New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall (w/Missy Higgins & Jonti)
Sept 27             Brooklyn, NY @ Williamsburg Park (w/  Zammuto)
Sept 29             Camden, NJ@ Susquehanna Bank Center (w/Missy Higgins & Jonti)
Sept 30             Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion (w/Missy Higgins & Jonti)
Oct 1                Raleigh, NC @ Raleigh Amphitheatre (w/Missy Higgins & Jonti)
Oct 3                Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium (w/Missy Higgins & Jonti)
Oct 4                Tuscaloosa, AL @ Tuscaloosa Amphitheater (w/Missy Higgins & Jonti)
Oct 5                Atlanta, GA @ Chastain Park Amphitheatre (w/Missy Higgins & Jonti)
Oct 7                Miami, FL @ Klipsch Amphitheatre at Bayfront Park (w/Givers & Jonti)
Oct 8                Lake Buena Vista, FL @ House of Blues Orlando (w/Givers & Jonti)
Oct 10              New Orleans, LA @ Lakefront Arena (w/Givers & Jonti)
Oct 11              Spring, TX @ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion (w/Givers & Jonti)
Oct 12              Grand Prairie, TX @ Verizon Theatre (w/Kimbra & Jonti)
Oct 13              Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits