You’ll be promoting your latest album, Twice In A Blue Moon, out here. For those that didn’t hear it, tell us more.
I had my big break with trance in the very late ’90s but after a while I felt like I needed to go back to the sounds I grew up on. So this album is going back to the melodic roots. I wrote it when my wife was pregnant and we were being tossed from emotion to emotion, and that’s translated itself into the album. So something like ‘Radio Crash’ is definitely a lot more energetic and banging than the track that I made for my daughter, which is called ‘Gabriella’s Sky’. Gabriella is her name, by the way. So it’s kind of a personal album for me, a very warm and lush one.
Do you think dance music doesn’t get as much respect as it ought to?
On one hand, I think a lot of the media still look at dance music as just something that’s made on a computer. On the other, the most well-established rock acts use DJs to make remixes for the dancefloors, so it is respected in a way. I think dance music still has to earn more respect, even though it’s 20 years old!
What will you be playing when you come out here?
Things from the album and my favourite tracks – lots of energetic stuff. And there will be lots of lights and visuals – it’ll be more like a big show than just another gig.
Speaking of other gigs, in 2007 you played in a virtual club in the online 3D chat room-cum-sandbox game Second Life. How did that work?
I just made this mix MP3 and then my character played it in this other world, this Second Life, while I went online and chatted. Technology-wise it wasn’t possible to mix live, but I was definitely there chatting away. But I prefer to go face-to-face – I’d rather see people on the dancefloor and know what the vibe’s like than have them looking at me on a screen.
Does it drive you nuts, being only just outside the DJ Magazine top five for 2008?
On the one hand I would like to be there, but on the other I still see myself as a producer and DJing is just something that comes with that. I do what I do and what I like doing, and if that puts me in the sixth position I’m happy with that. It would be cool to be third, too, but I’m not going to change my life for that.
So you won’t be locking Tiësto and pals in a cellar or something?
Yeah, I’ll slip him something and hide him away!
All you have to do is find a chink in the top five’s armour…
Yeah, I wish I knew! But all those guys are very talented at what they do, and they’re very good at hiding their weaknesses too.
Ferry Corsten plays Madinat Arena, April 10
