Tiesto - Putting People in a Trance

When a lot of people hear the phrase “trance music” the first images that come to mind are of teenage kids dancing in blacklit warehouses while high on ecstasy. According to Tiesto, however, those are images of the past. The present day trance music fan is significantly different.

“The new generation is not into trying drugs that much,” he says of the latest additions to his audience. “There’s definitely a change going on in the electronic music community. The older crowd is slowly stepping out and the new generation is totally different, they are not so jaded yet, you can play whatever you want for them. You can mix it up with some mashups, a little bit of techno, some vocal, and house.”

For Tiesto that new audience has included everyone from other producers, to P. Diddy, to Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz. Seeing this change in his crowd he says the “rave days” are pretty much over. “It’s still there, but most of the time I don’t play on those kind of raves anymore.”

Where Tiesto has been playing is all over the world and since 1999 he’s been chronicling those trips with his In Search of Sunrise series of albums, the latest of which, #7 in the series, covers the trance scene in Asia. Tiesto found Asia’s contribution to the genre unique in that their version of trance is “a little bit harder, energetic and very melodic.” The crowds also reacted to the music differently. Tiesto remembers one especially wild crowd in Korea saying, “It felt like a rock concert. People would start pogoing, like jumping on each other and stuff. That was pretty crazy and it was in a very small, intimate club for a thousand people.”

A native of Holland and a veteran of the world circuit, Tiesto recently toured America and he noticed a huge change in the US electronic music scene while he was there. “I think America is catching up really fast at the moment,” he says excitedly. “Dancing is getting bigger thanks to the internet, I think. People are not depending on the radio stations they used to listen to.” People have been tuning in to Tiesto’s show, though, Tiesto’s Club Life, which airs on XM radio. As of now the show has nearly a quarter of a million listeners.

In addition to his own work, Tiesto continues to remix songs for everyone from Britney Spears to Imogen Heap to Tegan & Sara. The man who closed the main stage at Coachella last year has been known to break out any and all of these tracks during his live shows. There is one thing, however, that he hopes you won’t find at any of his shows, and that’s glow sticks. “Throw them away, please” he says of the luminous batons. “You can hurt each other with throwing a glow stick in somebody’s eye or something.”

The moral of the story - if you’re going to see Tiesto keep your ears open for new sounds from around the globe and your eyes peeled for the occasional incoming incandescent item.

Story originally ran on beyondrace.com