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An interview with Paul van Dyk

Author: michelle pirovich
Thursday, February 13, 2003
Yesterday we announced the release of Paul van Dyk's 'Global' - the DVD which contains a comprehensive and remarkable look at Paul's extraordinary 10 year career. In this special interview; Paul discusses the making of this exceptional project and speaks candidly about his place in electronic music.

What was the idea behind releasing a CD / DVD 2 Disk set- What was your personal motivation-

The idea to start this project was motivated by two rather different things. The outer motivation was that, at the beginning of 2002, I finally had all the rights of my own productions, which had been in the hands of MFS all the years before. I've been DJing and producing music for more than ten years, and all of a sudden, there was this opportunity for a look back over my shoulders - a personal experience but also an experience to share with my long-term fans who have been tremendously important for my work. The inner reason is that I wasn't interested in doing just another "Best Of..." album. The world has changed so much in the last years. Especially the street and club culture as it has emerged since the beginning of the 90s has had some crucial impact on this development. I wanted to create something which is technically up-to-date and capable of reflecting the atmosphere and many facets of today's global culture. Well, and I've always been the one taking the steep and stony path (laughing), which brought me in the position of having to invest much more time and energy than I could ever have imagined. But now that this project is finished, I'm very happy. All the work was very rewarding and this release truly captures a part of my world that is so important to me.

What exactly do you mean by saying "much more work than I could ever have imagined-"

(laughing) I am a very demanding and ambitious person. That's why I searched and found partners for the realization of this DVD project who are equally ambitious in their line of work. For the video footage and visual design, I could win over Die Gestalten (Berlin), who have been specialzing on DVD productions and motion graphics for the last years. On the other hand, it was Nucleus sound studio (Berlin), who are one of the leading German studios in the field of 5.1 surround sound productions. The spirit and verve of all partners involved has been fantastic. There were millions of details to discuss and coordinate. We produced hundreds of gigabytes which went straight to the waste bin and which will never ever surface anywhere. I'm really glad that everything is over and done, but at the same time, I'm very happy about having learned so many things in the process. And I hope that the bits and bytes from the bin leave some traces of quality on the final version of the visuals.

How did you select the tracks- It must have been rather difficult to choose 12 tracks from a period of ten years of music production...

Well, actually, it was rather easy. More or less, I decided by intuition. I have to admit, though, that some tracks are easier to "translate" into 5.1 surround sound than others, which also had some influence on me. Still, the key question for me was, which of the tracks were crucial for me personally and which of the tracks received the most emotional or enthusiastic feedback of my fans. And, if possible, I wanted to represent the many shades of my productions as well. Apart from club hits such as "We Are Alive" from my last album, you'll also encounter more quiet but also highly intensive tracks, such as "A Magical Moment." This track from my first album was never released separately on vinyl, but to me it's one of the most important tracks. On the DVD, the track is connected with a gig of mine in Bangkok. The impressions of this amazing place, the atmosphere in the club and the reactions of my fans - these are all some of the "magical moments" which I consider myself very lucky to experience.

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