Picture this: You are ushered in a VIP van from Siloso Beach to a nearby posh hotel, to meet with one of the top future house DJs who recently played alongside Kalkbrenner, Technasia and Anja Schneide at the Great Wall Music Festival. Definitely one of the most memorable ways to spend the last couple of hours of the year, we reckon.
Here for Singapore’s annual beach countdown at Siloso Beach Party, Dutch DJ Don Diablo opened his hotel room door for Popspoken fully-decked in his signature stage attire, and with a huge smile plastered on his face.
“Come on in, I have chocolate!”
With only his open MacBook set on the edge of his bed, it seemed like Don Diablo wasted no time in perfecting his set scheduled at 2am upon arrival to his hotel in Sentosa.
He quickly warms up to us, sharing about how he just flew in from another music festival in India, and was really excited to play at Siloso Beach Party as it was his very first time playing at a New Year’s Eve countdown event.
We chat with Don about his thoughts on Future House and “Future House Mafia” that has been going around the Internet – a triangular relationship between himself and two other DJs, Tchami and Oliver Heldens.
Don acknowledges that Future House is hot right now, but would rather not consider himself to be under this sensationalized genre. He’s confident with having his music simply coined under the House umbrella, which is more inclusive of the electronic music he produces.
We also ask Don about his thoughts on ghost production, one of the main issues in the production of EDM in recent years. Is it unethical? Don begins with slight hesitation to comment, but ultimately makes a stand to say that while he thinks plagiarising someone else’s music is unethical, he has always been happy to help other DJs produce their music if they need assistance or just extra creative juice.
When asked for advice to aspiring DJs, Don Diablo is quick to comment about how many young producers nowadays are distracted by the idea of DJ-ing, when they should be focusing on actually creating original sounds.
Anyone can DJ – even my grandma can DJ. It’s about being a musician rather than a technician. I don’t think the Rolling Stones or The Beatles were thinking of how the music would sound… They were thinking of how the music would feel. I think that’s the most important thing, also for electronic music.
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Special thanks to Full Circle PR
This interview was done in conjunction with the Siloso Beach Party 2016
