TEXTTOPARTY FEATURED DJ: TIESTO
If it's Wednesday it must be Latvia. Tonight Tiësto plays to 15,000 dance enthusiasts and music fans in the Baltic State. Already this week the legendary Dutch DJ has wowed the Balearic masses at his summer-long Monday residency at Privilege. Tomorrow he's off to Italy. The day after, Greece.
This is very much business as usual for Tiësto, the ultra-busy DJ who turned the playing of trance music into an artform and whose achievements are unsurpassed.
Tiesto was inspired by the likes of U2, he invested heavily in the live aspect of his sets, employing his own sound, light and visual crews, creating arena-friendly dance music spectaculars. In 1997 he formed his own label, Black Hole Recordings, to release both the records he made himself and ones made by like minded electronica visionaries. He has been nominated for a Grammy, had worldwide hit singles (his remix of Delerium's Silence featuring Sarah McLachlan; Dance4Life featuring Faithless's Maxi Jazz), performed at the opening ceremony of the Athens Olympics with music he composed especially for the occasion, wowed the rock festival crowds at Coachella, and remixed the likes of The Killers, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Bloc Party. He is, in short, the biggest DJ in the world.
'Because people care,' is Tiësto's response when asked to account for his huge success, 'and they see that I care. I'm very honest in what I do. It's not an act or a gimmick. It's pure, it's emotion.'
When you see me DJ you know I feel it and I love what I do. The real thing. When you see me play you know you are seeing someone who plays not because he has to but because he loves it. For this champion of the people, it's not just about his undeniable ability to create a party in any venue, large or small, in any place in the world, but also about how the music moves people. Makes them feel something. People write letters saying, 'I was going through a bad period but your music and your show made me feel good.'
But 2009 is also very much about business as usual for Tiësto. After a run of four top-selling electronic artist albums, the electronic pioneer has made Kaleidoscope, an artist album in the truest sense: a stunning collection of songs written and recorded in collaboration with a variety of music talents from the worlds of dance, pop and rock: Jónsi Birgisson from Sigur Rós, Kele Okereke from Bloc Party, Nelly Furtado, Calvin Harris, Emily Haines from Metric, to name a few. Having made the DJ performance an artform, Tiësto has now made the dance album an artform.
'The starting point was to work with different artists that I liked,' Tiësto explains, 'it was as simple as that. 'Sigur Rós make beautiful music. Bloc Party are fantastic and exciting and innovative. But the hardest thing initially was to get those kind of people to collaborate. They don't work with dance artists as a rule, and especially not a dance DJ, but when we started producing these tracks, I was surprised at how well the styles work together.'
Once the artists had seen YouTube clips of Tiësto's crowd-wowing performances, like the one of him playing in front of 250.000 people on the beach in Brazil, and once they'd heard the tracks he'd been writing, they all jumped at the chance.
First on board were Tegan and Sara, the Canadian indie duo and twin sisters. Tiësto had remixed their single 'Back In Your Head', and in June 2008 they met in Vancouver. 'I realised what great songwriters they are – I gave them a track to write on and they did an amazing job.' In his home studio in his hometown of Breda in Holland, Tiësto set to work finessing the collaboration. 'Feel It In My Bones' is the result, an epic, shimmering floorfiller.
Soon the songs were pouring in. Nelly Furtado and Tiësto started off as mutual admirers, but after making her way to Tiësto's performance at the 2008 Miami Winter Music Conference (she'd come along with her producer Timbaland) Furtado instantly agreed to be involved, and a few weeks later she gave Tiësto an idea for a song that would become, 'Who Wants To Be Alone'. Next to sign up was Emily Haines of Metric. She caught the thrilling Tiësto DJ Experience in Ibiza last summer and again, didn't hesitate – 'Knock You Out' is a euphoric tune that will cause floorquakes in the .....
READ MOREAwards Overview Awards 2008
* IDMA Award Best Global DJ / Best Electronic Dance Album - Elements Of Life
Awards 2007
* Grammy Nomination Best Electronic Dance Album - Elements Of Life
HE WILL BE LIVE IN MIAMI OCTOBER 17TH @ LIV NIGHTCLUBText PARTY to 88089 to Get Access!!
**Biography courtesy of www.tiesto.com**
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