Interview: Showtek

October 1, 2012 By 630 Comments

The Showtek brothers, Wouter and Sjoerd Janssen, have been dominating the scene for years. With their first album release in 2007, these guys have continued to climb the ranks in the DJ world. Recently collaborating with artists like Tiesto and Hardwell, their sound is everywhere and growing larger by the day. Showtek is known as one of the most high-energy shows in the dance music world and they have shown no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Check out our interview with them before Beyond Wonderland in California after the jump.

Tiesto and Showtek – Hell Ya| Beatport

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How are you two doing today?

Fine, looking back at a great weekend we had. We played on Friday in Vancouver in a small but very cool club and Saturday we killed it at Nocturnal Wonderland in California. So we are good!

We’ve noticed lately that your sets you have drifted away from the traditional Hardstyle sound, why is that?

Well we didn’t change our sound totally if people really think that. We are just expanding it. It might be complicated for some fans who don’t know the whole story. But we’ve been producing any kind of music since the day we started producing. We’ve always wanted to be diverse, as Showtek we were but there was a certain ceiling above our head. We couldn’t totally express our musical desires as Showtek cause the EDM scene was never ready for it. But we’ve been co-producing music for example with Marcel Woods and Tiesto for a while now. And we thought it was time to put our name on top of some tracks as well. EDM is ready for it! So with CRAZY COLLABS we shocked the world a bit, we worked with artists we really admire or who are just really fun to work with. Fuck genre’s and narrow-mindness, we still bring party music to the max and look what it did to us. It’s going great! We still play hard, but with a different touch. And we never had the traditional hardstyle sound as you in hear in Europe, that’s way more harder. That’s why Showtek stands on its own that much.

How did you end up collaborating with artists like Tiesto and Hardwell?

With Tijs (Tiesto), we’ve been working with him behind the scene for a while now and the click we have in the studio is just great. So when we were working on this track we thought , let’s make it a Tiesto & Showtek, HEll YEAH! That’s how it started. And we already spoke with Hardwell a year ago or so,  to do something together but we never got time for it because we both got such hectic schedules. So when we were working in the studio, we made a f*cking sick melody. We send him the demo and he got back to us within 5 min, the day after we finished the song in 3 hours! And now, it’s a massive hit and the crowd goes nuts when we drop it. And more CRAZY COLLABS to come…

Do you guys think there is a bright future for Hardstyle in the U.S? For an Example, do you think a festival like Defqon 1 would thrive in the US market?

Well, of course there’s always a market for everything. We don’t know what this sound will do in the States, it has a certain following though but in our opinion it’s to hard as it is now, it’s almost the same as hardcore. The scene is to much on it’s own, maybe if some producers get a bit more accessible it will do better. But to give you an honest answer, we care more about Showtek than about a the scene itself. We don’t want to be put in a box, if tomorrow Knife Party calls us for a collaboration , or Jay-Z .. haha (if!!) we will do it. It’s all about the music, not about one style.

Any chance of a FTS rework in the future?

Yeah. We’ve been thinking about that for a long while.. would be cool huh!! Let’s give skrillex a call haha :) no serious, we think there will but we need to have a plan for that!

What’s the craziest thing that a fan has done during your high energy shows?

One girl asked for a autograph on her pussy… what do you do then? She was really hot as well! We also “met” some girls in Australia who wanted Show & Tek on their boobs. It was a group of 5 girls, so we had some work to do:) but before they asked to do they had to put off their shirt which said; Showtek, don’t fuck the system, fuck me instead. Wow… hahah

If you two weren’t DJ’s and producers what do you think you would be doing?

Wouter would be working for some commercial company, writing jokes cause he’s really funny with word jokes. Sjoerd would be working as a SWAT member or so, he needs the action! :) But we come from a very musical family!

Is there any new productions or collaborations in the works?

Yeah, We have some new Crazy Collabs coming; with Bassjackers – Hey, NoiseControllers – Get Loose and a track with Justin Prime named drop it.. really cool stuff! Also a new Showtek solo release coming up , called Crunk which will be releases on Dim Mak, Steve Aoiki’s label!

Anything else your fans should know about?

Haha. Yeah we drink a lot of tea after our shows. It was so funny, after our big sold out 5500 capacity solo show in Sydney, you might think we were in to party hard! So our tour manager came backstage with a bottle of champ but we said no, we wanted green tea to chill out hahaha.. Sometimes we are really boring! Well, better backstage than on stage:)


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