JORIS VOORN MAKES AND PLAYS A TIMELESS, SIGNATURE STYLE OF TECHNO AND HOUSE
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Joris Voorn has conquered nearly every aspect of the dance music scene, from his spine tingling productions to the legendary DJ sets he has built his reputation on, and his flourishing label Rejected. As one of Sensation’s global residents, Joris gets to play the biggest stadium shows in the world, but manages to stay true to his unique, underground sound. When Joris played in Toronto, we jumped at the opportunity to get his insight on some current events and recurring themes in the dance music community. This is what he said…
What was it like playing at the first Sensation event in the United States? How did it compare to some of the other Sensation events that you have performed at? Sensation NYC was great! It was one of the smaller Sensations, I’ve done a few where there’s 35 or 40 thousand people in front of you, but the vibe was really good. Sometimes it’s hard to see the audience and how they respond, so you have to play on intuition more than crowd response. I’ve done many Sensation events by now, so I know what works. I play a lot of my own edits of tracks as you don’t have the same vibe as in a small club where you can take the people on a long musical journey.
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You have become a frequent name on many festival rosters around the globe—which has been your favourite so far? Tomorrowland in Belgium is a great one, Awakenings in Amsterdam is fantastic, SW4 and Creamfields in the UK, just did a Stereosonic tour in Australia, too many to mention! Festivals are nice, but when the season in Europe is over, I’m alway happy to go back into the clubs and play longer sets.
When you posted your remix of Don’t You Worry Child by Swedish House Mafia to various social media outlets you referred to it as “Club Music not Pop Music.” In your opinion, what’s the difference between the two? The following of SHM is more a pop crowd than a dance crowd, and DYWC was a pop song, so I wanted to make sure people understood I made a dance floor remix to be played in a club, not on the radio.
The members of the Swedish House Mafia are arguably the poster children for the popularization of dance music that many of your colleagues in the more underground genres openly criticize. What inspired you to remix Don’t you Worry Child in the first place? One of the reasons I decided to do the remix was that it’s
a big challenge to make something that’s so far from my own sound into something I would actually play myself. Another reason I did the remix is because I know the guys play some of my music now and then, they’ve been supporting my sound for a few years and I knew they’d understand whatever I would do with this mix. I don’t take part in criticizing the new EDM movement, as soon as you understand it has very little to do with what we do in the underground, there’s nothing much to say. It’s just a shift of pop music towards a more electronic dance oriented sound but the kids listening to this music won’t go to parties where I’m playing, at least not at the moment. Besides that, the underground is more healthy and colourful than ever, so there is not much to complain about.
In your opinion what has been the greatest technological advancement to the art of DJing in recent years? If you think about it, in general everything is kind of still the same as 20 years ago. DJ’s still use a turning wheel to control their music coming from a usb stick, based on the 100 year old vinyl turntable. They even still beatmatch to some extent, and also mixing tracks is done the same way as when DJ’ing started. In the underground laptops have been shaking things up a bit more. Playing multiple tracks