What were you thinking when you decided to leave hardstyle to switch genres and come out with a new style of music?
Wouter: We wanted to shock people a little bit with the new genre coming out, progressive yet electro, but let's do something with our background we figured if we were gonna do something new it had to be something good.
Do you think that all artists need to get out of their comfort zone and get into a new sound where people don’t recognize them?
Wouter: If you want to have evolution in your scene then you need to do different stuff or else people will get bored and move on to the next guy.
Sjeord: It’s a fast business, if you do something new, then within five weeks there are 20 other similar tracks coming out, you always have to be 3 steps ahead in your mind of what to do next.
How did the inception of your “crazy collabs” come about?
Sjeord: We figured, lets do some collabs with big names that we have known for a while like, all the collabs were meant to do something different and they all came out really good.
What collaboration are you the most proud of at the moment?
Wouter: It would have to be ‘Cannonball’. Just because of how big it has gotten, everyone is playing it, even the local guys.
Sjeord: Tiesto said to us: “Dude this is like the best record I’ve ever heard”. So we knew it was going to be a big track, he was like, "I want this for my label" so there was no discussion after that.
Who do you guys want to collaborate with most that you haven’t yet?
Wouter and Sjeord: Knife Party and Bingo Players.
Do you have any new tracks that you plan on coming out with soon?
Wouter: We have 4 new tracks coming out, one is kind of Dubstep record called ‘Get Loose’ that is coming out on Skrillex’s label, OWSLA.
Sjeord: It’s kind of funny, we met Skrillex while at a friend’s wedding in our city and he was there singing our tune saying “dudes I love this track” we weren’t star struck or anything, but you know, he’s an important name in the industry.
Wouter: Yeah right, you were crying after! haha.
Sjeord: Haha yeah I had to smoke some weed to get my emotions all together, not but seriously I was like if this guy loves it, its gonna mean a lot to us, if you do a track with someone like Skrillex or Tiesto, it has a chance to be a bigger track than being on any other label but to be on a label it has to be good so when they say yes to it, it means a lot.
How did you come up with your cartoon character alter egos ‘Baldy’ and ‘Cresty’?
Wouter: Well it was part of our plan we had when we were switching genres, because we have our background in Europe which is a much different crowd then we are used to here in the states, you can’t even compare it.
Sjeord: They are like loyal fans and they want you to stick to a certain genre, they have certain expectations for you and your style. So we didn’t want to just tell everyone we were going to do something different. We didn’t want to get in front of the camera and be so boring and say “hey this is Showtek blah blah blah” and explain ourselves. So we decided, ok lets make ourselves into cartoon form and show them through episodes what we are doing in a funny way.
Wouter: So baldy is the bald head of Sjeord and Cresty probably doesn’t make sense to you guys but if you literally translate it, it means the way my hair is funky, like a crest. So if you literally translate it to Dutch its makes sense. There wasn’t another word that made sense so we went with that.
Sjoerd: I wanted it to be Baldy and Justin Bieber but it didn’t work haha.
What parts of your personality do they both represent? In the videos it shows them getting pretty ‘crunk’ do you get that ‘crunk’ as well?
Sjoerd: Haha well its also for you to let your imagination go a little bit, you must take a funny approach to it or they will think you are boring. People always think we’re always drunk and rock and roll, but we are actually pretty normal. We are so boring that last week were playing with Rehab and we were all drinking tea! We were like “oh we’re really boring” “yeah but no one knows this shhh” haha. At the festival itself we drink but afterword we’re all drinking tea.
Wouter: We’re not Mick Jagger’s in red pants walking around fucked up all day, but we have our moments.
You guys have some commandments for Showtek, can you talk about them and tell us how they came about?
Wouter: Actually its kind of the same story as Baldy and Cresty. When we made this transition to this new genre, we got a lot of questions from people and we didn’t feel like answering them all, so we just made a list, its actually a fuck you list but we say it in a nice way.
Sjoerd: You know what it is, if you do a certain style for like 10 years then people will put you in a box and say oh this is your thing and you have to stick to it.
Wouter: So Armin [van Buuren] is like trance and say in 5 years he wants to do something different, and he’s bigger than we are so he would get millions of death threats and who knows what, so we decided to make a list of 10 things to answer them and say fuck you this is who we are and fuck off please.
Who has the better rules you or Dada Life?
Sjeord: They have bananas! It’s different dude, if you get into a fight with them they throw bananas!
Wouter: I’m not going to answer that actually, I think they are both great and we shouldn’t compete, music isn’t about competition. We love them though they were one of the firsts to have that kind of grungy electro sound, I think they really opened the new scene and market for us.
Have you used their plug-in at all on any of your tracks?
Sjeord: To be honest no. People told me to use it but ah, we have our own secret its called the banana plug in, haha it doesnt make sense it makes the track more slippy or something. Hahah.
Wouter: We have our own plug ins it really fattens your tracks, but there are more ways to do that. To be honest they are one of the guys that sounds the best in the scene.
Sjeord: You know whats funny, we were both playing together in South Korea, they were playing after us so we went before them. So we met them in passing but we never saw each other before so it was kind of a weird moment, they were like “hey your bald” I was like “hey yea I’m bald too!” Like you don’t know what to say but I had to say one thing so I was like, hey when we’re making a track we listen to your music to kind of compare a little bit and he was like no way dude when we make a track we listen to your music!, I was like oh thats fuckin’ bananas, so that was awesome, they have a great sense of humor.
Speaking of going crazy, today was the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade for the city in Southie, how do you guys traditionally celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?
Wouter: To be honest we don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s day in Holland because we live like a few blocks away from Ireland so they party over there, but its great to see how crazy people are going, I would just notice all the green drunk people around the hotel.
So your dealing with a crowd that has been out all day partying, how will you keep the energy going?
Sjeord: We play in Dublin a lot so we are used to the Irish crowd, and to be honest they always come in drunk even before the show. I’m not really sure what to expect tonight because they have bottle service but they also have a big EDM crowd so its gonna be a mixed up set, so either they are gonna love everything or they will be like no not this track again.
You guys dropped a remix of a Carly Rae Jepsen song 3 days ago, its very different, how and why did you pick that song?
Wouter: The guys who wrote it are Max Martin and Lucas Hilbert, they are close friends of ours. We heard the original like half a year ago and we were like oh yeah this is nice. Max Martin is THE producer songwriter, he works for all the big names like Maroon 5, Britney spears, Backstreet Boys, Taylor Swift, look up his name on google he is the biggest songwriter in the world
Sjeord: So they came to us and asked if we could make a club mix of it and at first we were like this is a little weird but we were like hey lets try it. For many people it will be looked at as a commercial song but in my opinion a song being commercial doesn’t mean that its bad, it just means that people like it. The lyrics stick in your head the whole day so why not do a remix if I like it myself, Carly Rae Jepsen liked it too, she was like its gonna be big in the clubs, so I guess we did something right because our name is out there.
How do you feel about hardstyle being on the come up, especially in the DJ Mag top 100, with people like Coone and Headhunterz really making high spots on the list, were you guys disappointed that you didn’t make the list?
Wouter: No we knew this was about to happen, with all respect to people in the scene, because they should do what they love to do, it is really big in the Netherlands and Belgium and some parts of Europe and they get a lot of votes from there but we thought that the market was not growing.
Sjeord: Hardstyle is like trance, the people who listen to the music are very dedicated to the scene, so if they need to do something for their favorite DJs they will do it, and to be honest we took a step back in that scene, we knew the hardcore guys weren’t going to vote for us, but to be honest, it’s a list, and if you’re number 12 or 15 or 500 it still doesn’t mean you are the best it is an opinion. An opinion by a lot of people, but it still doesn’t mean you are the best, because I know some people in the top 20 that I don’t think are the best in the world but if they got there, then in some respect they deserve it. We said to ourselves, let’s step back and let’s strike back with a track like Cannonball.
Wouter: This may sound cliche, but you really need to take a step back to take 3 steps forward. We knew we would be down for like one or two years but we wanna be happy thats the most important thing, we actually felt like sellouts because we were doing this style and we didn’t feel comfortable anymore. Maybe people think you’re a sellout if you go mainstream but we felt like if we’re not loving what we are doing and making money for it, thats the most crap thing.
Sjeord: We believed in our own sound and style, and we had doubts at first but as soon as our tracks came out, we knew we made the right decision. All the tracks we made are getting played by the big guys and we couldn’t ask for more. We never really thought DJ mag was that important anyway and we’re doing way more than we did in the past so we are more happy now.
If DJ mag isn’t a source that you look to for validation, what do you think is a credible source for judging who is the best DJ?
Wouter: I think you should do like a top 10 ranking and like how many countries you play in, because Belgium is the second most voting country for the top 100 list, thats pretty weird, who plays in belgium, all they have is Tomorrowland, other than that there is no scene there.
Sjeord: How many number one hits do you have, what’s your airplay on the radio, how many gigs do you have. The competition is in the music, but I don’t really give a fuck if someone likes someone else over us, why would I hate that guy for it?
When the EDM craze leaves, how will you remain strong?
Wouter: If you bring quality, you will never disappear.
You always have awesome sneakers on at shows, any plans of expanding merchandising and design in the future?
Sjeord: We are talking to sponsors at the moment, I am a shoe addict, I buy like 2 pairs of shoes a month. I think it is really important to look good on stage, but I have a big show addiction, I always want to buy D-Squared shoes, and my watch everyone asks about it they say they love it and I say its Diesel its not Prada or Gucci or anything fancy, I just love it.
Sjoerd, Gillete or Schick for the head?
Sjoerd: Yeah of course make a bald joke, hahah. I have really baby skin I can’t shave with a razor so I do everything with the buzzer.
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