Dancing Astronaut got a chance to speak with arguably the greatest and most influential DJs of our era — Tiesto. We discussed his College Invasion Tour, upcoming gigs, new DJs, and the relevance of the DJ Mag Top 100 list which recently closed. Find out what Holland’s finest has to say after the break!

DA: With your College Invasion Tour recently underway, as a San Francisco-based news outlet we were pleasantly surprised to see 6 stops in California including one at UC Davis. Why was there a huge influx of gigs weighted towards California venues?

Tiesto: Well, California is a quite a big state, lots of people, lots of venues where you can see me play. I havent played in California in over a year and around the LA area I haven’t been there in close to 2 years. So I’m excited and hopefully we can do some some damage.

DA: You have plenty of big names opening for your shows during your University Tour such as Porter Robinson and Ken Loi. How did you go about picking them?

Tiesto: I try to bring along guys that I feel will do well in the future. I want them to come along, bring their own tracks and bring their new sound and ..yeah make them part of the family.

DA: Do you have any upcoming collaborations with the DJs within your ‘family’?

Tiesto: No, not really at the moment. Im always up for collabos but I’m working on a lot of things at the moment: some demos, some ID’s. So I’m a little bit all over the place. I got this Coldplay remix that I just finished yesterday so that’s convenient that it’s finally finished.

DA: Being such an influential DJ you mentor other producers, most notably Angger Dimas in your group Boys Will Be Boys. Are there any other DJs you are bringing up in the near future?

Tiesto: Yes there are a few along with Angger. The Bassjackers are doing really well and another one is Tommy Trash who is going to be really good.

DA: All of us at Dancing Astronaut love Tommy’s remix of “Falling Out Of Love”. We love his sound!

Tiesto: Cool, yeah! Tommy is really talented he has a few releases on Musical Freedom coming.

DA: Your show at the Home Depot Center is the biggest single headliner DJ performance in North America. Do you have anything special planned for this gig or are you going to treat it like any other event?

Tiesto: Well because it’s a mark in history for me and (EDM) in North America we have to come up with something special. I consider this one of my most special shows I’ve done in the US so far so I’m really going all out for that show. I’m going to put all of the money we have back into that show and it’s going to be a really spectacular show.

DA: You have booked two shows (back to back) at Ruby Skye on October 30th and 31st – are there going to be any differences between the sets? 

Tiesto: I noticed when I play two nights in a row it is always different. There are some special effects and opening tracks that will be the same but no two nights are ever the same. With music there is something magical in the air so  you never get the same results.

DA: As you probably know the DJ Mag Top 100 voting recently closed. How influential are the results in booking events and how accurate are the rankings? How important are the rankings in a producers career?

Tiesto: Oh, I think the DJ Mag thing is pretty much irrelevanant nowadays. I dont know if anybody really looks at it still. I haven’t looked at it in a couple of years and I can say it hasn’t really effected my career. I have been in the top ten for the last 10 years I think, but I really don’t think people really care about DJ mag top 100. There are so many more outlets now like Facebook. You can look at the Facebook pages of all the DJs and see who is the most popular in the world. Most popular is obviously David Guetta. He has like 25 million facebook friends (likes) and last year he wasnt even number 1 on DJ mag top 100 so I think that list is just irrelevant nowadays.

DA: Thank you for your time it was an honor to catch up with you. Look for a few of the Dancing Astronauts in the front row for your show at Ruby Skye on Halloween!

Tiesto: Thank you, I will definitely look for you guys!

Tags: interview, tiesto

Categories: Music