Trance pioneer – Ferry Corsten is here to share his perspective on Trance music, the mainstream industry and many more.

Ferry Corsten, the man who’s produced trance tracks under multiple aliases such as System F, Moonman, Pulp Victim, and Gouryella is here with AsiaLive365 to share his perspective on Trance music, the future of trance music, how the mainstream industry has impacted the artists, and many more. Read Below for the interview.

ASL365: Can you tell us about todays set at Tomorrowland?

FC: There’s a new track coming out next week with Kristian Nairn also known as Hoder from Game of Thrones and we basically did a rework of my track Galaxia together. It will be released as collaboration and the nice thing about the rework is it’s a groovy and very house style perfect for the summer. That’s the track I am going to open to for today. Other than that I have two more new tracks for the set, one that I really made for my set and another for the new unity coming up in a few weeks and that is what I will play today.

ASL365: Do you play a lot of older music? What’s the split between old and new?

FC: I do play good mix of old tunes and new tunes as well. There’s no better response from a crowd when you play old track and very old track. Since I’ve been in the business for such a long time, the demographic of my audience goes from young kids from today who loves to hear the stuff to the clubbers who love to hear stuff I used to play. I try to put one of the old tracks in and a few other tracks from a year ago and a new track to please as many people as possible. Sometimes it’s nice to play an old track especially if I haven’t played it in awhile, and the audience gets surprise as well especially after not having played it for awhile.

ASL365: How do you constantly push yourself to progress and upgrade your production/DJ sets?

FC: I always try to keep myself inspired and usually I try to do that by listening to completely different stuff, what inspires me to make a trance record is not going to be trance music so I always try to listen to other types of music. Right now I’m listening to cinematic and classical music because it’s just a different soundscape and different elements that are used in that music which are amazing to bring into my genre and spice it up a little. But I also try to look around and I try to find out what makes every one tick with other genres what is the thing that makes techno so popular right now. I try to take those elements and use them in my genre.

ASL365: Being in the industry for the past 20 years – What’s your preference, Vinyl, CD’s or Digital?

FC: I know there’s a big sentimental feeling towards Vinyl, of course it was great because when you touch a Vinyl it feels like you’ve touched the β€˜music’ but lets be honest we all fly a lot now a days so the big suitcases with dragging records at the airport and fighting with ground staffs, I can do without. I prefer the almost old school way with the decks; you can still play those tracks as if you were playing Vinyl.
See More: Mike Williams shares with us his approach to Tomorrowland’s set, the way he produces music, favourite cities in Asia and many more.

ASL365: What is the new kind of trance music in your perspective?

FC: Trance right now is on a search, there’s two camps, 128BPM, 130BPM vocal trance camp with Anjunabeats and then you get the 140BPM with Aly & Fila but there’s a vacuum in the middle. These situations are splitting trance up into 2 camps and not making trance any stronger. The thing we should look at is speed the BPM up or lower it down, that’s where the new sound of trance should go. Also I notice that the trance songs go up to 8 minutes and if you want to attract the younger audience who’s attention span is a lot shorter. I think structure of every trance track should also change and should be more compact and straightforward instead of these long dragged out tracks, where a lot of young crowds just looses the attention after all. Those are the things that have to change.

ASL365: Out of all the music you have produced which track are you most proud of and why?

FC: It’s really hard to pick out here. There are so many tracks that I really love, my remix barber’s Adagio For Strings, obviously ‘Out Of The Blue’ by System F which launched my whole career. But also tracks like ‘Rock Your Body Rock’. Recently my blueprint album, which is such a story-telling album with the entire different scenario and all the different element of the album. The visuals and the story to all the artwork and everything has to be connected. And there’s a new passion that I started on Spotify, it’s a playlist called β€œStill Point By Ferry Corsten” it’s a label that we set up for cinematic and neoclassical stuff and that’s really a passion project.
See More: DJ and Producer Dannic unveil what to expect at Tomorrowland set, plans for Fonk Records and many more.

ASL365: Artists don’t necessarily need to be mainstream to survive – Do you agree on that?

FC: Yeah I agree, this whole electronic scene has never really been mainstream apart from few odd ones that became top 40 records until the last 5 year maybe, I don’t think the essence of the stream doesn’t really need mainstream. My opinion is to please no mainstream.

ASL365: What other bookings do you have lined up for 2019 so far?

FC: I have Tomorrowland again next week. Transmission in Prague, Dream state in Australia. Definitely a few more festivals coming up.