Lucien Foort Interview courtesy of Kent 

A lot of big name DJs are coming out of Holland – you, Sander Kleinenberg, DJ Tiesto, Jurgen, what is it about Holland?

I think that we’ve finally found our way in terms of dance music and we’ve found a way to distribute that on a global scale. We’re now 100% participants of the global dance floor, which I think is very important because you can only do so much in your own country. To be a part of that, being from Holland – which is a small country – makes us [the Dutch] very happy.

Signum, the trance house duo that played Gatecrasher for KENT Choice Osmosis at Movement are also from Holland. Did you guys meet up?

I heard they live close to me [in Rotterdam] but I had never met them so I did make an effort to go and see them when Gatecrasher played Movement. Very nice geezers. It was great to speak Dutch with them especially as we’re on the other side of the world. They were pretty nervous before their gig but I thought they did a good job representing the groovy and happy sound of Holland.

So the Dutch have a sound then?

Yes. It’s something to do with the beat, I can recognize it instantly.

You need a certain level of development before you see a “sudden influx". I was one of the early birds in Holland doing dance music and I can say that it’s taken ten years to grow, so it’s probably about time we made our mark on the map. Guys like Tiesto and Ferry Corsten have been paving the roads for Sander Kleinenberg, Armand van Buren and me.

In terms of Dutch dance DJs, have you got a personal favourite?

To say something about a DJ you have to listen to them more than once so I can’t really say anything, especially if I’m coming into a club and hearing the last five minutes of some DJ before doing my set. In terms of professionalism, I just toured with Armand Van Buren in Australia.

Despite having only just met Signum, you knew the rest of the Gatecrasher crew from having worked with them and of course, even when you were touring Australia, which is half way across the world from Holland, you did so with fellow countryman Armin van Buren. Is the world getting smaller or is the dance community a small one?

The dance community is not that big. When you get to a certain level you’ll find that there’s only a couple of people that determine what shape the dance music market is going to take. Pete Tong for example. He’s one of the most influential figures in the dance music world. With Essential Mix he gets DJs that no one’s heard of to do mixes alongside the big DJs. But yes, once you’ve get to that level everything is pretty much centred around a couple of big DJs, then it goes down in a pyramid in terms of the whole structure.

You did a particularly spectacular Essential Mix for Pete Tong.

To do an Essential Mix for the first time in your life and get nominated for Best Radio 1 Essential Mix at the MUZIK Magazine Dance Awards this year, I was pretty shocked when it happened! It [the award] eventually went to Sander Kleinenberg, which I thought was well deserved. Over this last year, I’ve only really just got started on a global level, whereas Kleinenberg’s been touring for two and a half years. But, I’ll get another shot at it next year.

Still, another notch in the Dutch scene’s bedpost, eh? You’re personal best set was also laid down on home ground, wasn’t it?

One of my top sets was in Hague, Holland’s capital. It was a free pop festival called Bevrijdings. It’s one of these gigs where you can’t plan anything. You just play and see if you can work with the crowd, so you tend to play all the way across the spectrum. I play very widely – breakbeats, tech house, progressive, trance, progressive house, even techno. There were in total 400,000 people there and I think I had 50,000 at my stage and it was outside in the park. There’s no one gig where I’d say this is the one and nothing’s going to match it, but it’s definitely the gig I’d look back on and say wow!

I haven’t played in Russia and I haven’t played in South Africa. It curiosity, to be honest – I’ve never been there – and because I’d like to be part of the global dance floor there.

,b>You’ve got numerous residencies in Holland and the UK. Give us the lowdown.

I’ve two residencies in Holland centred around the first and last week of the month. There’s Stalker in Haarlem, which is at a very small club for 350 people – very nice in terms of checking your records on the ground. The other is Progress, which is to do with taking people as far as we can and giving them an insight into dance music and bring the global dance floor to Rotterdam’s backyard. The DJs that I bring out for that have included Stacey Pullen, Cohen Hamilton from Lush in Ireland, Danny Howells, Anthony Pappa, Jimmy Van M, Ashley Casselle… It’s been pretty UK orientated, just because UK is closer [to Holland], although Kasey Taylor from Vapour Recordings in Australia has played twice. Then there’s every month at Gatecrasher in Sheffield, every two months at Cream and every two months at Lush.

You’ve said that dance music on TV is different from what dance music really is.

I don’t see it as different but the focus is on something else. If you want a lot of people to like something [which is true of TV], you are going to go for concepts that are quite easy to grasp. Whereas if you experience dance music for what it is you’ll probably be standing on a dance floor and experiencing a sensation, rather than hearing or seeing a concept that some company been thinking out. With them it’s, “we need this to stick in someone’s brain in three and a half minutes so that the next question they ask is ‘where can I buy this?’” because that what commercialism is all about. If I can avoid my sets becoming too commercial, too big, too anthemy, too ‘this is now and next week you won’t hear it again’, then I can give people an insight into what dance music really is.

Your funky melodic tech house sound stretches across the board of house music and you certainly don’t limit your playing according to specific genres. Will that sort of diversity be the eventual direction that DJ sets take in the future?

DJs nowadays have become so big they’re the supplier of music, so they can’t play just one particular style of music. And with simultaneous mixing, where you don’t talk into the mike [and introduce the next track] you do need to be smart about how you move between musical styles smoothly. Also, if you say you’re going to be a DJ, you have to know your music and appeal to a lot of people and play different styles of music, left and right.

Does that mean no more ‘techno nights’ or ‘prog house’ nights?

Again, it comes down to marketing. People have to put a stamp on something otherwise you can’t sell it. If you don’t, how are people going to know what they like or what they hate. They have to have a marker to differentiate. Obviously, you are going to call progressive house, “progressive house”, but what is “progressive house”? Dave Seaman, Timo Mass, Danny Howells, they all play progressive house, but Timo Mass is a little more techno orientated, Danny Howells is a little more house orientated and Dave Seaman is a little more trance orientated. In a year from now those different styles will be even more diverse but they will still be classified under the same name, “progressive house”.

In 2001, I played so much and it’s been time consuming. However, in the last two weeks [prior to coming to KL] I completed two productions and in 2002 I’m going to work my schedule around being in my new studio. I can do more domestic gigs or gigs in the UK, for me that’s 45 minutes on the plane. And I’ll center tours round the times I don’t need to be in the studio. I also work in Manchester with Evolution on Fluid Recordings, but I’m focusing on my stuff at the moment, as it’s been a while since I’ve released some tunes. I have been working on the new Funk Function track. The A-side is finished and I’ll be playing that in KL off the CD. So, by the end of January I’ll have a couple of tracks ready.

Dutch Liquid productions are a firm favourite with Carl Cox. Tell us about it.

Dutch Liquid is a collaboration between Ron Matser and myself. He’s one of my old mates from way back when and he gave me my first gig in a decent club. He had one of the first progressive clubs in Rotterdam and basically, you could play whatever you liked there although we found out later we were playing progressive house. Anyway, he comes out to my studio and brings loads of samples with him and we discuss where we’re going to go with them. The results are more techno orientated and minimal than the stuff I do on my own and it’s [the collaboration] is a completely different working environment than I’m use to – when he goes away I don’t tamper with it [our work], I wait till he gets back and we finish it together – but that’s good.

A nomination at the MUZIK Magazine Dance Awards, the release of Singularity Vol. 2 and big ups from numerous big name DJs, including Sasha, who reckons your music is “funky as hell”. 2001 was your year. Are you sad to see it come to an end or are you looking forward to 2002?

If you plant a seed in the ground and you see it evolve into a plant you do hope it will be a tree with a solid foundation that will last for the rest of your life. In terms of DJing for me the foundations have been laid, so yes, I’m looking forward to next year and seeing how my work evolves.

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