October 27, 2016 by Joline | Photography by Berbe Rinders Art

Not a podcast but an Offcast: a side of you some of us might not know. How would you describe your Offcast?

The initial idea was to make a slow tempo psychedelic tribal mix, but I found it was a bit too much ‘dance’, so I decided to make it more ‘chill-out’ including a lot of listening music. The name of this Offcast is Samhain (pronounced as Sawen). This is one of the eight Celtic celebrations of the year in which we honor the end of the summer. We look back at the previous period, honour the dead, take leave of all that we no longer want to carry with us and with that we create room for something new. So everything you hear in this Offcast is in line with the spirit of this time of the year. I think it’s important to know our culture and roots in order to know where we are heading too.

You think we have no clue where we’re heading to these days?

Well, I think we kind of forgot about the origins of our celebrations. We think Christmas is about presents and Santa Claus, while it actually comes from the ancient Celtic Yule celebration (celebrating that the days becoming longer and lighter).

(Laughs) I could go on for hours and hours about the Celtic traditions, but let’s try to stick with the short version. Two years ago we started to celebrate the Celtic fertility festival Beltane in the church of Ruigoord on the 30th of April (former Queensday in The Netherlands). The idea is to bring back the sacredness to the party. We celebrate to remember not to forget. Good thing is that we see the need for these kinds of festivals growing after years and years of the same kind of parties with a more hedonistic character.

Could you pick a track from the Offcast that embodies the sound of Samhain?

El vuelo del Aguila (flight of the Eagle) by Piet Jan Blauw and Cheko. In this track the Dutch audiovisual artist Piet Jan Blauw combines electronic soundscapes with the shamanic flute played by the Mexican Aztec Cheko, creating a kind of transcendent atmosphere. It is said that during Samhain, the boundary between the material and spiritual world is at its thinnest, and this song captures that mood very well. It’s also a nice wink to the Mexican ‘Dia de los Muertos’ which also resonates with Samhain.

Does this Offcast represent your own music?

The music of the Offcast is very atmospheric, not so much dance music, which is my normal angle as a DJ. Even my dance repertoire has slightly shifted throughout time, from more tech house and deep house combined with techno, to a more holistic organic sound including ethno and acoustic influenced dance music but also a sound I call psy- tech, the more playful approach to psychedelic dance music.

You’ve been around in the electronic music industry for twenty-five years, starting as a DJ when you were only 16-years old. How would you describe the journey of electronic music from the 90’s until now?

In the 90’s electronic dance music was something new, so these were very exciting times. It was a big hype and you could feel the spark everywhere, first in The UK & The Netherlands and after that in all other countries around the world. Now the spark of doing something completely new is, of course gone, but another door has opened. In the 90’s electronic music was mainly focused on computers and synthesizers, but around the year 2000, it became mainstream and more and more sub-movements arose. Artists started looking around at other possibilities within the electronic music field and nowadays you see that the tendency in electronic music starts to become more acoustic, nature orientated and native. A whole new global scene is born, look at festivals such as Burning Man, Boom and Fusion. The world is now ready for change and you can see this kind of music becoming more accessible on a larger scale.

You just mentioned Burning Man, Boom and Fusion. You are also the co-founder of Dutch festivals like Magneet. What is the influence of these festivals?

I think these transformational events are the future. It’s a mini-community, in which thousands of people have the same experience, they get inspired by each other, by the music, dance together, share life. Just forget what you learned in economics class at school because this to me is real profit.

At these kinds of festivals, people learn new things that they can implement into their own lives back home. For me a real eye-opener was, for example, the fact that at Burning Man people genuinely care about the environment, no trash is left behind. When I got back to The Netherlands, I was shocked by all the garbage people throw on the ground.

Sustainability was also one of your main themes being the Night Mayor of Amsterdam from 2010 to 2012, what changes were you able to make?

My mom was a mayor for twenty-five years, and ever since I was little I was involved in social issues, so when Amsterdam was looking for a new Night Mayor, a lot of people said to me: Isis, this is really something you should do! During those two years I did a lot of lobbying, talking hours and hours with officials and because of that, I was able to establish the Magneet festival, a first major breakthrough in the tight time regulations of the city. I also advocated the 24-hour permits in Amsterdam, from which a lot of people benefit nowadays. Concerning sustainability I introduced innovative waste policies during events, to be able to rely on the social consciousness of visitors to make sure everybody cleans up their own mess and leave no garbage behind.

How do you see the role of music in society?

Music is really important. I get upset when I hear kids don’t even get music lessons at school anymore. It has been proven that playing instruments has a positive influence on the brain and besides that singing and making music is also very fun and good for your body. Speaking about that, during ADE Green there was a very interesting talk called Music as Medicine, about the potential role that music has in healthcare.

Music also unites us. It’s something we globally understand and want to experience together. I don’t believe in the political power games of divide and conquer, I believe in getting together, planting new seeds and transforming into something better the past has showed us so far.

Where and when will we be able to experience your future sound together?

Coming Saturday the 29th of October we will celebrate Samhain at the Church of Ruigoord for those who want to tap into the roots of European culture and hear my modern approach of indigenous dance music.

September 14, 2016 by Joline & Guy | Photography by Berbe Rinders Art

Okay, guys, you’ve made the very first Offcast. How did you go about it?

We’ve tried to make a sort of summary of all the music and genres that inspire us and we listen to. The tracks all have electronic characteristics with an organic feel. And although the first couple of tracks have a lot of energy because of the drumbeats, they’re also sort of meditative: a warm sound with a crossover between acoustic and electronic. Because of the organic sounds, you sometimes don’t even hear whether it’s a synth or an actual instrument. The last three tracks are drenched in melancholic beauty and vulnerability, something we’re looking for in our own productions as well: rhythmic percussion combined with melancholy.

So this Offcast actually pretty much represents your own music?

In this Offcast you can hear mostly music we normally listen to. They’re some of the best tracks that these artists we really like have made, but this Offcast shows our soft side. The music varies more than normal when you hear us play a live set or DJ set.

And in every track, there are elements you can recognize from our own productions, like the world music or African vocals, or the sound design, or the same melancholic feeling. The most important things to us when curating tracks for this set was to have a strong and clear feel and emotion to be able to tell a beautiful story.

This also strongly differs from what we normally do. During a show, we sort of have to work towards a climax. By making sure the tracks work together nicely we were able to tell a different story. This, in turn, challenges us to do things differently and discover new sides of our musical tastes.

What tracks do you guys think really stand out?

Well, one of the biggest inspirations we used in the Offcast is a track from John Hopkins, Abandon Window. This track is filled with emotion. It’s like hearing the soundtrack of a film when the end credits are rolling and you’re not yet able to get up because it touched you so much. Everything is flowing into one another and it’s like the music is saying: all the emotions you’re feeling right now, it’s okay, even if it’s a little sad or even dark. The track also represents the emotions that are in the rest of the Offcast. It brings catharsis to the set and leaves you with a positive feeling. He also combines electronic and acoustic music.

Another track that we think is really nice, is the spoken word-like track by Tom Waits from his album Mule Variations. When I first heard that track, I just thought it was really weird, but it somehow does something to you and really compliments the obscurity of the Boards of Canada track before and the Trentemøller track after. Also, the guy has done so much cool stuff in his career and therefore has so much character. That’s very inspiring. And it’s really nice that you can combine that with an electronic sound.

Those two worlds are mixing more and more. How do you see Polynation in that development?

Yes, it used to be more separate. When you went to see a concert or show it used to be either a band or a DJ waving his hands behind the decks. That image has changed and the two are blurring. We think that the audience can relate better to what’s happening on stage when they actively see you perform. It’s really cool to see the synergy grow on stage.

And it also fits really well with our organic sounds. We, for instance, use field recordings from which we subtract elements that we sometimes give an electronic feel. But because the original recording was organic that blueprint stays apparent somehow and, when done right, of course, you end up with a nice mix of acoustic and electronic.

You are pretty much into the electronic-acoustic mix. How would you place that in a broader musical perspective?

The reason we make music, apart from doing it for ourselves, is to bring our audience in rapture. Music creates a connection and a sense of acknowledgment. Take Jon Hopkins for instance, it’s music that taps into this sort of communal emotion that’s recognizable for almost everyone, even though they might experience and feel different things or connect different life events.  This creates a kind of shared experience, and by simply listening to that track you accept the emotion and can feel yourself getting more relaxed and in harmony. If music can play that role, we think on a small scale you’re making the world a better place. It’s a very positive way to make people feel and experience something.

This can be achieved in numerous ways: some can completely lose themselves in our music, and some come closer to their feeling and allow themselves to be vulnerable. The combination between electronic and acoustic allows us to reach both audiences and gives us more options to play with music.

After our performance at PITCH festival, there was a couple that came up to us and told us that we really touched them. That’s something that is very valuable to us. In a world that is pretty much upside down, where everyone has to achieve something, music makes you take a step back, return to your core, and share emotions and get into a state of trance. Think of it as a kind of primal need we all long for that music enables.
Our music speaks the language of dancing and getting in a trance, but also at the same time, it appeals to more sensitive feelings. Most of our tracks begin with a firm beat, but along the way presents the sensitive side, melting it together into a whole. As if you inject warms feelings into a cold world. Something the world can use every now and again.

That warm and sensitive sound you describe, is that something you would like to build upon?

We are musical very open to anything actually. We don’t want to focus too much on one side of the spectrum. We’re planning on leaning a bit more to the acoustic side to discover a broader audience; one that doesn’t necessarily goes to clubs and festivals to dance. We want to expand our music, maybe a little more towards being a band, with the same idea and mentality, but with room for live improvisation and more use of instruments.

For the rest, we’re going to discover new sides by teaming up with other musicians, a bass player for example. We think it will be very interesting to see what happens when we bring more musicians to the equation because it enables you to focus more on your own role within the group. Maybe we will dive behind a piano on stage, or start using live looping, or we can make our drumkit sound more electronic. These are all options to discover what is musically possible for us.

So actually, we are building one big playground for ourselves to be free to do what we love most, without pressure from our audience that longs for a specific sound. We tried that a bit and it didn’t work. There is enough to go on and even more ideas to work with, but you have to shape your world in a certain way to provide the best environment for yourself to make the most out of it.