DJ TIMES
MAY 2014
London, England – Nine flatscreens, hanging from the Ministry of Sound’s high ceiling, are staggered in banks of three across the dancefloor, away from the DJ booth. The striking HD footage pierces the smoke and lasers, accentuating the sharp melodic synths that are a fundamental part of Markus Schulz’s signature sound. The screens are showing video footage of the crowd itself, giving a dizzying hall-of-mirrors sensation as we wander across the vast expanse of the MoS main room. There’s a build-up, then an enormous cheer as Schultz drops the main vocal sample from Depeche Mode’s 2001 hit, “I Feel Loved,” and it encircles the space. The vocal fits, just as if it were heard at London’s Coldharbour Lane exactly in ’01, a time when Schulz finally felt he was making headway in his career. The flatscreens showing the fans tell their own story: With almost two decades of experience playing to dancefloors, Schulz insists one of the biggest changes from the ’90s rave scene to today is that, in the past, the crowd was the main event, not the DJ. Schulz’s early career, especially the time he spent in Arizona, saw him carve the craft of what he refers to as “going down the rabbit hole,” playing up to seven-hour sets, designed to get people looking away from the DJ booth and at each other, at the lights and at the carnival of freakdom—all hypnotized by the moment. In an amusing twist of fate, however, the American mainstream EDM explosion has seen Schulz become a center of attention, a multi-award-winning spokesman of sorts for the wider electronic music community. (Among taking other honors, he was voted America’s Best DJ in 2012.) With a record label, artist-management arm and one of the most internationally syndicated and successful radio shows of the decade—the Global DJ Broadcast—to add to his full-time schedule of touring and producing, it’s not difficult to see why. We’re just not sure how he finds the time. DJ Times recently caught up with the Miami-based Markus Schulz, one of America’s top jocks and one of the globe’s top trance talents. It went like this: DJ Times: Let’s talk about your earlier career. You moved to the States from Germany aged 13.You first release was in ’93. How did that production process start? Schulz: People always want to talk about my earlier career! Well, I was working in a studio in Arizona at the time, trying to get my foot in the door. I was an assistant, taking out the trash and so on, but I got to be a fly on the wall in some sessions. The studio was available at night time, so in the evenings I would be able to go in there and mess around. I started playing some of my stuff out. During that time, it was trying to find myself, trying to find my footing. But I was always chasing. I’d think, “This guy’s doing this, so now I gotta try and copy that.” DJ Times: You were also remixing from the early ’90s... Schulz: I did some major-label remix work—I remixed Madonna, the Backstreet Boys, stuff like that.
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