Egbert

Dan Prince·
Features

Interview by Rob Chadwick

Egbert – a man on a rocket ship at the moment. Gotta kick off by asking, how do you chill away from the music?

Thank you so much. My weeks all look basically the same all the time. At the weekend it’s gigs, Monday kitesurfing, the rest of the week studio and repeat…

When DJing back to back – do you plan sets? As a live act, surely this is quite hard to achieve?

We don’t plan anything with our sets. I have about a thousand of my own tracks to choose from, so it’s always on the fly.

You have been making music since you were eight – what gear did you use back then?

At the time I had computer without a mouse and a program called Scream Tracker. It was very basic as you can imagine. The cool thing is that I still have all the tracks that I was making, some tracks still have some cool ideas, but the sound coming from that old software is quite terrible haha.
https://soundcloud.com/discoveregbert/today-is-my-birthday-started

And how did you evolve from there?

The most important is the developments in software really. Over the years making electronic music became more and more accessible for people without an expensive studio. Nowadays you need a laptop and headphones and you have the same power for which you needed a million euros of hardware 30 years ago.
What are the most important lessons you have learnt along the way?

Hard to come up with an answer without all kind off clichés. But listening to your gut feeling is very important I think. 

You play a couple of big festivals soon – who do you like playing outdoors to a bigger crowd? Is it harder to connect?

My sound is better for indoors I think. When I’m playing on festivals I always request to play in a tent. Since low-frequencies come out allot better inside. My tracks are very low-frequency focussed, so that is really important. 

What do you do to stay healthy and sane when on the road?

That’s the hardest part of my job. But during the week I try to have at least 1 day without working or thinking of work. You need balance all the time, kitesurfing is doing that really well for me.  

What makes your relationship with Secret Cinema so strong?

We love the same sound; I think it all comes from there. I meet people all over the world who love this sound and somehow they are all in the same vibes as well. Techno has no language.

What was the last record that made you go ‘wow’ and why did it?

With our label “Gem Records” we had a beach party where I played  hours b2b2b with Secret Cinema and Enrico Sangiuliano. This new guy Enrico Sangiuliano is an incredible producer and surprised me with new unreleased tracks many times that night.  And Secret Cinema was playing a new unreleased track by “Reinier Zonneveld” and that one really blew my mind. 

Egbert performs Dockyard Festival at ADE this October

www.egbertlive.nl