Where is armand van helden from

Following a Greatest Hits retrospective, Van Helden returned to his old-school rap roots with the party breakbeat album, Sampleslayer Enter the Meatmarket. The 2 Future 4 U album followed in , spawning a U. Both of these songs also appeared on Van Helden's studio album Nympho, and "My My My" became a chart hit once again when it was re-released and remixed in Van Helden's Ghettoblaster album, influenced by freestyle and other '80s dance sounds, appeared in A few other Duck Sauce singles followed during the next few years, leading up to full-length Quack, which finally arrived in Van Helden continued to be an in-demand remixer, with stars such as Sam Smith , Madonna , and Disclosure among his clients.

In , he released a three-CD mix on Ministry of Sound titled Masterpiece, including one disc of early house tracks, one disc dedicated to yacht rock, and another consisting of '80s freestyle. Van Helden's recording career was given another retrospective in , with Defected Presents House Masters. Open App. Armand Van Helden 3,, monthly listeners. Duane Harden 37,, I love that song.

But you wanted to be in that clique because that was it. Back in those days you DJed first, then you made beats, then you got a nightclub gig, then a residency, then got offered remixes, then you got tracks out on labels. That was the process. I skipped all of that and went right to making big songs and figure it out from there.

Can he DJ? If everything is just one note or two notes, you can make ten songs a day. The form of music I was making was meant to be primal, intuitive. Did Tori Amos or her people approach you, or were you already working with Atlantic Records at that point? That is not how this works. Mariah Carey is already big; the whole point of remixing her is to get points in another market. We stuck to our guns on this, and it worked for us. Not that one — the bassline was from the parts that were sent to me.

I played that bassline. When did you start becoming aware of the English speed garage tracks that were utilizing your swamping basslines? I basically made a deeper mix.

If you listen most house music at the time, it usually had some percussion that propelled it if the kick was pulled out. It came back around to the UK, and they started a whole scene up from it. Also during that period you made the Sampleslaya album, which was more hip hop. That was a big left turn, mistake or not mistake, at that time in my career.

You should stick to what people know you for. In , you released 2Future4U which was probably the album people were expecting instead of Sampleslaya. One thing that intrigues me is that 2Future has a lot of big club hits; you could have easily licensed it to a major label in America, especially then. Yet you released it on your own label. Did you think you could just do it better on your own?

Our whole intention was to deliver to FFRR; we had that set up before I started making the first beat on that record.

But the States was open. In that timeframe, the UK dominated in terms of the world outlook on the scene. They were all indies and people that rob you. They were kind of ghetto and they would probably rip you off, and it was scary.

So we started our own imprint, Armed Records, to put that out. I had come up with that loop, and it was sitting on DAT — a ten-minute thing, filtering up and down and messing with it, dropping beats and putting beats back in, just a groove I had made.

So I had to go through and do a serious edit job to build it into a song. But he intuitively channeled that record. In the middle. All of that is just him bugging out. He literally can just get on a record and get into some sort of channeling zone and go off like that. That changes up the feel. It seems like Killing Puritans kicked against what you had done before. It was where I was at mentally at the time, whether it was psychotic or not.

Some people, because I did such crazy things on Killing Puritans , they thought that, number one, I was losing my mind, and number two, I must have made this to shit all over my record deal, so I could get out. Really, neither was the case.

Just think of Kanye West. In dance music it was all undercover and behind the scenes. I grew up hip hop. Hip hop existed to me as a bridge-building music. I saw trance when it was in its early height only as a purist thing, and again my ideology was simply must break purism. Killing Puritans : that title has meaning to me. By the way, MTV Germany pretty much banned me from that point.

Shut up. In other words, if there is a bunch of trance-loving Nazis out there, let them have their fun. The wisdom in age kicks in. I was just talking to a few DJs, and they all know the cash cow that America is. On the concert circuit, it seems like it happened overnight — like, how did we get here? But I think in a way, [U.

S promoters] modeled after the Europeans. You bring in the big sponsors. You make it pro. If you would have asked me back in if that would be the future, I would have laughed. Again, the bridge-building aspect [is] what I always aspired to do. But in a way, mixing house and hip hop to big commercial success — you did that in England when you worked with Dizzee Rascal. They worked with the right artists at the right time with the right sound, and everything just congealed and lit the American radio airwaves on fire.

I have never in my whole life heard this amount of dance music. House and hip hop were always separate; David Guetta, Calvin Harris, Afrojack — they blew the doors off.

Remember what I said about just a lot of white people following trance?