I was a clubber in the Nineties. I went dancing every week.
So in my mind I own a lot of house records still.
The first thing I remember hearing was just the dance music that was in the charts when I was growing up. I don't remember many of the names of specific tracks - they were just kind of early acid house things.
I was DJ'ing house music way back when - I'm not like a new house guy.
Since I was a child, I always loved music that made me want to dance. As a teenager, I used to dance the night away to electronic music.
I was big into hip-hop as a kid, and when I was eighteen, I got into dance and rave music, which was popular in Ireland at the time.
At the end of the '90s and into 2000, electronic music was still an underground phenomenon, especially in America.
Holland is a really small country, but with a very strong club and festival scene. Dance music has been huge in Holland since the late eighties. So there were a lot of opportunities for producers and DJs to release records and play live.
Until House came along I don't think the English made very good dance records, you know, there were very few really good English Rap records, whereas once House came along all of a sudden we started and now I think we probably lead the world, and have overtaken America in dance music.
Dance music tends to be a solitary affair.
I've never heard Daft Punk; I've never heard a track of theirs in my life. They're the two guys with motorcycle helmets on?
Disco evolved into Chicago warehouse. Then there was techno; eventually, it evolved into EDM.
The music industry isn't converging toward dance music. Dance music is dance music. It's been around since disco - and way before disco. But there's different versions of dance music.
I'm really into, like, electric pop music and dubstep, things like that.
All music is dance music. But when people think of dance music, they think of techno or just house. Anything you can dance to is dance music. I don't care if it's classical, funk, salsa, reggae, calypso; it's all dance music.
You're surrounded by electronic music in New York. I mean New York is one of the few places in North America where electronic music is the prevalent form.
I'm into my grime, hip-hop, dance, and house music.
When I say dance music, it's anything that makes me want to dance. It could be Timbaland and Missy Elliott, but it could also be disco music and samba music: It's not relying on melody in the same way; it's more about rhythm.
I've been a fan of electronic music for a while.
I used to do this one club called New York Sound Factory where I played house, hip-hop, and dancehall. I was one of the first DJs in the South to play everything.
I play a lot of hard, uncompromising dance music; it can be anything from dance to rock to reggae.
I think, in the early years, my biggest influences would have been... Daft Punk was a huge one for me, I bought their main record when I was nine; at a young age, I was into music. The Prodigy, Gorillaz were big ones.
Dance music is so interchangeable. There's not a lot of face to it. It's a bunch of Dutch DJs with the same haircut.
The reason I like Steve Aoki is because I can trace my love of electronic music all the way back to when I was listening to not just new wave but to YMO [Yellow Magic Orchestra] which, to me, was the ultimate Japanese band and launched synth electronic music.
I think that party music will live forever.
