DJ Tiesto’s arena-scale event meant ‘to blow you away’

If there’s a huge crowd and a DJ spinning, chances are the event is an outdoor rave or festival, not an arena usually reserved for rock acts. Tijs Verwest, a.k.a. Tiesto, thinks that it’s time to turn that perception around with his Elements of Life world tour, which comes to Edmonton tonight.

A stadium-sized multimedia experiment developed around the Dutch trance DJ’s legendary six-hour sets may sound like a losing venture to the fickle sorts who think the whole “electronica” thing is over.

But his brain hasn’t been rattled by standing near the bass bins too long. The man voted “Best DJ in the World” three times in a row by DJ Magazine says the multiple screens, massive lighting rigs and concept based upon the 2007 Elements of Life album released North America-wide on Vancouver’s

Nettwerk Records is meant to “totally blow you away.

“Reactions are amazing to it at the shows that we played on the Continent and in New York and Los Angeles,” says Tiesto, 38. “I’ve been thinking about how it would come together for about three years now, how to make a big event happen that’s really good because it’s always cool.”

With a 35-member team on hand, this is hardly just another jaunt around the globe to drop some dope beats for the club crowd. A fixture in the dance-

mixing scene for nearly two decades, Tiesto knows about the party action and respects it. But for this tour, there is more performance in mind.

“People come to raves to take drugs and not to really take in the music and you play to their response. This is quite different. A lot more thinking went into this to co-ordinate it to the idea of the four elements of life: air, water, fire and earth.”

Each of these “element movements” is carefully choreographed by the production team to seamlessly blend in. The music flows throughout.

“The earth is really slow, warm music, air is more trancey, water is more harder trance and fire is more housey. That’s a very simplified explanation.”

While his initial rise to fame was in the trance scene, it was epic remixes of tracks such as Delerium’s Silence with Sarah McLachlan that led to the deal on this side of the pond with Nettwerk for the release of the mix album Summerbreeze. Peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard dance charts, the remix spent four weeks in the U.K. top 10.

Jump ahead to Athens in 2004 and he’s the first DJ to play an Olympic opening ceremony, captured in the album Parade of the Athletes. The difference between these two career peaks clearly shows an artist in development; one bound to have irked some fans.

“There are two kinds now. The ones who come to hear the old albums and the classics and the ones who are there for the new material. Fortunately, they both come to the show and I am playing old, new, classic and more, so everyone is happy.”

He still shakes his head at the degree of success he’s experienced. It’s a long way from local clubs in his hometown of Breda, Netherlands, to a projected arena audience of 10,000 for shows on this tour. Whether he can pull those numbers remains to be seen, but it won’t stop him from doing what he does best: working hard and always expanding his musical scope.

- AUGUST 24TH – 2007 (Edmonton Journal)