Showtek Feat We Are Loud! & Sonny Wilson
Booyah (Original Mix)
Any artist who loves sushi is good in my book.
Our resident brothers for August, Showtek, sat down to chat with us about their musical history, Jay-Z and why Salt Lake City is one place they will always visit.
TMN: Hey fellas. Thank you so much for taking a few moments to sit down with us and for taking over TMN for the month of August! Let’s start off talking about you guys as brothers. How did you both decide that you wanted to play music together?
Showtek: We never had the dream of becoming DJs, it really just happened, but not out of the blue of course. We started producing music as a hobby. We both loved music when we were young – Wouter played piano and Sjoerd worked on beats on his computer. When our parents got divorced we needed a way to express ourselves! We hooked up as a team and locked ourselves up in our little room and just made music, straight from the heart. We had no background in music, no schooling, no one who taught us how to work music programs, we just discovered everything by ourselves.
When we released our music in 2001, we immediately scored. We reached the charts in Belgium and our tracks were played by other big DJs. So within a year our name started to grow in our own country and some parts of Europe. We were asked to play in a club in our hometown as residents DJs, and from there on we started to really DJ. We love DJing and traveling the world, don’t get us wrong, but it started with producing music.
TMN: Did you start off by learning traditional instruments? Did you guys have sibling arguments over who got to play what?
Showtek: Wouter played piano when he was a teenager and still does. He also plays guitar, so he is definitely the musical Mozart out of the two of us. Lots of melodies are created on the piano at home, and from there we start making most of our music. We never really argue about producing or DJing. Sometimes we agree to disagree, haha.
TMN: Were your musical aspirations something your parents encouraged growing up? How do they feel about you guys being together all the time doing what you love, and experiencing tremendous success while doing it?
Showtek: Well our father has only seen us twice on stage, once at Sensation and once a local festival near his house. He is really proud now, but if our parents stayed together our career might have never happened. After the divorce we both skipped a lot of classes at school, and Sjoerd was even kicked out three times because he always skipped the first few hours. We always worked until 4 in the morning, freaking on beats and stuff. Our dad would never allow us to do that, but we took advantage of our mum who worked all day to feed four kids. She didn’t really notice! The fact that our parents got divorced brought us more together.
TMN: Speaking of tremendous success..”Cannonball”. Holy shit. That song took the EDM world by storm and was seemingly around every corner. Between Ultra, WMC, and Coachella, we heard it dozens of time by all kinds of different DJs. What was it like experiencing that?
Showtek: Yeah it became a big bomb! It was received really well and was supported by big DJs. We were at Ultra and our tracks were played 34 times! Haha.. Yeah it’s always cool to hear that people like our music. That song brought us to another level in the dance industry. It was in the top 40 for 24 weeks in Holland, got a golden record, and it was the same story in Belgium and France. So far it’s been our biggest achievement in music!
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