Ferry Corsten

 

The Dutch superstar has consistently been voted one of the top 10 DJs in the world (according to DJ magazine’s definitive Top 100 DJ chart) for five years. He’s played for hundreds of thousands of fans – sometimes at once – in amphitheaters, fields and nightclubs from Australia to Russia to white-hot Ibiza. He took the party island’s “Best Trance DJ” prize at the annual DJ Awards ceremony this year and two years ago; got tailed by some road-tripping fans on a Southern Comfort-sponsored, 26-city bus tour of America; and had his life’s work  interpreted in music, video and décor at his annual Masquerade event “Full on Ferry”, at 12,000-capacity arena Ahoy in his hometown, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

It’s all in a year’s work for the man who’s been called the “architect, pioneer, and instigator” of trance music’s global dominance.

But within the close-knit international DJ community, Corsten’s regarded as something else too: A studio auteur with a fierce sense of sonic rightness; a real-deal producer who works solo, sans engineer, and creates the most complete, energetic, melodic records in dance music. His style is so singular that synthesizer manufacturer Roland commissioned a Corsten sound bank for their new SP-555 sampling unit. But it’s so broad that it could meld with Public Enemy’s classic cut “Bring The Noise,” on a Corsten remix that Chuck D himself called “the ultimate concoction of space, energy and lyrics.”