NEXT DANCE RADIO

Mike Marquez:

My goodness. right, let’s clap it up. All right, what it is, How You Be, Your Boy Mike Marquez here with joined by late, Laidback Luke, in the house.

Laidback Luke:

So good to be here, man. So good to reunite with you as well, you, Mike. ⁓ And yeah, it’s just the overall vibe in the air of the Miami Music Week. Ultra starting today, know? ⁓ Big stuff happening.

Mike Marquez:

Yeah, you are always in the middle of everything that’s big. I mean, everything that’s going on. Tell me about what’s going on. Let’s start music wise. What’s going on with music?

Laidback Luke:

Well, I’m right here in my relaunch. This is a new Laidback Luke you’re looking at. New hair, new logo, new looks, new sound. The thing is it’s a new look, but it’s also an old look. Because I’m taking it back to when I started, like right before Dutch House exploded, and in sound and in mindset as well. And I’ve been so amped, like I’ve been making tracks in that type of…⁓ sound and it’s been incredible to unleash.

Mike Marquez:

I love that, because your career, you’ve done so many different types of sounds, you’ve innovated, you’ve kind of reinvented things, like do you see yourself trendsetting yet again that people are going to follow you in this direction or do you see it as more a personal thing for yourself to do?

Laidback Luke:

I think both. It’s always been both where it’s like I can spot trends ⁓ and we’re going to talk about my DJ gear as well, right? I can spot trends, and I can act on it and then afterwards the world catches up. ⁓ But I feel so strongly about these things as well. So, the sound where I’m sitting currently is… See, I could have chosen to go either hyper techno or afro house and the BPMs are so far apart. And I’m right there in the middle where I’m like, I feel there’s a sort of a rebellion coming up within society. And we need a music that accompanies it. This is like a screw the society type of music. This is going in hard. So ⁓ I’m really leaning into the Fidget style, which…Blog House style, which biggest tracks are, for instance, A-Tracks, “Yeah Yeah Yeah’s” remix. Or even ⁓ Steve Aoki’s “Pursuit of Happiness remix”. That type of festival energy, and ruggedness, that’s what I’m bringing back.

Mike Marquez:

I love that you do have your finger on the pulse of when things are changing or things need to change. You mentioned the DJ gear. Let me switch gears and talk about the DJ gear. So, we have talked before about just the whole thing with the algorithm DJ, DJing on the phone. How has that been working out for you? Because you have done major festivals on the phone. How has that been for you?

Laidback Luke:

Let me take you back to 2003. The years 2003 when I discovered you could DJ with CDs. There was a CDJ-1000 pioneer put them in my studio for me and they said, check them out. And I was on vinyl back then and I burned a couple of CDs, and I tried it I was like; this is the future, this is insane. So, you mean I don’t need vinyl anymore and I can just burn my new tracks and test them out immediately and I was like, I could see it. So, I didn’t hesitate and announced it on Dutch national TV that DJing with CDs was the future. Smacked like everyone was like this is not real DJ you you’re not paying a DJ to watch them play CDs and it’s like I had a lot of backlash for that and a lot of people said DJing with CDJs will never be the future and here we are and we are in a current position that DJing with CDJs is seen as quote-unquote real DJing I’m taking this the next step because the

The ease that I have with like programming cue points, working with real-time AI ⁓ stems with thanks to the algorithm app. DJing with four tracks, my little unit holds four decks and a mixer in one. There’s just so many benefits to it and indeed I’m playing with this on the biggest stages in the biggest clubs and it’s rocking for me.

Mike Marquez:

I love it. My man, Laidback Luke. Thank you so much, brother. I really appreciate it.