Before last year, the closest French producer Madeon and Dutch DJ San Holo ever came to collaborating was touring together in 2016. But on Nov. 5, the two dance stars found themselves closing out the 2023 Vision & Colour Music Festival in Wuhan, China, together after a last-minute cancellation from the original headliner — and their unexpected set was so magical, they're bringing their chemistry to Miami's Ultra Music Festival just four months later.

Madeon and San Holo — whose birth names are Hugo Leclercq and Sander van Dijck, respectively — will play a back-to-back set as headliners of Ultra's intimate amphitheater-style Live Stage on March 23. Like their VAC performance, the joint Ultra set will offer hard electronic beats, live mash-ups and fan-favorite cuts from both of their catalogs, curated by each artist in an attempt to impress the other.

"I've noticed a trend in dance music where audiences are attracted to moments — things that feel spontaneous, like back-to-backs that you didn't expect, shows that are announced very late," Madeon tells GRAMMY.com. "There's something about 'You had to be there.' As a performer, I want us to feel that energy."

San Holo echoes, "This all came from spontaneity. As long as we keep that alive, people are going to have an amazing time." 

Ahead of their Ultra set, Madeon and San Holo caught up with GRAMMY.com to hear more about their serendipitous partnership  — and why it's not guaranteed to ever happen again.

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I'm excited that you're bringing this joint effort back. I was so intrigued when you did the set in China. 

Madeon: The way it came about is probably why it ended up being so special. We were both in China playing our respective shows for this festival, VAC. I played Good Faith Forever, Sander played a DJ set hybrid. We were about to fly back, but the headliner that was supposed to close the entire festival was sick. They had this big fireworks show already, a huge production, and then they didn't have an artist. 

They asked us about a back-to-back, and we were like, "Well, that sounds kind of fun." Basically, 24 hours before going on stage, we were like, "We're gonna headline this mega festival and create a whole new show from scratch," which was a little reckless. I think the sleep deprivation and the time zone change probably played a part. 

Sander and I met up in the hotel room and took some big swings. We made a whole new visual show with a black-and-white camera feed. I was on my laptop making visuals on the way to the stage. Sander and I decided to each have succeeding sections, like 15 minutes each. We did not show each other what we were going to play. We're trying to make sure we would impress each other, like a proper back and forth. 

San Holo: The complicated thing is that Madeon is actually on different equipment. He has his own crazy, secret setup that is insane. He's extremely flexible, and I'm on the CDJs [turntables]. It's like trying to get different machines to talk. We have to really pay attention when we transition from our sections, which was really exciting and challenging.

Madeon: For me, the best part is that when you start playing, I know you're gonna play for 10 minutes or so, which is long enough for me to just dance, have fun and get lost in it. Then after 10 minutes, I think, "Okay, where do I take this next?" It feels very celebratory, and most of what Sander played was music I had never heard before. I felt like it was in the audience partying with everybody whenever he dropped something cool, and hopefully vice versa. 

San Holo: Absolutely. That's a fun thing of back-to-backs. You're like, "What is this?" Normally I would go look at the CDJ, but now I had to look over to this laptop machine with your setup. I was like, "Where can I find the song title?"

Madeon: We were supposed to only play an hour or so, and when we were gearing up for the ending, the festival was like "Do you want to play longer?" We ended up playing an extra 40 minutes completely unprepared. It was very magical. 

We had this handheld camera. Whenever he was playing, I was filming him, then whenever I was playing he was filming me. We looked at the footage and saw the way that it looked, and it felt strong and different. It didn't feel like a typical Madeon show or a typical San Holo show. So it felt true to what it was, as far as this spontaneous idea. It was such a special moment, and so unexpected. We didn't know how fun it was gonna be. 

I'm really shocked to hear this happened so last minute. Listening to the set, it felt like you had put so much thought into mixing your styles.

San Holo: I was a little bit scared, to be honest — like, "Is this gonna work?" But that actually made it so fun.

Madeon: I think if it was earlier in my career I would have been more scared, but we both have enough experience to know we can figure it out as DJs. When I do my live show and I'm singing, it's all super rehearsed — and same for you Sander, right? But when I DJ, I don't like to prepare, because otherwise I'm bored. 

This felt doubly exciting. The risk factor is what makes it real. We were there, we took a risk, and there was this magical memory. 

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So you whipped together this wild concept and the wheels didn't fall off mid-set. Going into this Ultra set, is that now part of the parameters of this project? 

Madeon: We're implementing a little surprise in the show, and we're very excited about that. That one is more planned, but it's also spontaneous — you'll see. We want to make sure it's not exactly what we did in China. 

Sander is just going to tell me the opening and closing song of each of his sections, and then it's my job to find the connection between. It's like a puzzle I'm going to solve, but I'm not going to over-prepare.

San Holo: I've got to talk about your setup. I'm jealous of your setup, because it really allows you to be completely free with the key and the BPM tempo. You can just flip it in whatever way you want. 

Madeon: But I'm jealous of your setup, because CDJs are everywhere. It's so convenient. They feel great to use. 

San Holo: It's just harder with CDJs to actually pitch things. You can pitch up tracks, and it's the Ableton algorithm so it still sounds pretty good.

Madeon: That's true. Sander sent me a bunch of his acapella and melodies, and I pitched them to the right key, and then I could play them on the launch pad so I could do mashups live. That's not something you can easily do on CDJ.

San Holo: No. I am a bit more prepared. I want to play some tracks I found from some really small artists, for example. I want to put them in the set because I think this is amazing music. People have to hear this.

Madeon: Well, there's one thing you're gonna have to prepare for a lot, that secret moment. I trust your skill there. 

San Holo: The fact that it's scary is also why it's fun. People will feel that too, in the audience.

Madeon: I love going on stage and not knowing exactly how it's going to go. I feel like my favorite moment of the set is going to be something that I did not expect. Certain shows are very prepared. It feels like performing a recital, but like this feels like going to a party for me. We know we're going to run into cool people and hear cool music, and things are gonna happen that are memorable. 

And you're closing out the Live Stage, which is more intimate than the 200-foot Main Stage or the airport hanger-style Megastructure that hold crowds of thousands.

Madeon: I love that stage, the amphitheater — and we have the honor of headlining it, which we're really proud of. That stage is where you get the most control over the look and feel of your show. When you play the main stage, it's so massive, so it has to be a collaboration between who you are as an artist, and what Ultra is. That's awesome, too, but it's fun for us to do the live stage because we can control a bit more of the experience. 

Are you bringing back the black and white camera?

San Holo: I've got to give a lot of credit to Hugo. He has a huge vision regarding visuals. 

Madeon: You also had some great insight. It's cool we were both willing to do something different than our normal show. We want to make sure that, if people have seen our shows a lot of times before, they feel like this is a different, secret, rare experience.

San Holo: You gotta tell about the logo.

Madeon: When I make music, I have a lot of self-doubt and I can be really nervous and work on songs for years. But when it comes to visuals, I tend to be very radical, cutthroat and confident. I will take a thing and then really double down on it. 

When we first were trying to figure out the visuals, the natural idea was to use half of my visuals and half of Sander's, and this didn't feel right. So, I started making those black-and-white things, and one of the first things I made took Sander's logo and my logo and just overlapped them on top of each other to create this abstract shape. I thought it looked cool and had a good gut feeling about it.

San Holo: The first time I saw the logo I was like, "Wow. That's kind of crazy," but I really love and admire the cutthroat approach. That's easier for me in my music sometimes. 

Madeon: If we had used it just a little bit, it would look like a mistake, but if you just commit to it, like "No, this is it," then people trust you. It's all about confidently committing. In the photos, we ended up really liking how everything looked. Some people in China who were there even got that logo tattooed, so it's one of these things where you have to feel the moment, feel the energy in the air at a given time. Again, I think that's where dance music is at right now. It feels more spontaneous, like you react to the magic in the air, and then go with it. Chase that excitement. 

(L-R) Madeon and San Holo at the 2023 Vision & Colour Festival | Photo: Haley Lan

It fits the way you're approaching the music as well. It's the two of you together and you're giving each other space to exist. It's more than the sum of its parts.

Madeon: I think audience members, one of their favorite parts is being with their friends, and [when] there's a song they love, they look at each other and react. As a solo performer on stage, you don't have that, because you know what you're going to play. But because there's two of us, we get to surprise each other. 

That's why I don't want to know too much about what he's going to play. I know he's made some edits to some of my songs, and I'm going to sample some of his songs too, but I want to surprise each other. I think that magic and that excitement is going to make us DJ better.

To give each other that space requires a lot of trust. Where does that come from?

San Holo: We haven't worked alongside each other a lot. I was on the Porter and Madeon Shelter tour [in 2016], and that was a life-changing experience for me. It's not like we call each other every day. If anything, our friendship is starting to really grow as we're doing the music thing together. I know Hugo has been doing this for a long time, and we trust each other in our professionalism. I made a huge mistake on the China stage. I spun back the wrong CDJ at some point, but we know how to fix it. 

Madeon: Yeah, that's the magic. A few years into doing this, you grow this connection with the audience where they trust you and you trust them. Some of my favorite memories on stage have been things going wrong. At the end of the day, it's not about perfection. It's about memorable, beautiful, joyful moments, and once you trust that, and you know that in your heart, you'll always find the path back to something joyful. 

Is this a collaboration you might continue? Is it too early to say?

Madeon: We're looking at returning to China where this began to do it again. The spirit of it needs to be spontaneous and quick. There's no pressure in trying to build something, but you never know. We might have so much fun [at Ultra] that we want to do it a ton. It's more about what feels right. 

Ultra asking us to do this was unexpected. I thought it was gonna be one-and-done. We accidentally created something other festivals were interested in, and now we get to bring it to the United States exclusively at Ultra. 

You never know. It might be a lot of music, maybe a lot of shows, or not. But I would say that people at Ultra, if they want to see this, they should go — because there's no guarantee.

Music Festivals 2024 Guide: Lineups & Dates For Coachella, Bonnaroo, NOLA Jazz Fest & Much More

The world's premier electronic music festival is about to strike in Miami. In the days and weeks leading up to these unforgettable three days, you can immerse yourself in body-moving, brain-electrifying, future-forward sounds.

Ultra Music Festival has revealed two lavish playlists, curated to match their Main Stage and Resistance Stage. The former will feature talent like Swedish House Mafia, Marshmello, Nicky Romero, David Guetta, and other greats.

Digging even deeper into the contemporary electronic scene is the Resistance Stage-themed playlist, System Breach, which spotlights house, techno, and underground sounds. Artists featured will include Carl Cox, Eric Prydz, Claude VonStroke, and many more.

Ultra Music Festival 2023 will take place on Mar. 24-26 in downtown Miami. Check out the two playlists below, check out the full lineup here and grab your tickets here — for what will undoubtedly be a world-beating experience for electronic music fans everywhere!

Listen: All Of The Dance/Electronic Music 2023 GRAMMY Nominees In One Playlist

San Holo doesn’t call himself a DJ. Ask him for a more relevant term and his answer is simple: "I'm a musician."

It’s hardly left field to say that San Holo’s emotional productions feel right at home on a hip, college radio station. Instrumentals have always been a part of the Dutch artist born Sander Van Djick’s style, and his powder-pink electric guitar a present force at every live performance. Those hallmarks are likely to remain, even as his act evolves.

His signature approach shines again in his new 20-track LP bb u ok?, which arrived on June 4 via Counter Records. The extensive collection is an exploration of the analog sounds, soft vocals and surprising alt-rock cameos that have always set San Holo apart in a genre saturated by festival bangers and heavy bass. It comes as a follow up to his romantic and uplifting 2018 debut LP, Album1, and while many of those familiar, mellifluous chords persist in bb u ok?, there’s a palpable maturity to the new set of cuts, and a definitive rock edge—both fruits of gained perspective, perhaps.

"It’s like an indie album with EDM energy," he shares excitedly about the new album. "I feel like a lot of songs—even though they are sensitive—still have that level of energy and there's still a drop in there, you know?"

Between the opening strums of "i am thinking of you" and the final mirrored piano plunks of "one more day," he weaves a wistful, musical narrative that pays homage to his time in L.A. where he wrote the majority of the album in just two months. In his interview with GRAMMY.com, he speaks about the inspiration behind the highly personal album, the growing popularity of rock-driven electronic music, and what it was like to create art alongside a few of his greatest influences.

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You’ve mentioned that Album1 was written during a period of your life when you were in love. How has your current phase of life influenced bb u ok?

It is definitely about the aftermath, or what happens after love and not per se in a very sad or depressing way. It's more about how you move on, and it's also about acceptance. I was in a relationship and it didn't work out. And it hurt like hell. But it's not like I'm saying, "Oh, I wish we could go back." I'm just saying, "This is life, and let's move on."

And I'm grateful for even getting to experience all these emotions. Also heartbreak, I know it sounds weird, but it's also a very important emotion to feel in your life. Life is a huge influence on my music. That's why it's so personal to me, I write everything myself or with people that I love. And when people like my music, it feels so good because, in a way, I feel like they understand me.

Read: Ian Sweet On Anxiety, Depression And Recovery: "I’m Learning To Not Sacrifice My Own Health And Well-Being For Others"

What does it take to build a highly personal album?

For me, it's really important that the album kind of feels like an ongoing story. In the first track, you hear a melody, and that melody comes back in the last track. So, it's kind of like a chapter. The first track opens a chapter and the last track closes a chapter, or maybe the book. When I write albums, it’s all about my world. You know the things I feel inside of my world and in my head, based on conversations and experiences with people. And I always try to translate those feelings and emotions that are oftentimes, really hard to put into words.

"the great clown Pagliacci" is one track that stands out specifically. Why did you choose to include that sample?

So, "the great clown Pagliacci" is featured in a part of the album that revolves around loneliness. It’s something I've been feeling a lot—you know, when you're on the stage, and the lights go on, you kind of feel alone again. Even though you're in front of thousands of people, when they're all gone, It feels so lonely back in the dressing room.

I heard the sample on a record from Mr. Hudson, who I love, and I pitched it down and made it my own. I put some guitars on it and I changed it up, but it just felt like when I first heard that doctor say, "I am the great clown Pagliacci." It just really hit me, because I relate to it, because people always think you are the clown, the performer, the artist, just a happy face on stage. But rarely do people get to see all the struggles.

bb u ok? features your own vocals. Was it intimidating to create something so authentically "you?"

It's always a little bit scary, and there are some takes on there that are not perfect at all. You can hear the noise from the laptop or the air conditioning in the background. But something about that made everything feel so much more personal. Because, I can see the Airbnb I recorded at. I can see the garden and the rooms in my head. And it’s just personal, and that's the only way I want to do it.

Instrumentals are a unique element of your sound. Which analog instruments were new to bb u ok?

I think the biggest analog instrument featured on this album that wasn't really featured as much on Album1 is the acoustic guitar, because there's a lot of songs that feature acoustic guitars, chords or melodies played on acoustic and then combined with a heavier electronic beat. That's definitely something new to this album—almost like acoustic dance music instead of EDM.

Have you always known that "rock" would be part of your on-stage aesthetic?

I remember when I started playing guitar in my songs and during my live shows, and even during my DJ sets, I would just pull up the guitar and play some parts. I remember people didn't really like it at first—I think 50 percent didn't really get it. It was after a remix I made got popular, and I went from playing guitar every day to DJing, that I brought the guitar back into my work. I really believed in it, so it worked for me. It’s become my thing. Guitars have a place in electronic dance music—I'm not talking about the aggressive solo [electric] guitars but the sparkly, kind of small indie guitar parts can also fit in.

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There seems to be a higher adoption of that trend now. Why do you think that is?

I think it's just a natural progression of artists who make electronic music wanting to add more organic sounds. There's a whole new scene coming up that is incorporating guitars and their vocals into their electronic productions. Maybe it’s because back when I was like 15, I asked my mom, “Mom, can I get a guitar? Can I have guitar lessons?” And nowadays these kids probably say, “Hey Mom, I want to be a producer.” So, [the computer] is their first instrument.

You’re obviously a fan of indie music. What was it like working with a genre pioneer like Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo on “wheels up”?

He randomly hit me up on Twitter one day. He was like, “Hey I just heard one of your songs, and I love it.” I was like, “Is this really happening? Rivers Cuomo?!” I was double-checking if it was really his account. He asked me to send him some stuff—the amount of times artists have told me to send them stuff, and then I send them something and nothing happens.

But I made a track in the studio anyway, sent it to him, and I think, literally a week later, he sent back his vocals, and I was like, "Whoa, this is so good!" And then we went back and forth about some words and some more nuanced stuff. And then he recorded the vocals and I had a great take. For me, it's really funny because I used to be a guitar teacher after I graduated from the conservatory. I used to teach kids "Say It Ain’t So." Now to work with him—it’s so surreal, it's full circle!

Mija is another cool collaborator on the album. Is she someone you’ve always wanted to work with?

I haven't worked with her before but she was always someone that I thought also doesn't necessarily belong in the DJ world. She was a DJ for a while but now she's just doing whatever she wants, and I always felt like I related to her because I felt the same. I just appreciate Mija for doing her own thing.

So is it safe to say you feature a lot of artists who make music you prefer to listen to?

I'm really excited about the collaboration with American Football. They are a band that rarely collabs with anyone and, yeah, they definitely influence my work a lot. I think I am the first electronic artist to ever collaborate with them.

What do you want people who are struggling with a heartbreak to take away from listening to this album?

If you listen to the song and it touches you, then I've already done my job. I just want people to relate to it, whether it makes them sad or happy. For me, that's the beautiful thing about music—it’s different for everyone. I wrote the songs from my perspective and my emotions, and if my emotions can help someone feel something else, that's beautiful.

There's a song on the album called, “i get lonely around people, too.” I guess we all feel lonely around people sometimes, right? It's not like being around people makes you less lonely. It's a feeling that comes from within. The entire song has me repeating that phrase, “Don't you worry, it's not you, I get lonely around people too.” It's about relating to each other and even though we all have our own lives, and we get lonely in our heads sometimes, it's important to understand that we all have our own problems and our own struggles.

Given the content and themes, does now feel like a perfect time to share bb u ok? with listeners?

Even though the album was written before the pandemic, I think a lot of topics make sense for the current state of the world. The last song is called “one more day,” and there's a line that goes: “If we only had one more day, what’s the last thing you would say?” It's something so relevant for me throughout this pandemic because of all these existential thoughts [I’ve had] about life, how fleeting the moment is and how short life is. It still makes so much sense to release it right now.

Porter Robinson Finds Peace With Passionate New Album, ‘Nurture’

Porter Robinson is finally giving himself permission to be human, though this road to acceptance was not without bouts of darkness.

It’s been nearly a decade since the GRAMMY-nominated DJ/producer’s 2011 debut project, the Spitfire EP, helped ignite North America’s explosive fascination with EDM—its instantly recognizable synth stabs and pulsing electro beats brought him to EDC that year, when he was just 18 years old. Then in 2014, his first album, Worlds, left its transformative mark on the genre, igniting a trend among electronic tastemakers to experiment with new sounds, many shifting focus away from festival bangers to create bodies of work packed with bona fide passion.

The years surrounding these divergent releases were defined by tireless tour schedules and the constant question: “What’s next for the wunderkind from Chapel Hill, North Carolina?” When one spends every waking moment poring over work, burnout is the only reasonable outcome. For Robinson, that realization came after years of battling depression and his own crippling fear that he’d never produce worthwhile art again. (Though fans of his trance-leaning alias Virtual Self or his powerhouse Shelter (LIVE) Tour in which he shared the stage with Madeon surely have rebuttals.)

“Self-compassion and being kind to myself, those are all things that don't come naturally to me,” Robinson shares candidly. “But when I'm able to get there, it's so good.”

Let's Dance: ZHU Talks New Rave-Ready Album 'DREAMLAND 2021,' Being Inspired By Hyphy Music & Asian Americans Finally Being Heard

His newest LP is a testament to that fact. An exploration of his deeply personal journey in regaining his confidence, Nurture is a welcome collection of sunny productions, mellifluous piano chords and nature-laced soundscapes which offer ears exactly what its namesake promises. A foil to the dreamy, far-away sounds of Worlds, Nurture is (as Porter calls it) “intimate” and “up-close,” its instrumental elements and crackling lo-fi aesthetic a clear departure from past styles, yet distinctly Porter at the same time.

Fans recently had the chance to experience Nurture (LIVE) during Secret Sky, an online music festival created during the pandemic as a virtual alternative to his in-person gathering Second Sky, which will return to Berkeley, California for it’s second installment on September 17 and 18. Robinson sat down with the Recording Academy to discuss the album’s three-year metamorphosis, how he creates his multifaceted live performances, and what he hopes fans will take away from this musical lesson in perseverance and finding peace.

Was there a definitive moment where you shifted from feeling unable to create music to recognizing that you had something solid in the works?

For a project of this scale, those breakthroughs tend to happen over time, and little by little. One of the first moments where I could say things started to seem like they were getting better was in, I think, 2017. I had really not left my studio for some time, and my manager and my girlfriend were both like, “It's time to leave.” To my mind at that time it made no sense at all. I thought, “How am I going to do the only thing that I'm trying to do—make music again—if I'm not in my studio?” It felt like anything besides working was a waste of time. And that was one of the truly pathological beliefs I had to work through.

I ended up going to Japan with my girlfriend for a few months, and I had a studio rented just in case I wanted to try to make music. That was where I had one of my first breakthroughs and it wasn't visible to me at the time but what was happening was that I was basically running on empty in terms of inspiration and staring at a blank canvas and expecting something to spring out. It was a really kind of egocentric way of thinking about creativity, because I think for me, creativity is actually more like I find something new that I love, or something new that I haven't tried before, and it gets filtered through my senses and experiences and habits and it comes out the other side as something novel.

I started forcing myself to do new things and forcing myself to spend time not working. When I was there, that was when I wrote the chorus of “Look at the Sky,” which ended up being the lead single.

The lyrics to “Look at the Sky” and “Musician” obviously speak very much to this transformation, from the burnout to the breakthrough. Did the words or the beats come first?

Every song begins with the instrumental for me. That's how I've always worked, and I think maybe it has to do with coming from an electronic music background. I've actually thought about it—maybe I should try just writing a song first and then producing it second?

The only song on the album that I can say was written in that way would maybe be the song “Blossom,” because it's really stripped down. It's a ballad and it's a love song. It's just me and a piano over which I'm playing an acoustic guitar sound.

I can't move on until I have something in the instrumental that makes me want to bathe in the music, like live there. I'm looking for a sound that just feels like it fills the hole in my heart. And with “Musician” I definitely had that.

Whenever I have that breakthrough, I always do this thing where I walk back and forth in my studio and just listen to it super loud over and over and over and I'm like, “Wow, this is it, this is the best feeling ever.” I remember writing the beat instruments in the beginning and just being so excited and [thinking] I have to do this song right and ended up taking a year from that point to actually finish the song.

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“Wind Tempos,” on the other hand, has no words. What inspired you to include ambient productions on Nurture?

I've mentioned before how one of the first inspirations for Nurture was this artist Takagi Masakatsu who made the soundtrack for this movie called Wolf Children which hit me at a really pivotal point in my life.

I'm always trying to make music that feels beautiful. For whatever reason, that's what calls to me. And the things that I found really beautiful in the past were these really big, epic, wide sounds that felt far away, and sort of dreamlike and imaginary. And when I heard the soundtrack for Wolf Children—everything feels so close. It’s almost like ASMR piano music.

I remember feeling so inspired writing “Wind Tempos” and thinking, you know, there's no chorus, there's no drop, are people gonna think this is an interlude? But I feel so grateful that a good chunk of my audience [are] treating it as the main course.

What steps were involved in creating the Nurture (LIVE) audio-visual experience?

In the case of Nurture (LIVE), it began with commissioning visuals. I needed a whole lot of video content to put on the screens, you know? And so, I'll typically put together some references and boards and inspiration and some descriptions and we'll put out these feelers to various visual artists. I’ll pay them and commission little 15-second clips of video content, and then I'll do that throughout the year.

As soon as I turned in the album, I started thinking about how I wanted to arrange a live show. The initial plan was to leave the music really untouched and before I knew it I had re-edited all the songs and made little adjustments. I'll produce the live versions of the songs. The next step from there is making it so that I can perform them live, so pulling out certain pieces so I can play them on the piano or on Ableton Push or on the keyboard, and pulling out vocals so that I can sing and recreate all my vocal effects that I use, because I prominently, on this album, use this [effect] where I pitch the vocals up, and making sure I was able to do that live.

The instruments that we have on stage are curated based on what's really needed for the set, and I knew there was going to be a lot of piano for this one so I wanted to have a big piano set piece that would be like a central part of the stage. And then the next step after that is, is taking all the visuals that we've commissioned and editing them to the music that I created for these live versions. And then I just rehearse and rehearse, and we troubleshoot.

So it takes a village to bring this performance to life?

It’s a big collaboration with a bunch of really talented artists. Some of the people who are working on this live show with me, like for example Ben Coker my Lighting Director, or Ryan Sciaino a.k.a. Ghost Dad, who's my VJ, I've been working with them for like 10 years, since my first EP, Spitfire.

You’ve come to the realization that constant work can stifle creativity. So, what activities will you always make room for in your life?

It is easy for me to lapse into being a bit of a workaholic and putting pressure on myself. Things that I think I have to make room for are being a present partner and doing things with Rika. That's of really high value to me and I always make room for the two of us to spend time together and that's just so important to me, and having time with family.

And forcing myself to experience media! This is so random, but ever since I was a teenager I’ve had a weird anxiety around the idea of watching movies. When someone asks, “Do you want to watch this movie?” I get this gut wrenching anxiety [because I feel like] I don't have an hour and a half to do this, like, I need to be working. So I'm trying to force myself to watch stuff, and listen to new albums and go to places I haven't been before, whenever that is safe.

A big thing for me I think is actively pursuing new things to love. I think it's a big part of being an artist that can fall by the wayside. I've always been a scientifically-minded type, but once I started actually coming to understand mindfulness and meditation—it's genuinely life changing stuff! And so I have to add, that is something I always try to make space for too.

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“All we need is already here” is the motto of the album. It’s also been something we’ve had to remind ourselves of during the pandemic. What do you want people to do with this message now?

I think gratitude is a huge thing that I feel coming out of the pandemic and that I want people to feel when they listen to Nurture. And what I mean by that is [having] an appreciation for the extreme beauty and magic that there is all around us, in reality. I was so preoccupied with the idea of escapism and of going to this imaginary world that I think I sort of lost sight of how magical and mystifying our [real] world is.

Food is a place of comfort for many, so, of all the bites you munched on in the studio, what would you say was the “official snack food” of Nurture?

I'm gonna pare it down to three things. It would be these Quest Protein Chips, seaweed snacks, and then Oreos. Oreos are for the moment of weakness, and the other two are for the moments of strength.

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Like any self-respecting star during the early 2000s, Tiësto offered up a tour DVD to the world. Released in August 2003, Another Day at the Office follows the DJ's world tour the previous year, which culminated in a New Year's Eve set at Times Square in New York. The film captures the 33-year-old on the ascent—popular enough to be flown around the world, but still able to circulate a US festival mostly incognito.

The footage captures Tiësto jumping between international flights and limos, signing t-shirts and flyers for fans and playing gigs with a bag of vinyl records and a binder of promo CDRs. "My life in general is pretty hectic," he says early in the film, framed against New York's icy East River. "On Christmas Day, I played in Ireland and London, then the day after I flew to Hong Kong, and then a day later I'm here in New York." As he lists this sleepless schedule, the smile on his face suggests he wouldn't have it any other way.

Tiësto's newly hectic life coincided with the arrival of his debut album, In My Memory. Released in April of 2001 on the Black Hole Recordings sub-label Magik Muzik, the album confirmed the hotshot trance DJ's clout as a producer. Featuring the anthemic trinity of "Flight 643," "Lethal Industry" and "Suburban Train," In My Memory cemented Tiësto as the biggest name in his genre. Confirming his new status, he went on to win DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs poll for three years running from 2002 to 2004. The album also marked a distinct phase in Tiësto's production career as the new trance wunderkind before his evolution to a more polished sound on 2004's Just Be.

The DJ born Tijs Verwest was never idle in the years leading up to In My Memory. Starting out in the early '90s in his native Netherlands under the hardcore and gabber aliases DJ Limited and Da Joker, he soon broke through as DJ Tiësto. His marathon sets around Europe covered the trance spectrum, from delicate and uplifting to dark and enveloping. Early in his production career, he formed partnerships with fellow Dutch producers Ferry Corsten, as Gouryella, and Benno de Goeij, as Kamaya Painters.

As his career accelerated in the late '90s, he founded Black Hole Recordings with Arny Bink, launched the Magik and In Search of Sunrise mix series and collaborated twice with trance newcomer Armin van Buuren as Alibi and Major League.

In the late '90s, Tiësto also became known as a prolific remixer for BT, Signum and Balearic Bill. However his true breakout came in 2000 with the "In Search Of Sunrise Remix" of Delirium's "Silence," featuring Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan. Tiësto spent three weeks getting his version just right. "Everything has to be perfect or [McLachlan] doesn't approve," he told Canada's bpm:tv in 2001. After his take on "Silence" blew up, Tiësto put a pause on remixing to focus on his debut album.

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Tiësto worked on the tracks for In My Memory at the Black Hole Recordings studio in his hometown of Breda. "Lethal Industry" was already a mainstay of his sets in 1999, guaranteeing its spot on the tracklist. (Tiësto's other big tune of that year, "Sparkles," was featured in the Ibiza-set comedy movie, Kevin & Perry Go Large.)

While the album promised purist, club-ready trance, Tiësto set out to showcase different shades to his sound with the help of British vocalists Kirsten Hawkshaw, Nicola Hitchcock and Jan Johnston. The DJ then created the Magik Musik sub-label in 2001 as a home for the album, while also finding time to put out a pair of mix compilations, Magik Seven: Live In Los Angeles and the double-disc Revolution.

Tiësto structured In My Memory as a journey towards the sure-fire trio of "Flight 643," "Lethal Industry" and "Suburban Train." Album opener "Magik Journey" expands on the classical work of Tiësto's collaborator Geert Huinink, with swelling strings and ghostly vocals driving to an explosive conclusion. The same drawn-out energy returns on "Obsession," a collaboration with Dutch producer Junkie XL, now best known for scoring Hollywood blockbusters like Mad Max: Fury Road and Deadpool.

Working together in Junkie XL's underground cellar in Amsterdam, the pair produced the ideal nine-minute track for an all-night Tiësto set. (On his YouTube channel, Junkie XL recalled taking the "obsession" soundbite from a Calvin Klein ad on TV: "The beautiful thing about the [year] 2000 is you'd get away with things you'd never get away with now.")

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Not all the tracks on In My Memory floored the accelerator. The warm pads of "Close To You," featuring seasoned trance vocalist Jan Johnston, evokes a hazy Ibiza sunrise, while the instrumental "Dallas 4PM" finds Tiësto in expansive progressive trance mode. Title track "In My Memory" features Nicola Hitchcock's brittle vocals over a radiant melody, while the trip-hop-influenced "Battleship Grey," featuring Kirsty Hawkshaw, is the album's most surprising deviation.

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The album saves its biggest hitters for last. "Flight 643", named after the non-stop service between Amsterdam and New York, is built around an unmistakable synth stab that never lets up. Following the propulsive tech-trance of "Lethal Industry," the album closes with "Suburban Train," which builds steadily over ten minutes to all-out euphoria.

The composition draws heavily on "Re-Form," a 2000 track by Dutch producer Kid Vicious (that Tiësto also remixed). While "Suburban Train" became a staple of Tiësto's sets for years to come, he occasionally reached for the vocal version featuring Kirsty Hawkshaw, "Urban Train."

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In My Memory ensured Tiësto rarely slept in his own bed. In addition to his residency for Cream at Amnesia in Ibiza, he ticked off early editions of Ultra Music Festival and Coachella in 2002. That summer, Moby booked Tiësto for his Area2 festival tour of the US, which features prominently in Another Day at the Office. With trance at the peak of its popularity in 2003 (led largely by Dutch talent), Tiësto drew 25,000 fans to the Gelredome in The Netherlands for an eight-hour set captured on the Tiësto In Concert DVD.

Despite his good fortunes, Tiësto was wary of being labeled as just a trance guy. "I am definitely a trance DJ, but I try to bring people into trance," he said backstage at the Global Gathering festival in 2002. "I think of it as a journey, and in that journey, I visit the warm and harder stuff, and different kinds of music."

In his 2001 interview with bpm.tv, he shrugged off the suggestion that he was moving to a more progressive style. "I got a little bit bored about all the same epic stuff that's coming out," he reasoned. "I just like to play music from the heart, that has some sensitive elements and some powerful energy."

That wariness of being pigeonholed informed Tiësto's vocal-heavy but still trance-focused 2007 album, Elements Of Life, which earned his first nomination for Best Electronic/Dance Album at the GRAMMYs. In 2009, his new label Musical Freedom and electro-pop album Kaleidoscope clearly signaled a new era.

As the EDM boom took over the US in the early 2010s, Tiësto's sets moved towards big-room electro-house, which in turn attracted a new audience. "I think some of the old trance guys still have their following, but it doesn't feel like anyone really cares," he told DJ Mag plainly in 2014. While the occasional trance classic still turns up in his sets, the sound of In My Memory is firmly in Tiësto's past.

In Another Day at the Office, Tiësto describes the pay-off for his punishing work hours. "I love what I do," he says simply. "It's still my hobby. When I DJ, I love it." Two decades later, after thousands of shows and a few musical evolutions, the hobby is still paying off.

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