A-Lusion Interview
Som i nok alle ved så kommer A-Lusion og Scope DJ sammen med deres nye koncept Second Identity til Danmark på fredag. Det bliver til Hard Addicted "Dutch Invasion" på 8 Club i Vojens.
Du kan læse mere om festen i vores
forumI forbindelse med festen på fredag så fik Hardstylers muligheden for at spørge A-Lusion aka Onne et par spørgsmål om det fantastisk år han har haft. Interviewet er på engelsk og kan læses herunder.
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1. Hello Onne. First of all, thank you for taking the time, to do this exclusive interview. A lot of things have happened in your carrier the last year. You finally got to play at Qlimax, you started making small movies off your tours, you're hosting the Scantraxx radioshow. You established Second Identity with Scope DJ, and you are now in the making of an album together. Describe the last year, in your own words?
Last year has been for sure one of those years where it's all about investing in the future. I spend a lot of time on new projects, new techniques, marketing, a new studio and I worked a lot on getting my sound up-to-date again. Qlimax was sort of in the middle of all this. It was a sort of closure of the first 7 years of my career, but in the other hand it also was the start of next coming years. The Second Identity project was something I had in mind for a longer time already. Together with Scope DJ it evolved to the way it is now. I am so proud of what we did in the last 11 months. Traveling over 12.000 km together to get all the 15 tracks ready. (our studios are 1 hour drive apart from each other). We are so excited about the final result.
Another thing that was on my mind for a long time, was doing an own podcast show (A-lusion Hardstyle World Show). But because there is a lot of money involved when you play other people's music, and do it legally without getting a fine, I didn't know how to start. Teaming up with Scantraxx and creating the Scantraxx radioshow did the trick. Although it takes up quite some time to produce this show, I really love doing it. Especially when reading all the great reactions world-wide.
The down-side of the past years activities is that I haven't really made any solo music which has been released. But this is about to change now that the Second Identity album is finished.So in short, last year has been absolutely great. But I am looking forward even more to the rest of this year and next year. It's time to play some music for you all!!
2. Let's talk a bit more about the new album. It will soon be released. What can we expect of Second Identity's new album?
You can expect a really diverse album with a lot of original tracks. Of course there will be a great collection of melodic hardstyle tracks. But we also tried to search for some boundaries by creating tracks with acid sounds, distorted sounds, old-school reverse bass, breakbeat / dubstep parts, etc. We also tried different arrangements in our tracks sometimes. I think this is good for the overall hardstyle sound. Furthermore the album will be built-up like a real dj set. We want to have the built-up back on parties. So no 154 BPM and hardcore kicks in the beginning of the evening. But just great ‘round' hardstyle. Of course the ending of parties has to be haaaaaarrrd
We think it has to be like this, so that's why we also created our album like this.
3. Second identity's first big gig was Hardbass, how was that? And what has happened since then? Both with the Second identity project, but also between Dennis and yourself? What relationship do you guys have with each other?
When you share such a big stage (over 20.000 people in front of you), the band grows stronger. We had an absolute euphoric feeling after it. HardBass made us see that we could do great things together as a team. And that we could improve ourselves by working together even more. Around that time we decided to produce a complete album. I still look back at all the YouTube movies made during our set. It was absolutely amazing!
4. How will you describe the new album? The sound of it? the feelings around it and so on?
In overall the sound can be described as following: energetic, driven, melodic and atmospheric. We discovered that we both like themes such as Space, Mystery, Myths, etc. A lot of track ideas are based on those personal interests. Most of the kicks and reverse basses are sounding round, which gives it an open and fresh sound. On top of this, everything in the album is completely original. So no movie samples or copied melodies. We hope that everybody will have some personal favorites, just like we have!
5. Who is your idol?
Well, there has never been any idol hanging on a poster of my bedroom wall. So I don't have any real idols. Of course there are people to whom I look up to. But this changes regularly. As a kid I used to look up to soccer players. As a teenager I looked up to the breasts of all the Baywatch actresses and nowadays I look up to certain producers. But when I think of it now, my overall idols are probably my parents. They taught me so much and opened up a lot of doors for me!
6. You have also recently started to host the Scantraxx radio show, tell us something more about that? How is it, to host your own show?
As I said earlier, I wanted to do this for a long time. When I spoke with Scantraxx about it, the idea of the Scantraxx Radioshow was born. After some try-outs we decided to invest some more time in it and last July we launched our first show. The name "Radioshow" might be a little bit confusing to some people. In general it's a sort of pre-recorded PODcast with all the latest Scantraxx releases included in the first 30 minutes. So this is not my own DJ set, as I just present the tracks. The last 60 minutes of the show are filled with a special Scantraxx artist guestmix. I will do a guestmix myself someday too of course!
We still have a lot of ideas for the future, including a live radioshow someday!
I've been one of the longest members of the Scantraxx team since I joined in 2003. It's great to do the production and hosting of this radioshow. It feels like I'm giving something back, for all the chances they gave me! This radioshow is for the fans and hardstyle lovers. And of course it's a good platform for us Scantraxx artists, to show what we do!
7. You are coming to Denmark this Friday as Second Identity. This is not your first visit to our country. Are you looking forward to be back in Denmark? And what do you think about the Danish people?
This will be my fourth performance in Denmark. I always love to do there as it makes me realize that there are even more expensive countries as Holland. Heheh just kidding of course. The party people are great and they really know what's going on with new tracks and projects. I really do hope that the Danish people will keep going wild in the future and get an even bigger love for Hardstyle. This music united us! We, as Second Identity, are really looking forward to our next show in Denmark!
8. What can we expect of you guys this Friday? Something from the new album perhaps?
Yes, during our live-act, we will play pretty much all tracks from the album. Because the liveact mainly consists short versions of the tracks, we can probably play like 70% of the album. But we'll see how thing go on the night itself. Besides our Liveact, we will also play solo as A-lusion and Scope DJ. We both have new music ourselves too!
9. As we all know you are a well known figure in the Hardstyle environment. Tell the Danish fans something about yourself, they definitely don't know about you?
Pff, something you don't know yet. Ok here we go....
I'm addicted to chips. I eat it everyday. I eat like 4 or full 5 bags every week. I really hope that I can stop eating this much in the future, as it's not healthy. So going abroad to DJ, is actually pretty healthy for me, as these are the moments I don't eat large amounts of chips.
10. Thanks once again, for taking your time to do this interview. We are really looking forward to having both you and Scope DJ in Denmark again. Any last things you would like to say to your fans here in Denmark?
Make sure you come to our performance to hear the new Second Identity tracks as one of the first! Thanks for all the support so far, and keep it coming. If you want to interact with me, just go to: http://facebook.com/alusion. Check out the Second Identity facebook at: http://facebook.com/secondidentity