Tiga Quotes

“An old DJ dog like myself wants to make fun of what it's all become: Dutchmen playing Olympic ceremonies and progressive-house pool parties, and men in hooded capes existing in a landscape seemingly free from shame, irony and intelligence.

Once you strip away the giant black T-shirt, though, DJing is still magic.”

“At the beginning it was very simple: it was just records. It was very much about competition in finding records.

There were limited copies of everything. So you might actually be the only person in the city who could play a record. That’s quite a radical change.

For me the biggest change has been the limitations. When you can only physically travel with 80 records, your decision-making process is different.

The pre-planning is different. You have to problem-solve in a different way.”

“Because real DJing is about something that can't be packaged or replicated: it's about timing.

It's like stand-up comedy: you're only as good as the connections you make and the speed with which you make them.

DJing is wit. Oscar Wilde said that. Sometimes you have seconds to make a good decision.”

“DJing is an insane existential puzzle.”

“For me the best DJing in the world is always when you’re not really thinking. When you start thinking about it too much, usually people can hear it.”

“Humour for me is a pretty clear sign of intelligence. It’s like a shortcut.

If I think of anybody that I really love, there’s humour. Prince was hilarious. Same with Bowie.

And then obviously you’ve got Louis CK or Jerry Seinfeld, these guys are incredibly smart.

Lastly, there’s no faster way to finding out if somebody’s full of sh*t than if they’re not funny, if they can’t laugh at themselves, you know?”

“I only had 20 records in my diagonal milk crate, looking so ghetto and back then I would play every track, and I’m talking every cut. I had to work it because I had so few!”

“I think the easiest way to describe what I like is: dance music, groove and minimal rhythmic components with a little bit of pop.

Something that has just enough of a hook to make something not boring and entertaining, but without too much of a hook that it overpowers and dominates your imagination, you know? So that it leaves room.”

“I'm a romantic at heart. I believe that all DJs who deeply love what they play are doing things the right way.

It doesn't matter if people are pointing and broadcasting the set on the web for people to mock without pity.

If you're really feeling it, then you're the luckiest laughing-stock in the world.”

“Ideas are funny things, they come and go quickly. We all know what it’s like: you lie in bed and you have a good idea, or a funny idea, and it might just be gone after that.

It might never come back — or even worse — a friend or someone might say “Oh, that’s stupid.”

And then you turn around and go, “Oh yeah, that is stupid.”

Being influenced by other people too easily isn’t good.”

“It's going to sound a bit, I don’t know, ‘Buddhist’, but ideally you’re really not thinking while DJing and the connections really come from some deeper instinctual place.

It’s a little bit like when you’re telling jokes, like if you’re in a room at a party and you’re busting out one-liners with your friend.

There’s a time for you to develop the joke in your head, you drop the joke, boom, you say it, the distance between the idea, the opportunity for the joke and delivering the joke was too short.

Maybe there’s another guy in the room that’s still trying to think of the joke but you don’t pay attention to that.”

“Most think of the DJ now as a performer.

You’re buying a ticket to see a guy play an hour at a festival and probably that guy is a big name with a big logo and getting paid loads of money, probably has a few hit records out and that in essence is more like a concert, or at the very least it’s a condensed power approach to things.

He’s looking to play music you already know, probably some things of his own and he doesn’t have the time or the desire necessarily to spread things out. It’s a totally different dynamic.”

“My dad played music at parties in Goa, and I would help him make his tapes because I was super organised and had incredibly neat handwriting.

That was my first lesson in DJing: be organised. Also, I knew how the buttons on the tape machine worked, and more importantly what they could make hippies do.”

“The early equipment you really remember, because when people ask you what you used 5 years ago it's hard, but the original pieces really get stuck in your mind.”

“The first DJ that I saw and in my mind I was 'Oh my god I want to be like that', the one that really changed my life was Jeff Mills.”

“The idea of something being really original is an illusion. It’s highly unlikely you’re ever gonna do something really original.

But the closest you have is just something that’s yours, that you came up with honestly.

You have to be very anchored, you have to defend and fight for the little things that you like.

Not even so much because they’re good—though hopefully they’re good — but more because they’re yours. That’s all you have, basically.”

“What have I refused to adopt? I’ve refused to bring a laptop into the club, that’s my big stand.”

“When I went to my first real club, I saw the DJs in the corner and wanted to be them. Not so much to be the centre of attention as to be occupied. Maybe even necessary.

This strikes me as a radically different starting point than wanting to be the main attraction. I imagined the actual centre of attention was some cool guy at the party, you know, the kind with a collared shirt and a long curly hair.

The DJ had a realistic role, a respectable one, and I set my sights on that niche.”