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Paul Van Dyk: Smiths, Rock Vote and Grammys

Author: Jonty Skrufff
Monday, February 14, 2005
"A Grammy is pretty much the biggest award you can get as an artist. Everyone says that even just being nominated is a huge honour and puts you on top of what you do."

Chatting down the line from his German headquarters, Paul Van Dyk admits he's excited about being up for a GrammyAward in the new Best Electronic/Dance Album category for Reflections. "I don't know anyone from the American Music Academy so I don't know what their view on things are, but it's great," he repeats. "Let's see what happens."

Whether he wins or not, his nomination is certain to boost his profile in mainstream America even further, on top the prominence he gained from being a figurehead for voter mobilisation organisation Rock The Vote in last year's Presidential elections. Fiercely critical of the Bush administration personally he nevertheless managed to maintain the impartiality necessary for his task.

"From the very first day that I was involved with Rock The Vote, I said: "I'm European, I'm German, I don't even have an American passport, I cannot vote, I'm not going to tell you who to vote fo. The only thing that I'm interested in is that you, if you have an opinion - go and vote'," says Paul. "I tried to push democracy in terms of a democratic process of election and I didn't tell them who to vote for. Throughout the whole campaign, when people asked me who I would vote for, I never basically said I would vote for this person or that person."

And three months after Bush won, he's as interested in US politics as ever, he insists.

"I didn't change my views on politics. For me politics is about getting involved and trying to change something," says Paul.

"I believe that's necessary, especially in times like this where some strange small group takes over America and is trying to attack the next country (Iran), while they're still in the middle of two wars they haven't finished. I'm still as politically interested and engaged as I was before, I think these times it's even more necessary that you do something when you see something is wrong."

Unsurprisingly, then, his follow up compilation to his mix CD Politics Of Dancing is called Politics Of Dancing 2, a project he's close (-ish) to finishing.

"I would say I'm still in the middle of the project, I have a lot of separate parts of tracks that I chosen, and I have to put all these parts back together and bring everything back to order," he explains. "I'm also just finishing off a new one, - a song of mine, that's going to be on the mix CD as well."

Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): How would you describe the compilation's musical style-

Paul Van Dyk: "It's what I would call up to date electronic dance music, ranging from techno-y things by Chris Liebing to smoother tracks, covering the whole range of styles I enjoy playing."

Skrufff: You spoke enthusiastically about catching Sasha playing a rock flavoured set in your Mixmag column recently, is rock an area you're tempted by-

Paul Van Dyk: "When I said Sasha was doing his rock stuff, it was like real rock stuff he was splaying, not just rock elements in electronic music, which I sometimes use. He was playing really cool rock tracks, somehow. But it's not for me. He's very special doing his own thing and I enjoy listening to Sasha doing it but I think it would probably be very annoying if someone else started trying to do it like Sasha does. I do my own thing."

Skrufff: You spent lots of energy campaigning for Rock The Vote last year, what conclusions did you reach from your experiences-

Paul Van Dyk: "In terms of persuading young new voters to the polls, Rock The Vote and all the other voter mobilization organizations were very successful. People talk about numbers being between 10 and 11 million new young voters, so that's a huge result. But obviously Bush mobilized even the last corner of the country and was able to get more votes. Fair enough, that's democracy so we have to accept that, but that
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