Paul Van Dyk spoke to the ECHO about his new album and upcoming event in the city
Paul Van Dyk is coming to Liverpool(Image: www.lukashaupt.cz)
Legendary German DJ, producer and Grammy award nominee Paul Van Dyk talks to clubs editor Emma Johnson about his new album This World Is Ours, the Liverpool crowds and his favourite memories of his days at CreamHi Paul thanks so much for your time. It’s an absolute pleasure to catch up with you again…Thank you so much for having me!
We are very excited to have you coming back to play for us in Liverpool. When did you last play the city?
Too long ago! Can we say that? No, I believe it was just before the pandemic. October 2019 at Camp and Furnace for Cream’s anniversary show.
You were here a lot in the days of Cream. Do you have any special memories from that time?
I remember one time when I’d been playing the Annexe when Oakey [Paul Oakenfold] had his residency there and I heard he was playing a track from my then just-released Seven Ways album.
Then the second track was from the Seven Ways album and then the third and the fourth, and he basically played the whole album. I was just standing there shaking, I just couldn’t believe it. Oh, and I also fell down the stairs once too!Are you looking forward to playing to the Liverpool audiences again?
Always. Back in the weekly Cream heyday, you used to get people travelling from all over the UK to club there. Nowadays though, for the anniversary shows, you get a lot more of a pure Liverpudlian audience. As such you get more of a sense of the people and their spirit, I think.How has 2025 been for you so far?
Amazing, and amazingly busy, for reasons I think we’re going to talk about later…You have your first album in five years out this month. You have said that This World Is Ours explores the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it will impact us as humans. What made you go in that direction?
In short, some degrees of concern. Currently, This World Is Ours is a statement of fact. We might have inherited the world; we certainly don’t always treat it as we should, but it’s been ours ever since we stepped out of the ocean several hundred millennia ago.However, we’re on the five to ten-year cusp of creating something that’ll significantly disrupt that. An entity that thinks, calculates, achieves, a thousand times faster than we do. I feel there needs to be more thought about that … and we’re speeding towards the last station-stop to do so.How do you feel personally about AI? Does it worry or inspire you?
To date, technology has always inspired me, right back from when I first began creating music. With AI though, I do have worries, yes. It’ll bring the tipping point at which we, as humans, cease to be the creative force in music making. But it’s as much the bigger picture than that. Artificial Intelligence isn’t music technology, or film, or entertainment, social media, military, finance or any other sector. To my mind, it may simply become the new definition of ‘technology’.You collaborate with a number of artists on the album. How did you choose who to work with?
It all came about through having conversations with people like John 00 Fleming, FUENKA, Sue McLaren, The Yellowheads, and others like Christian Schottstaedt and Reznor. Through tracks like Take Me Away, Against The Algorithm, Let Go And Listen, Back 2 The FVTR, Gatekeeper and naturally, This World Is Ours, we’ve channelled our feelings and intuitions about the course our planet is on.What do you hope people take from the new album?
I truly hope it will give people pause to think about how artificial intelligence is at this very moment, and going forward, changing the world around us.You are in the middle of a world tour. Do you still enjoy DJing in front of people as much as ever?
It’s second only to oxygen for me. I don’t know what I’d do without it. There was a point in my life about 10 years ago, following an accident on stage, when that became a real possibility. As I began to recover, how close I’d come to not being able to play again was one of the hardest parts to reconcile with.What is the most important thing to you when you are formulating a DJ set?
Crafting moments in time for my audience. Finding a way to create something truly unique and memorable, that will stay with them for as long as is humanly possible.Do you still have any dreams to fulfil in your music career?
At this stage my dream is to stay free, to be able to do exactly what I want to do artistically – DJing, production, remixing or in any other form it might take – whenever I choose to do it. Nothing is more important to me than having that freedom.*Trancecoda x Paul van Dyk presents This World Is Ours at the Dome at Grand Central on Good Friday (April 18). See Skiddle for tickets