Breaking The Mould

Tiësto may have christened the hybrid of trance and house, 'trouse', but his pal Ferry Corsten pioneered it back in 2002 with the crossover hit, Punk. “I like to think of trouse as 'hance' – honestly!” Corsten quips. “It's house with trance, not trance with house.”

The Rotterdam native built his rep in the trance underground. He's still feted for his System F project, Out Of The Blue, a classic. He'd establish his own name with several 'artist' albums. Corsten has also remixed major pop acts, lately Justin Bieber's dubstep-esque Just As Long As You Love Me.

The DJ/producer is returning to Australia with a fresh concept that will appeal to fans of, er, hance, trance and house. Full On Hosted By Ferry Corsten involves him interacting with other DJs – in this case Swedish houser Zoo Brazil and US trancemeister Shogun. “I'm sorta like the glue,” Corsten says. They all play solo sets and, in between, tag team. “It is more like a concert show, in a way. It comes with a full production – custom-built visuals and everything. But what makes it really nice is that I think as a clubber at the Full On event you really feel that you're part of a big family. It's not just the crowd's on the one side and the DJ is on the other. It's all together, really. Even among the DJs, we all play together, basically.” The Dutch trance contingent has upped the ante for DJs everywhere with stadium shows, Corsten conceding that it's now competitive. “I just look around and I see what's missing sometimes or what I would do in certain situations.” In developing Full On, he realised that, Swedish House Mafia aside, the communal feeling was missing in EDM. “All the DJs are so on their own islands. This is my performance and this is me.”

Corsten dropped a fourth album in February. WKND is, he says, “sort of like house meets trance – it's very melodic but in general it's a little slower.” The fusionist has worked more with singers, the best known of them Armand van Helden collaborator Duane Harden (It's not the first time he's hired vocalists – Corsten teamed with the late Guru on 2006's LEF LP). The Dutchman admits that he wants to “reach a wider audience,” though not necessarily via commercial radio play. “It's just a new thing for me again.”

Corsten's desire to try new things has often raised the ire of trance purists – especially when he aired Punk (recently remixed by Russian Corsten fave Arty). “I did get a lot of stick for that; 'How can you do this to your trance fans? We want your Gouryella [his gig with Tiësto] and System F sound!' Yeah, that's twelve years ago, guys, I grew up as well. You move on. I do those things not always having in mind that I wanna be innovative or anything – that doesn't really come up in my head. It's more like, 'Okay, I've been doing this and this already for a while and I need to inspire myself and trigger myself into something new,' just so I'm in the studio again really excited about something. I'm the type of person who, if I do something over and over again, I get really bored and I go numb. So I need a change for myself in order to stay enthusiastic in the studio. I know that some of my fans really want to keep me there in this glass box – like, 'Okay, this is how we know you and this is how we want to keep you.' But, if I do that, I'll die.”

Luckily, the haters usually come around once they've familiarised themselves with something. Corsten copped it with last year's “very housey” single, Check It Out, but today it's one of the tracks that goes down best in his sets. “It's a funny sort of psychological thing that people have to go through, I guess – and myself included!”

Ferry Corsten will be playing the following shows:

Friday 21 September - Palace Theatre, Melbourne VIC
Saturday 22 September - The Hi-Fi, Sydney NSW
Friday 28 September - Family Nightclub, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 29 September - Fresh, Hobart TAS
Sunday 30 September -  Villa, Perth WA
Monday 1 October - HQ Complex, Adelaide SA