The Thrillseekers in one word is legendary…

…from his larger-than-life personality, gorgeous melodies and breakdowns, and some of the best tracks as he is in a very special class. He may not have a massive discography, but he has one of the most consistent when it comes to quality. Spanning three decades of producing and releasing music, The Thrillseekers is now navigating the realm of streaming in this new environment as he’s finding a place that sets him apart while still delivering quality to his fans.

Speaking with the legend, he will have you laughing and appreciating his honestly, flair and wit that can be lacking in other artists. A good read to reconnect why you fell in love with his music from the beginning.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me and pardon the cheesy line, but ‘connect’ with me today. How have you been? Are you excited to be back touring and playing shows? When can we expect you to be back in the USA?

So how have I been? Well, it’s been a weird few years as it not just for me, but for everybody. Yeah, I’ve kind of battled on with the hope that one day we’ll get back to touring, and we’re kind of about to start doing that. And I’m going to be heading over to the USA, next week, for Dreamstate. Super excited to be coming back. Of course, it’s been at least two years since I was in the USA and it’s one of my favorite places to come and play, especially in California as well. So, I hope to see you next week on the Friday. I believe I’m playing and yeah, I’m getting a little bit excited

We all know your love of vinyl, and you still release on vinyl today. Why is keeping this form of distribution important to you? Besides convenience, what is the difference in your opinion of digital vs vinyl?

So why is it important to me? But you know what? I kind of like a lot of DJs back in 2005, 2006, 2007 when I transitioned from Vinyl to CDs. And at the time that seemed to be a really innovative new futuristic way to perform and brought lots of new options. What it also brought was a lot of automation to DJing. So, there was very little skill involved. Because so much of it is just taking care of, by matching numbers on a screen.

At that time, I also sold a lot more records. In fact, I couldn’t even give a lot of them away because nobody seemed interested in vinyl anymore. And over the years, I started to kind of miss the tactile nature of DJing and I started to play with Sam Mitcham for an event, it is called Wax Format. And it just made me realize how much more fun playing on vinyl actually is. And you know, another aspect is when you stood on stage mixing with USBs or CDs, that there is nothing to do really other than choose the next track and, you know, everything’s taken care of in terms of beat matching and syncing up because, technology takes care of that. When you’re playing on vinyl, you are touching the disc all the time. You’re speeding up, slowing down and there’s so much more involvement. And when I played vinyl again, maybe about five or six years ago, having not played for 10 years, I just really reconnected with it.

So, during looked down I saw everyone jumping online and doing mixes online, from their studios and nobody was doing vinyl and I thought, “I’m going to try to be a little bit different” and I thought I’m going to just do this with vinyl and I ended up buying all the records that I sold or gave away years ago. And it just became a bit of a passion for me through lockdown. And I thought well, I’m going to also create an income for myself by selling vinyl as well. So I kind of got a lot of the tracks that I have released over the years and a lot of tracks that I’ve never released on vinyl before and I thought I’d compile those in two final compilations. So that’s why we connected vinyl compilations, which I’ve done volumes 1, 2, and 3 and I’ve done a classics volume and also in anthems volume, which is a collection of some of the biggest tracks that I’ve played as a DJ over my career.

So that’s kind of continuing to gather pace. I’m going to continue with more compilations just because there’s a lot of demand for it. People seem to be really into it and so many emails from people saying they’ve just got into vinyl for the first time or they’re getting their turntables out from The Loft after such a long time and it’s nice for them to have to get their hands on new vinyl. Even though a lot of these tracks are old classics, which I’m recompiling but people are enjoying it. I’m enjoying it. So I’m going to continue with it.

You found success on Twitch with your live streams. In your opinion, what made you successful on Twitch? Is this something you want to keep going as you go back to live gigs? Why or why not?

Do you know what the whole Twitch thing was just a need to play and connect with an audience and I kind of had so many emails from fans after my first couple of streams thanking me for actually connecting people. Because obviously, so many people go clubbing and feel part of the community and that was just taken away from everybody. So, it was almost like building a community online and, I didn’t truly understand how meaningful that was to the people that tune in every week until they started telling me, I just didn’t realize it really meant a lot to them.  So that was the reason I continue doing it because, you know, people told me it was really, really helping them through a difficult time. I’m doing less of the Twitch now; I was doing every week.

Now, I’m doing it every two or three weeks, and I will keep doing it and just because I love to play vinyl, and if I’m going to have a vinyl session at home in my studio, I might as well stream it. And chat with people online while I’m doing that. So yeah, I’m definitely going to continue that.

You have had some really awesome B2B vinyl streams, my favorite is definitely the one with Mike P.U.S.H, how was that experience?  If you could do a B2B with anyone, who would it be and why?

Yeah, the thing with M.I.K.E was great. I knew he was coming over to play at Creamfields in the UK. So I reached out to him. I said, look, why don’t you come over we can go for dinner. I’ll show you around my hometown and we’ll do a vinyl back-to-back. And he was bagged up for it. Mike has played on vinyl for about 10 or 15 years. Everyone says this, it’s like riding a bike. You never forget. You jump on and as soon as you get your first mix in, it all comes back and Mike was totally that way. He wasn’t actually nervous as I thought he would be. I mean, I was definitely nervous when I first started DJing again after a while. And but Mike just jumped into it. And we have a very, very different kind of approaches to mixing and it was really interesting to see how he mixed but it was absolutely brilliant. We both loved it and we’re going to do it again at some point in the future.

And if I could do a B2B with someone else, who would it be? It would have to be Paul Van Dyk because my first ever DJ gig was with Paul Van Dyk and I was kind of thrown into a back-to-back situation with him on a radio show, which went disastrously wrong because I just couldn’t mix, and I wasn’t ready for it. So now that I feel like I’m a little bit further on with my mixing skills 20-odd years in the future. I’m ready to take that up that on, so maybe that will happen one of these days fingers crossed, right?

Back in August you asked your fans what has been their standout Tune of the Year so far. What about yours? What tracks stand out to you and why?

For me, Ben Bohmer has been my standout artist of the year and his track Beyond Beliefs, which was his opening track when he did that live set from a balloon in Turkey, was just phenomenal. I don’t know what people think or call it progressive house, or whatever. It is to me just a really nice, lovely, slow, trance track and it’s a major track for me. Absolutely brilliant. One of those tracks I wish I could have written myself.

We all love your classics, but when can fans expect some more new music from you? Any plans for another artist album? If so, when? If not, why?

Well, there’s definitely going to be more music from me and nothing to announce right now because I’m keeping my lips sealed. So, you will just have to wait and see.

Finally, if you could only live by one motto, what would it be?

Well, it’s always been quality over quantity. I kind of live by that. I would rather release few meaningful tracks throughout my career than tons of tracks which are mediocre and just fly over people’s heads. I’m not into that. I would rather release a few tracks than many crap ones.