Not only did we get a chance to catch up Audrey Napoleon at Identity Festival Philadelphia, but we also got a chance to talk to the Showtek duo, Sjoured and Walter. These two in my eyes have been blowing up big on the scene, and they’re only just beginning. The brothers were nice enough to answer all of our questions on their tour bus before hitting the stage. Here’s what we talked about…
JON: How has the tour been going for you guys so far?
Sjoured: Really great! We’re not used to touring along in the bus so it has been new for us, but besides the bus, the ID crew is one of the most professional businesses we’ve ever worked with. Besides the great shows we had like Detroit and New York, which we played for 15,000 people, it was insane! It has also been really cool after a show to hang out with all the other guys like Excision, Datsik, Noisa, and Eric Prydz. The good thing of it is that the whole crew is going from city to city so you start the day off saying Hi to everyone.
Walter: It’s like camping!
JON: So tell us a little more about the New York show. How did it go?
Sjoured: 15,000 people and we played on the Rockstar stage because we have this hard edgy party sound, but they asked us if we wanted to do a show on the main stage and we were so happy with it. In our opinion, I think we killed it but we had to turn it down a little bit because Mr. Prydz was on after us and you have to show some respect, but it went off and it was crazy.
JON: So where is Showtek originally from and how did you two as brothers get involved in the scene?
Sjoured: We are from the Netherlands.
Walter: We started about 10 years ago; we were already pretty popular in Holland. We played on every main event and played solo shows for like 6,000 people so we were kind of hitting the ceiling there. But actually the last three years we started going world-wide, and being behind the scenes with people like Marcel Woods for like eight or nine years, so we’ve been working on different kinds of music besides Showtek for our whole career but we never showed anybody. The last three years we’ve also been working with Tiesto on his productions like ‘Maximal Crazy’ and ‘Tornado’ with Steve Aoki.
JON: So the name Showtek is showing up a lot, not only with your collaborations but with the crowd as well. Can you tell us a little more about what goes into Showtek?
Sjoured: Yeah, our name is growing really fast lately. I don’t know how it happens, but our career is always going forward naturally. We never try to push it that hard, we just want to make really good music, and produce with artists that we want to work with on solo tracks. The main thing of our show though is to make it a hell of a concert and make sure people want to come back. There is always a little hype after the show.
Walter: We closed down EDC last year (2011) in Vegas and we had a huge response to that, and I think we were in the right place at the right time. But we work really hard in Holland to accomplish all those things. Especially if we work with Tiesto as well on his remixes and productions so we’re really busy. But now we said that it’s time for us now because we’ve been doing the hard dance sound for a long time and now we’re practically doing anything from electro to weird Moomba stuff.
Sjoured: We’ve always had this hard body sound and people ask if we’re changing. We’re not changing, we’re just expanding because we travel so much all around the world and we think it’s so important to surprise people.
JON: I think this really says a lot about you guys. You’re looking for ways to surprise the crowd constantly and really bring that to the foreground when you’re on stage! I think it’s great that you are concerned with bringing a new experience to the crowd every show and in my opinion, this is what separates you guys from the ever growing pack of wolves.
Sjoured: Thanks man! Times are changing though because we’ve wanted to do this like five years ago, but there was no scene for it then to drop our names with Tiesto or Marcel Woods. I remember just sitting there with Tiesto working on a track, and I said “Fuck it, why don’t we just drop both of our names on it” because it’s all about the music and we had so much fun, why should we hold back. We wanted to surprise people, and I think if you’re ready for it as a person and the scene is ready why not just go for it, and I think everyone loves it.
Walter: In Holland, it’s very hard to do something different. You’re either electro or hard dance or trance, etc. so we couldn’t express ourselves fully. We wanted to do more but there wasn’t really a market there, but then here in America you hear guys doing anything and mixing it up. So we don’t know what’s going to be next, or what we’re going to do, we’re just going to see. We’re just going to go in the studio and if it’s going to be working on something with Noisa, working on something that’s 190bpm we don’t care, it’s just going to be fun.
JON: Thanks for taking the time to sit down with us and answer some questions.
Also, shout out to their manager Grant who was really accommodating in setting the interview up.
You can stay up to date with Showtek on Twitter, Facebook, and on their website as well:
www.Facebook.com/showtekofficial
www.Twitter.com/showtekmusic
www.Showtek.nl
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