Armin van Buuren doesn’t really do interviews anymore. He’s reached the upper echelons of his chosen career, and doesn’t really need to. The “trance overlord,” as someone dubs him at the Q&A that your DJ Mag hack hosts with him at this year’s revamped Winter Music Conference in Miami, is one of the most successful people in dance music — seen as impeccably clean-cut and well-adjusted by some, as godlike by others. He’s the unflappable, intelligent, fan-friendly king of the #TranceFamily; the record-breaking five-time winner of the Top 100 DJs poll. He’s rich, he’s famous, and he’s remained staunchly loyal to the oft-maligned sub-genre of trance that others distanced themselves from during the EDM boom. Your hack has known Armin for a long time — perhaps 17 years — but has never done a proper interview with him. There’s been plenty of meets at Top 100 DJs poll-winners parties, of course, from before he was No.1 DJ in the world to his long reign at the top, and then his magnanimous passing of the baton — usually to a fellow Dutchman. Armin has always been friendly, polite, confident and unassuming, with no hint of unhappiness or lacking of conviction in himself. As we take up a position on some comfy white sofas for the interview on the roof of the Faena Hotel in Miami, Armin really opens up for quite a revealing interview. But first, some history. Too young for the clubs at the time, Armin discovered dance music through radio. He got his first sampler in 1992 and started producing at the age of 16, scoring his first releases on Dutch label Timeless Records in 1996, before galloping sci-fi trance missive ‘Blue Fear’ started getting played by John Digweed. Initially released on small Dutch imprint Cyber, the track was signed to ‘Northern Exposure 2’, Sasha & Digweed’s hugely influential compilation series, as well as being licensed to Bionic Beat in Germany and Xtravaganza in the UK, a fledgling trance label that had early success with Chicane’s beatific ’Offshore’ release. Armin started DJing around the Netherlands after finishing his law degree, and just after the Millennium got booked for his first international gig. “My first gig outside the Netherlands was in Cream in Liverpool, at the Courtyard. It was February 5 2000, which happened to be the exact same day that my single ‘Communication’ was picked up by AM:PM,” he recalls, very specifically. “A year and a half later, I first travelled to the US. I first played in Denver, and then the same weekend in Washington D.C. It was for Pete [Kalamoutsos], who now has Echostage, the No.2 club in the world. It was the start. I always consider myself very lucky, cos I was on the trance boat.” He starts talking about the “golden age of trance,” the amazing nights he’d have at The Gallery at Turnmills in London, at Golden in Stoke-on-Trent in the UK and so forth. But how did his first gigs in the United States come about? Armin cites having ‘Blue Fear’ on the ‘Northern Exposure 2’ comp and starting his own radio show as the main contributing factors.

“I always promised myself as a little kid that if I ever had the opportunity to make my own radio show, I would do it,” he says. “I felt it was the most direct way to introduce new music to your fans.” He started a weekly show, A State Of Trance, in June 2001 — in Dutch — and a couple of guys in the north of Holland started illegally streaming his show on the internet through Shoutcast, an early streaming protocol. Trance enthusiasts from around the world began following the show, communicating with each other via IRC chat. “For American people in the beginning, it was really hard to find trance music,” Armin says. “It was nowhere.” Yet the internet had just started changing the world. Six months after he started A State Of Trance he was on his way to the United States for the first time — flying economy with his manager David Lewis, his box of vinyl in the hold. Because the United States is such a vast territory, it took a long time for trance — and Armin’s American popularity — to really get going. “When I speak to someone from America they’re always a bit ashamed that they were a little bit behind,” Armin says, “but I always reply, ‘You guys invented house music, without you we wouldn’t even be talking about trance music.’ If it wasn’t for Chicago, and the early adopters — the Kevin Saundersons, the Todd Terrys and the Masters At Work — we wouldn’t even be talking.” Another significant development in Armin’s North American advancement was signing to Ultra Music (no relation to the festival) after an intern there — a fan of the ASOT radio show — played Armin’s music to the head of the label. “They signed my very first album, ‘76’,” the Dutchman explains. “They didn’t like the cover, so we had a different cover for the American version, but the music they kept the same. He was the one who suggested that I should do an uplifting mix of ‘Burned With Desire’ — which I initially didn’t want to do, because I approached that track as a chill-out track with Justine Suissa. It was picked up by Radio 1, it was on the Radio 1 playlist in the UK, and it was picked up by KTU [radio] in New York and became my first club hit in the US — when everything was still vinyl.” Nevertheless, Armin’s progress in the States was gradual, he says. “The spread of trance happened very slowly in America — especially for me. Tiësto was different, I think, because he had a god-status in the US and was already massive — he sold out arenas on his own in 2004, 2005, when the rest of us were still in clubs.” Over time there came to be big trance followings in the New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, reckons Armin, “Chicago a little bit too. Miami was very important, I found a good trance following in Denver, Dallas and that area. But it took a while — it was a club thing for a long, long time.”

“Out of the 10 positive comments on a gig, there’d be one negative one — and that would destroy my life. I wasn’t able to sleep, I was using alcohol too much, and I was feeling depressed — I was really depressed about being No.1. It was crazy” Armin starts talking about the importance of festivals these days, but DJ Mag wants to know if there was any sense in which he and his team wanted to ‘crack America’? “Of course, behind the scenes we said that to each other, ‘We’re gonna rule America, we’re gonna conquer the continent,’” chuckles Armin. “David [Lewis] even set up shop in New York, and for a long time we talked to several American management companies to take me on as a DJ, but Dave was pretty stubborn and said he wanted to do it himself. “I never did a bus tour, which was pretty regular at the time,” he continues, eloquently. “DJs did bus tours, cos clubs were very important to the scene. Now the fans just come to EDC or Beyond Wonderland or Ultra Music Festival, cos that’s where they get their share of the music that they want to hear.” He starts listing some of his favorite gigs from across the States. “My residency at Vision in Chicago — Excalibur, as it was called back then,” he begins. “My biggest show in the US was selling out Madison Square Garden — twice, once with A State Of Trance, once as Armin Only. Playing the Forum in LA... but those were just the big shows, y’know. But I think my first time at Ultra Music Festival was a big one, too.” Armin has run an A State Of Trance stage at Ultra for nine years now. Sat in the sunshine, he continues talking about significant moments for trance in the United States. “I want to say 2008 was a really important development for dance music in the US because that was the year, to me, that David Guetta had those massive radio hits like ‘Love Takes Over’. All of a sudden those hits were being played on daytime radio in the US, and that sparked A LOT. There was already something happening in Europe with the Global Gatherings and the Gatecrasher Summer Soundsystems and the Creamfields and all that — in the UK it was already big, but something really happened when 2008 hit, and we all benefited from that. Hate or love David Guetta, he opened a lot of doors for all of us.” “Of course, the wins of the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs poll were also extremely important for my career in the US, too,” Armin continues. “In 2007, I was voted No.1 for the first time. After I got the award in London, I flew to LA for a gig at a place called Vanguard. And all of a sudden I had these shirtless dudes in my crowd. They hadn’t come to see Armin van Buuren, they’d come to see the No.1 DJ in the world. That’s when I realised how big that title was, and how much it meant. “And with the different crowd came a higher expectation — at least, that’s the pressure that I put on myself. And after that came the depression that I went through in 2010. I was with a coach, and I wasn’t feeling happy about myself. I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing.” How come? “I’m too much of a pleaser — I always have been,” he admits. “It’s not a pleasant characteristic to have, because you’re never going to please 100% of people — that’s a given. Yet I was trying so hard. So out of the 10 positive comments on a gig, there’d be one negative one — and that would actually destroy my life. I wasn’t able to sleep, I was using alcohol too much and drinking too much at home, and I was feeling depressed — I was really depressed about being No.1. It was really crazy. Not that I wasn’t thankful for that title, but I was no longer the Boy Wonder, the guy next door who just played some tunes that everybody liked. I was also the No.1 DJ in the world, which was a great thing to have, but it was hard to get over it. I knew that one day I wasn’t going to be No.1 any more, and I was so scared of that moment — what’s going to happen to me then?”

Armin’s last No.1 gong came in 2012, and he suggests that the pressure came off him after he relinquished the top spot. He got a Grammy nomination in 2013 for anthemic trance-lite ditty ‘This Is What It Feels Like’ featuring Trevor Guthrie, and felt like he could cross off topping the Top 100 DJs poll from his list of achievements. “That’s not to say I don’t want to be No.1 anymore — if you ask Steven Spielberg if he wants to win another Oscar, I’m not gonna lie, you’re only as good as your last film or last production,” he says. “But I’m also happy that Martin Garrix has it now, he’s the face of a new generation and extremely talented. “If it’s given to me again I’d be super happy and thankful, but I understand now that just trying to please your fans is not going to give you any personal satisfaction,” Armin continues. “It’s always a balance between you wanting to please some fans, and your own choices and your own character development.” With the pressure off, he says, a new chapter started for him and he started to embrace songwriting and producing more pop-oriented songs, “to try to veer out of my comfort zone in trance,” he says. “I really found my love back for producing — also by doing these strange collaborations with [rapper] Mr Probz or [Dutch rock band] Kensington, the kind of people you don’t expect me to be working with.” It’s a surprise to hear Armin talk so frankly about his mental health. DJ Mag wants to know how he got through his depression in 2010. “By gigging less, saying ‘No’ more,” he says, “which is difficult, especially if it’s your passion. Let’s be honest, right? It’s a very tempting world with the attention that you get; the adoration, and everything that comes with it — the private jets, the drugs that are being offered, the women that throw themselves at you. Is it true? Well, partly. That’s never been the main focus for me, and that’s why I’m glad that I’m married and had a stable family background. The birth of Fenna, my daughter, in 2011, kinda saved me in a way, because when she came it wasn’t about me anymore — it was about her. I think that changed me. “I think I started to believe too much of my own success maybe, too,” he continues. “So I did less gigging, I went to a coach, I was reading a lot. I took a few really long holidays and was just sleeping there. And I started making different music. That time in 2010, a few other DJs who knew about my mental problems were sort of laughing at it — it wasn’t common then to talk about it.” There’s been a real sea-change in thinking in the electronic music industry in the last couple of years in relation to mental health, says your DJ Mag hack — an extremely welcome development. “It’s great the way we can talk about it now,” agrees Armin. “At that time, when I was No.1, I was afraid to tell even you that. It was something that you didn’t talk about. I never thought about suicide or anything, it also depends on your character and who you are, the people that surround you — there’s a lot of factors that you have to take into account. “I’m very lucky that I had a very stable upbringing,” he continues. “In a way I don’t feel part of this industry at all, because I’ve never been a party animal like many other DJs that are now legends. I’ve never done any excessive drug use or partying until 9am in the morning — I’ve always been focused on the music. That always made me feel a little bit weird, that I didn’t feel a connection with that world.”