Much as the ‘Brothers Jansenn’ may sound akin to that of the title of a classic fairy tale, the story of these two Dutch born brothers is one that certainly holds all the mystery, fantasy and excitement of a best selling page-turner. Soon to be a headlining part of the Resonate in association Goodgreef's Xtra Hard Album Tour line-up at this September’s Southern Sound Festival at Poole’s Canford Park Arena; Wouter and Sjoerd aka Showtek have already in a very short space of time, created a legacy in hardstyle that could easily be referred to as a meteoric boost to stardom since their first release ‘Controller’ on Tr@nsenti@l back in 2001.

Since then they’ve managed to clock up a huge number of white hot hardstyle hits and remixes across a variation of labels including Blutonium, Q-Dance, Megarave, Seismic, Full Effect, ID&T, Undercover, Scantraxx, Universal, Sony and Kontor. Add to this a collection of some of their now still much sought after work upon their very own label, Dutch Master Works and you can see why they continue to lay down original, throbbing, dark and melodic offerings of unquestionable underground main arena excellence.

As live performers, you only have to hit them up on You Tube to see one of their many breathtaking and energetic live performances across the globe and today, I took some time to talk to the boys and get into the history of the phenomena that is… Showtek.

Hello Gentleman! How has your day been today? Give us a little insight into what you’ve been doing when we caught you at the time of this interview?

In a hurry! (laughs out loud), no yesterday we came back from two weeks travelling at summer destinations like Ibiza, Milan, Lloret de Mar and Gran Canaria. As you can understand with this crazy summer madness, we did not sleep much and today is the only day we have before we go to Australia tomorrow!

Your story is one of legend. The hard dance press speaks of a meteoric rise to fame after the release of ‘Today Is Tomorrow’, however you’ve been working away in a studio together for a very long time have you not? Isn’t it true that you come from a very musical family?

Indeed. Already since 2000, so in 2007 we thought it was time to be the first in hard style land with their own album, not a mix CD but a studio artist album, all tracks written, composed and produced by us. Not only have we booked success in a musical career, but our Uncle is a well known Pianist and our Aunt has her own Theatre, so it’s in the blood probably! Walt started playing piano in the early days and that seemed to pay off now, also both of our Sisters played instruments.

Tell us of your first ever experiences as young lads making that first step into starting to create music, how did you buy your first studio set up, how long ago and what went into getting prepared to be Showtek?

As I say, we started somewhere around 1999-2000, with nothing, just samples and we didn’t even have a real Synth! We just got our first Synthesizer (for us the legendary Yamaha CS1X) from our Mum as a Christmas gift. She noticed all the enthusiasm we had in making electronic music on our home PC.

That was the start; the funny thing is that we managed to continue to work on this home PC without any musical abilities so far. After releasing a few tracks, we were able to invest some money in real studio equipment. The Showtek release in 2001 was directly a massive smash, it directly entered the Belgium dance charts, between names like Milk Inc and Dj Tiesto, etc - so we were already proud as hell.

Your chosen medium is hardstyle / hard dance, for those that don’t know describe your style, your sound and the creative process you apply to your productions that have made you one of the leaders in today’s ever expanding hard dance forum.

Very easy to explain this, we write a catchy song text, create a catchy and nice melody line, make a phatt bass line, add some magic herbs, put it all in the Showtek blender and voila… (laughs). Just kidding, we take our job very seriously and we think about lyrics all the time, write them down while flying in the air to another gig, just a kick and a melody is not enough for us. We really want to create a real song, which people can relate to and also can freak on, on the dance floor.

Also Walt plays the piano at home where he creates a lot of melodies, so when we start we already wrote down the lyrics and made a melody. Of course sometimes we just start from zero in the studio, because we have to tell you that it really seldom that we have an off day. A lot of people can’t imagine what we really do in the studio, its not just touching knobs and mixing, its art.

Dutch Master Works is your label; give us an insight into your reasons behind wanting to build your own platform, a little bit of its history and what the future holds for forthcoming releases? Do you have an overall favorite production thus far?

After being label sluts we wanted to put all that inspiration, creativity and hard work into something we could build up ourselves, a platform for our own music and for new artists with a unique sound. We started our label in 2005, just with own tracks and productions and a few collaborations. As we produce under various other names like, Duro, Walt Jenssen, Mr. Puta and Southstylers; it is very easy to release a big number of tracks on your label. Other names we have is Dutch Master and new names Abyss & Judge, great producers!

As we very busy with our new album which will be released after the summer, those tracks will be released all on DMW and we have some great tracks coming up from the other projects.

I think our overall favourite track is still ‘FTS’, we wrote this song for the people and for ourselves and the crossover is huge! We’ve reached so many people with this track, in a total of over 4 million people on You Tube alone!

You recently mixed Disc 2 of the forthcoming Goodgreef Xtra Hard album, how did that all come together for you, what inspired and influenced your choices for some of the tracks that you mixed there and how long did it take overall to get your part of the album together?

Since the first Hard Dance Awards album we’ve noticed a big change in the UK for us, we’ve gained a lot of Showtek fans which is great for us. First of all, the UK crowds are awesome, full of respect and really know how to get down. As we are also very occupied with our second artist album, we were not able to put a lot of new Showtek productions on it, so we chose for all our favourite tracks we’ve been playing so far this year and still play. It’s great to show the people what you stand for with this compilation, Goodgreef is a big brand in the UK and the combination of this will be a success.

Of course, much as our focus so far has been on your excellent production, you are also masters of the stage as DJ’s. We’ve always said if you’ve not witnessed Showtek live yet, then put it at the top of your priority list. With that statement in mind, tell us why it is people can expect more than just two DJ’s on a stage when they come to see you headline a show?

The name says it all, if you go to Showtek ‘live on stage’ we want people to have the best time, not just a night out, but we’ll take you on a journey, with mostly our own productions and other uplifting tunes and with Duro also performing as MC, we try to make a complete show of it, it is very important that people really get something back from you. We try to tell a story when we perform, we really enjoy it to be on stage, it’s a part of our lives and we want people to be a part of that and have the same fun that we have.

You were crowned winners of the ‘Best DJ’ accolade recently at the Hard Dance Awards, have you recently been given the nod for any other trophies or awards of late (or previously) and if so, in what countries?

Beside that we also got ‘Best Produced Track’, ‘Hold Us Back’ (Feat. MC DV8) on that same award show and got some other nominations. A few months later we received an award from Beatport.com for ‘Best Track 2008’ ‘We Live For The Music’

It so great to get all this recognition for our hard work and it really inspires us to continue to do what we love most, produce the phattest tracks and spread the sound Worldwide.

You are known and loved Worldwide for your work both as DJ’s and producers, do you have a particular favourite country to visit and in answering that which part of the World in your opinion holds the biggest scene for your sort of sound?

Hmm, that’s a hard one. UK is for sure one of our favourites, but we don’t want to forget our home base Holland where it all begun. Also, Australia is one of our faves, we did 2 big solos there last year with a total of almost 10,000 people - so it is really hard to mention one particular one.

Well, you’ll be touching down again in the UK upon the main stage at the Southern Sound Festival, on the Sunday, 20th September, which brings us to our closing question – how many festival appearances have you made this year and which have been your favourites and why?

Countless, if you bare in mind that we sometimes play in two different countries in one day, the festival season takes almost 5 months - starts in May and ends up in September. Dance Valley was a big success and also Coloursfest, which was extra special because we headlined between Ferry Corsten and Marco V, that just shows what we are capable of and we can expand our sound anywhere, every time.

Gentleman – thank you for your time today.

Thanks!

Be sure to catch Showtek as they bring their unstoppable magic to the Southern Sound Festival main stage as part of the Resonate Presents The Goodgreef Xtra Hard Album Tour on Sunday 20th September. The festival runs from Saturday 19th September till the Sunday at Canford Park Arena in Poole and full details can be found at southernsoundfestival.co.uk more information on Showtek’s productions, releases, remixes, albums and tour dates can be found at showtek.nl

With thanks to Showtek, Barry Almond at PFA and SL-DJ at Resonate.

Words: Jon-Brown
Pictures: Courtesy of Barry at PFA with great thanks to Nat-Wild-One-TS-NC