Sitting there before an interview. Your mind is blank. You don’t have anything to really focus on, because whatever you’ve read or heard about someone, its never quite the same as meeting them in person. You sit with people, slightly withdrawn, conserving energy to spend one moment on tenterhooks.

Displaying your most natural side you have to connect, talk and laugh with someone you’ve never met. You have to direct the interviewee without being overbearing. There’s a limited timeframe for you to ask all your questions,. You can’t labour too long on one point, yet you can’t be giving the impression that you’re just rushing through the questions.

All of this means you have to be an empty vessel. You have to be a blank sheet of paper waiting for the colour to be painted by your subject. You have to be as calm as possible so that you can pick up on everything being said and really listen…

Tonight however this isn’t the problem. We’re sitting in Bar M and I’m sampling the native delights of Nandos chicken wings (hot) and we’ve got half-plans to get the Amnesia bus. I’m drained like a 19 year old Scouser after a San Antonio slam session as I’ve been interviewing already today. We left our last job about ten o’clock and now we’re meeting Ferry Corsten. Awesome. Only tonight it’s a real situation. We don’t even know if Ferry can fit the interview in before his set as he hasn’t even touched down on the White Island as my last chicken bone hits the plate.

Gee gets the call and we’re told it could be anytime soon. I walk over to the stand next to the stairs and enquire about bus tickets to Amnesia, mentioning that we are press. We could be royalty however and it wouldn’t matter as we’re told there are no tickets left for the bus that we want. Ensue panic. We can’t find a taxi, so we walk down to the rank only to find a string 30 people long. We’ve not got long till Ferry’s going to be there. A release comes as Gee manages to score a last minute minicab and we’re on our way to Amnesia.

We pull up to the gates of the club and pay the taxi driver. Any general anxiety ceases few more phone calls later and we have negotiated our way into the VIP area in Cream with the same ease the Robert Mugabe wins a general election. However, we now have a new more specific anxiety as Ferry still hasn’t arrived at the club and he’s got less than an hour to go before his set. We’re lead off to the VIP balcony, and whilst Gee goes off backstage to take a few photos, I’m left, near a door, to await Mr Corsten’s arrival.

They always say that things come to you when you’re not looking for them. My mind is a thousand miles away trying to be a blank piece of paper and I’ve got girls coming up to me trying to make small talk. The funny thing is this usually doesn’t happen to me, but now, as I try to ignore the chit chat, the old negative psychology kicks in and the girls simply talk more. I stand and contemplate the never-ending mystery of why I don’t have a girlfriend, when Gee pops his head round the door and smiling his cheeky smile he rescues me from my pit of self loathing. Suddenly we’re on through and we finally get to meet Ferry.

Firstly Ferry, just so our readers can get an idea of who you are, can you please tell us what dance music means to you and how it changed your life?

Dance music is the music that took over my life since I was about nine or ten years old. I used to listen to this radio show featuring all the latest Dance music from the US. It was about that time I said to myself “hey, I want to do something with music.”

Was that the US funky house, like the original Garage sound?

No! It was actually way before that. We’re talking around 1983-84, the old Afrika Bambaataa and Mantronix sounds.

Did you ever get into the original Old Skool Hardcore scene in the UK?

Yeah I loved that stuff, the early break beat and jungle, I was a big fan. Especially Fabio and Grooverider.

So how did this love of music you’ve got lead you into becoming a DJ?

The DJ thing was inspired by the radio show I told you about. They had a competition where people could send in mixes, not like a DJ mix, just like a well-produced radio mix.

You mean like your favourite tracks all in a row?

Well, the challenge was you basically got fifteen minutes and you had to get in as many tunes as possible. You know, like cutting and pasting in the Old Skool style.

Did you enter and win?

(Ferry laughs) No. It just really inspired me to make mixes and go on to DJ. I went on to bedroom stuff then after a while a got a couple of gigs in clubs. The DJ thing however was more like a hobby, but I just got more and more interested in actually producing the music I was playing. My attention switched to production and all of a sudden I had a string of big hits, starting off with ‘Out of the Blue’ in 1999. That was part of the whole trance boom. When ‘Out of the Blue’ was released and it went straight into the Top Twenty all of a sudden clubs started calling me for bookings.

How did that feel after all the years of hard work and practice?

Weird! Because for so many years I told myself “I don’t want to become a DJ.” This was mainly because I didn’t want to give up my free Saturdays. That’s really how I like to live.

(This makes me laugh a lot - You simply don’t imagine big stars like Ferry worrying about Saturdays… It’s nice to see that whoever you are on the scene you appreciate being part of the party more than part of the production)

So clubs, parties and girls are more important to you than DJing? Sounds like you’ve got your priorities right…

Well I had this chance to play at these big club nights like Cream, you know, how could I pass it up.

OK then, well we’re here at Cream at Amnesia tonight, so how did it feel the first time you ever played here?

Oh man, it was really scary. The first time I played I wasn’t used to the set-up here. The decks were in a kind of metal container with a sort of cushion. That was one thing but they also have a kind of mixer with rotary controls, and I’d never used one like it either. It was really, really freaking scary.

So you’re up there, you’re at odds with the equipment, however did you manage to make it through your set?

I just knew. I just knew how it worked, and I worked with it. It was good fun and a good challenge.

So now you’ve played at Cream here so many times I bet you can’t even remember all of them, so what’s the very best thing about coming to Amnesia and playing here?

It’s must be the crowd that comes here. Trance Anthems in the main room, the house side of things with the terrace, people just know. For me, the collective feel of the Trance lovers give me that feeling that when I play here I know it’s going to be an amazing night. People come here to hear trance and that’s what’s so great about it; they know what they like and they get it.

So you’re now booked to play Creamfields this year in the UK, how do you prepare for such a big gig at a festival, do you have any pre-performance rituals you follow?

From a DJing perspective I like to find a few tracks which are really going to fit together well for the set. Then I try to find different combinations of those tracks. I do like to rehearse mixes so I’ve got a good idea of what sounds great, but ultimately I like to follow where the crowd want me to go. As soon as one thing stops working with the crowd, I just go off in a different direction.

I often think of DJing as a conversation with the crowd, so you’ve got to talk about what they want to talk about and sometimes give them the answers they are looking for.

Yeah, absolutely, sometimes I even like to make special edits and bootlegs of my own tracks for really big gigs; just to make it sound a little different at times.

Do you still get nervous?

You know what? It’s more like nervous in a healthy way, like a kind of excitement. The funny thing is I feel more nervous, in the traditional sense of nervousness when I play for a smaller more intimate audience. For instance in a room with four hundred people I really feel that the crowd are so close to me they’re checking me out, looking at what tracks I’m playing and watching everything I do.

You’ve really embraced the power of the Internet, playing an online DJ set at a club in the popular social networking game “Second Life,” how do you think the Internet can influence Dance music in the future?

I think that the Internet is the only thing that can keep Dance music alive. However, when I say that I feel a kind of sharp pain in my gut, because I also feel to some extent that the Internet is the medium that’s destroyed Dance music with the piracy and all that. Purely thinking about spreading the music, thanks to the Internet someone in some random little village in Alabama may now know who Ferry Corsten is, even if there is no record store or club nearby.

And they can also go on the Internet and find out about Ferry Corsten and read interviews like this one online. I’ve actually read on your website that you do a lot of work for the KidsRights foundation, that’s something very different from what a lot of DJs do; can you tell us a little bit about how you became involved in the charity?

My wife is a Filipino, she comes from a third-world country and there is a lot of misery there; I guess being so close to it and exposed to it rather than going in and out of it makes you more aware. I was at a party and a representative of the charity approached me. He told me that they cater for an older crowd, maybe a slightly richer crowd. We now want to reach out to young people so I got involved because there’s so many young people involved with Dance music.

Do you have any plans for children yourself?

It’s interesting you should ask that because my wife is actually pregnant at the minute. It’s going to make Creamfields a pretty interesting festival for me because the baby is due right around that time. As a result I’m not really going to be able to see any of the acts there, I’m just going to have to fly in and fly out.

Wow, do you know if you’re going to have a boy or a girl?

We don’t know what we’re going to have but we do want to know. We’re going to find out soon.

What about names, have you got a list of names for a boy, and another for a girl?

Well, we’ve got a few ideas but I’m not saying.

I’d like to do a few fun questions just to end on Ferry, because I know you’ve got to go and play your set any time now. So quickly, do you believe in ghosts?

Not in the Casper the friendly ghost kinda way but I do like to think there is something more to all this, I’m a spiritual person but not in the Biblical sense. Of course I think there’s just gotta be more to life.

What do you think of piercings?

In the right place they can be fucking awesome! (Ferry and I both laugh a lot at the implication of this statement in that ‘oh-so-knowing’ manner)

So you like them?

Oh yeah! Oh yeah!

We’ve got to end now Ferry so to wrap up the interview can you give us a statement for all your fans out there, all the Ferry Corsten lovers who’re going to read this interview?

We’ll I hope I’ve seen you out here in Ibiza, and if not I hope to catch you at Creamfields or at Amnesia next year; especially next year - we’ve got some really hot dancers!

And with that, the interview is over. Six hours of nail-biting ‘will-we-or-won’t-we’ followed by fifteen minutes of being the most relaxed person in the world. As I stand sipping a vodka and tonic, watching the gorgeous club dancers throw their contorted shapes. The heightened sense of anxiety is gone but isn’t replaced with a sense of victory or accomplishment. There is no one to share your victory or appreciate it. The work is only half done as the words won’t write themselves.

Admittedly the sense of release is overwhelming. It’s a green light for Gee and myself to have fun. I forget for a moment the work, the girls and the stretching of one’s stress levels around the schedules of a DJ and remember why it is I love dance music so much. Ferry has gone from conversing with me to holding a most intimate conversation with each and every single person in the crowd, myself included. I look down on the Amnesia DJ booth and he’s rocking the party. I slip away from all my day to day worries and cares and let the music take me away. For the first time in the evening, I allow myself to smile.

Photos by Gee - www.geespot.net