Finland based DJ Orkidea is about to drop his latest album entitled 20 to celebrate 20 years of DJing. The album will be released on November 11th and it contains some of his recent productions as well as 2011 versions of some of his all time classics including Unity which was originally released in 1999. Electronic Night Life has been a major supporter of Orkideas work for quite some time so we decided to have an in depth interview with him to discuss the new album.

20 years of DJing is a mighty long time, what are some of the most important thing you have learned about music or the industry in all that time?

Wow! What a big opening question I’ve learned that in order to succeed (and feel good about it) you need to be passionate, trust worthy, open-minded, work hard and stay true to your own values and vision of the art you are creating. For most people (including myself) the success comes with help from some other talented people and it’s important to be respectful and thankful to all those individuals. And it may take a while that things take off so having patience and confidence helps too.

What inspired you to produce 2011 versions of some of your classics for your new album “20”?

The album has a certain retrospective element in it as it’s celebrating my 20 years of DJing. There will also be a big 30 date album release tour where I’ll be playing mainly my own music. I wanted to make fresh versions so that I can play more current versions of the most requested tracks. I worked for two years on the new version of ‘Unity’ so I don’t take revisiting classics lightly.

If you were to critique yourself, in what ways has your sound developed in the last decade?

Production wise the tracks have become fatter, wider, deeper and more polished. I think my sound has also become more confident and more edgy yet retaining the emotional and soft side of them. I hope that my music has the old school hypnotic vibe of trance, yet done with the most cutting edge production technology and sound.

Of all your productions, which track do you feel has been the most prolific to date?

It’s quite hard to pick up just one so I’ll say three. My debut single Unity (from 1999) was played by a wide range of DJs from Sasha & John Digweed to Pete Tong and Paul Oakenfold. That definitely opened lot of doors. Out of my many collaborations ‘YearZero’ together with Andy Moor has been the most popular while my version of Way Out West’s ‘Killa’ is the most prolific remix I’ve done.

Is it difficult to balance keeping your sound underground while still remaining successful in the process?

My philosophy is not to think too much of “how to make a successful track”. I follow my composer’s instinct and always have the dance floor in mind and trust that intuition will guide me to right direction. I am in a lucky position that I get income from my sound design work so that I am not financially dependent on my music production. That enables me to be even more true to my own vision and not trying too much to be “commercial”.

You latest album “20” will be releases on Solaris Recordings, how do you like working with that label?

With Rich Solarstone we share lot of same ground with our thinking about trance and DJing and also have long history in the scene so that helps a lot. The couple collaborations we’ve made have been super nice experiences too! MRC (under which Solaris operates) seems also like a bunch of very nice people who have nice attitude with doing things. So enjoying the experience very much!

I understand that you were organizing and promoting your own events in Helsinki for quite a while. Can you share some of your experience with that and let us know if you are still involved with it?

I’ve been doing events since 1992. I started with illegal underground parties and had couple afterhours clubs in 1992-1995.  We’ve run Club Unity since 1996 and together with those people we’ve done Renaissance events in Helsinki, organized parties in ice skating rings, parks, boats and even did One Minute Raves – one of the first flash mobs in Finland. During the years I’ve had artists like Eric Prydz, Paul Oakenfold, Sasha, Pete Tong, Sven Väth, Aeroplane, Nick Warren, and Jose Padilla playing at my events. So musically I’ve always tried to be as open-minded as possible.

Tell us about how some of your amazing tracks are created. What does your studio set up look like?

My studio is built very much around eight core Mac Pro with 36 GB of RAM. I work mainly inside the box so 99% of sounds are software created. I used to have lots of hardware but nowadays software sounds so good and is so easy that I’ve dropped all hardware. On software side Logic Pro is my sequencer and Arturia, KORG, IK Multimedia, Native Instruments, and effects are my main tools.

What do you think was the best year for Trance music?

There has been two years which in my honest opinion have been outstanding. 1993 was best year for the early (mainly German) trance from labels like Eye Q, Harthouse, Superstition and MFS with artists like Jam & Spoon, Cosmic Baby, Paul van Dyk and Oliver Lieb creating the foundation of trance music. 1999 was amazing with the Dutch revolution taking place in the more uplifting end of the spectrum and Sasha, Digweed, Warren, Seaman, Etc. playing and creating very trancey sound in the more progressive end, but there has always been amazing music out there.

Can you tell us more about the work you do at Nokia?

I manage the global sound design team of Nokia. We are responsible for all sounds in all Nokia devices which means filling every day over one million devices with sounds and music. This means ringtones, notification sounds, OS/UI sounds and preloaded music tracks.

Many DJ’s have dropped the DJ prefix to their names over the years. Do you still like to be known as DJ Orkidea, or just Orkidea?

The new album is by “Orkidea” without the DJ so I guess it’s phasing out. I’m so old school that I haven’t had a problem with keeping the “DJ” prefix there.

How are things going with Unity Records?

Unity Records hasn’t been active as I found it difficult to find the time needed to support the releases as well as they deserve. We had some amazing releases with Slusnik Luna’s ‘Sun’ being the most successful one. It was licensed to bigger label in UK and ended up making the UK singles chart Top 40.

Are you working on any other projects that you would like to share with us?

The sound design work at Nokia and the new album has been taking 99% of my time so not much other news. I am working on some remixes of the album tracks and then there is also the Orkidea remix of Finnish superstar vocalist Lauri’s new single ‘Disco-Nnect’ so those are the next Orkidea tracks coming out after the album. The first single of the album will be “Unity” with new versions by myself, Solarstone and Finnish progressive trance maestro Allende.

Do you have any other comments for your fans?

Thanks for all the old fans for sticking around so long and welcome all the new ones. Login on 11.11.11 to Beatport or iTunes and check out the album. Hope you’ll like and hope to catch you on one of my album release tour gigs!

 

http://www.djorkidea.com/

 

-          Interview by Zaneta Ortiz [ElectronicNightLife.com]