At the start of last month, Dutch sensation Dyro kicked off his first-ever Asia tour at Club Octagon in Seoul.
Even though this was his debut performance in both Asia and South Korea, there were no shortage of fans in the crowd. From signs to banners, it was clear that people were excited to finally see one of the biggest DJs in the world live in Seoul.
Before his set, we sat backstage with Dyro and asked him if he had experienced any ‘culture shock’ upon arrival.
He was quick to answer.
“Yeah, it’s kind of a culture shock…It’s like you see it in movies and TV and even in cartoons, and then you’re there. It’s like the real thing. It’s awesome.”
Many of our expat readers can probably relate to the feeling of stepping off a plane onto Korean soil for the very first time.
If you’re a regular ElectRow reader, you might remember our interview last year with Bassjackers at Global Gathering Korea. In that interview, Marlon mentioned their upcoming bus tour with Dyro, so we were eager to hear more about how the tour went from Dyro himself.
Besides having some bus issues which ultimately lead to canceling the last week of the tour, he told us that it went really well overall.
“For the last two years that I’ve been touring, we never had any major difficulties. And then on this tour they just gave us a faulty bus that was hell…”
He went on to say, “It kind of shows the other side. It’s not only fun and games and partying always. There’s actually sh*t going on.”
Another point that we really wanted to discuss with Dyro was what it was like to have his own label, WOLV.
We’ve spoken recently to a lot of DJs about constraints when releasing tracks/albums with a label that is after a particular sound or style, so we were interested to hear how that has changed for him since he started the label.
“That was one of the main reason[s] why I started my own label.
When you’re on a label…or when you make music and you want to shop it anywhere, you always have to mind the sound of the label. And you’re always producing in a box almost and not really doing your own thing…It’s hard, so that was one of the main reasons why I started my own label — to have complete freedom.
I’m the A&R manager. I decide what I release and what not. So, it gives me a lot of freedom and I think it really helped my sound. It helped me evolve more creative-wise.”
From running a label to touring to finding time for production, Dyro is a very busy man. We knew that balancing time must be a struggle, so we were curious how he handles it.
“Yeah, it’s definitely hard…It’s kind of tough to be handling everything at once. You find out the hard way, but I think we kind of have it under control right now.
My management is on it too and they’ve been doing Revealed for the longest time, so they know exactly how to run everything. I have a lot of help too, so I don’t have to do everything on my own.
The only thing I do right now is decide when something gets released and what gets released. So I’m basically the A&R manager — somebody that schedules everything.”
We definitely respect artists like Dyro that somehow seem to find a way to balance all of their duties while still releasing a stream of solid productions on their own.
As with almost all of our interviews with music producers, we ask for a brief production tip that they hold highly valuable — a golden rule, if you will.
Dyro gave a great response:
“I think the golden rule is: something’s never finished. So have peace with something never being finished.
If you feel like you’re still learning and you haven’t reached your level yet, be honest with yourself and don’t spend more than two weeks on one project. Just get over it and then go on[to] the next project.
I can’t even count how many songs I made before I actually made an actual song to be released. And it’s okay.
Every single song is like a learning process and it doesn’t have to be something that gets released. At that point, it’s really valuable to me.
You feel like, ‘Oh! This is the next big song!’ But eventually, looking back at it, it all sucked.”
It was interesting to hear this tip from Dyro, because we have noticed this trend with a lot of the successful producers we’ve talked to.
Many of them bring up the point that they have a lot of music that they have created and never released for one reason or another. Dyro told us that he still has his old productions saved and he finds uses for them sometimes.
“Yeah, I keep them saved and the fun thing is you can use certain elements of things you’ve already made and use them in your next song…And then you can use the best of that old project and then use it in something new and make it sound ten times better…It works.”
If you produce music, that’s some good advice for you to use!
As for music production software, Dyro uses FL Studio. FL Studio is a software that people often start using and never seem to want to leave from it.
“It definitely is, and a lot of people also think that it’s not the best software in the world…It kind of got a bad name back in the days when it was really easy to download and make crappy music on it. So you had a lot of people putting out music that wasn’t sounding really good.”
So once these people revealed they had made their “crappy music” using FL Studio, the reputation of the software was a bit damaged. However, Dyro stated, “Right now, honestly FL Studio, or Image Line, is killing it. Their on top of it. I even checked the new version they have coming out…it’s really cool.”
Dyro’s new track Pure Noise (Hardwell played it at UMF 2015) is set to release on June 8th on his label WOLV. Check out a preview of the track below.
He’s also got a lot of originals and some collaborations in the works with artists like Headhunterz, The Bloody Beatroots, and Milo & Otis, so stay tuned for updates on those!
Special thanks to Dyro and his team for allowing us some time to chat.
Also, thanks to Club Octagon for being a great host as always!
If you missed the set or want to relive the night, watch it here: Octaview #63 with Dyro.