7. Afrojack

 Afrojack

“Of course, it's been a fucking great year!” says Afrojack, aka Dutch producer Nick Van de Wall. “I think we can all agree on that! I mean, 'Take Over Control' started out as a dance trac...

Style: Electro house

Best known for: Take Over Control.

Tune of 2011: Sebastian Ingrosso & Alesso 'Calling'

Breakthrough DJ/Producer of 2011: DJ Rehab. I signed him to my label, and now he's blowing up everywhere. That's something that I'm really proud of.

What's the future of DJing? It will all be digital, but I still think the feel for DJing will always be there because it's so much fun. To me, DJing is still taking two records and mixing them.

Favourite app? Twitter. I fucking love Twitter. Keeps me in touch with family and friends and fans. And who doesn't love Fruit Ninja?

Discovery of the year? The biggest thing I discovered this year is Dropbox. Oh and my car. I just bought an Audi RS6 and it's really, really, really fast. It does 0-60 in 3.2 seconds.

Rediscovery of the year? I'm the only one still playing this song, but Freeform Five, 'No More Conversations', the Mylo remix.

Awkward Moment? Last night, I was playing a party in Milan. I was supposed to play till 2.15am and at 2am the sound guy cut me off in the middle of a track. I got really pissed off, and started yelling at him like a mad man. I looked at the crowd and there were like 100 people staring at me. You forget there are people watching you sometimes.

Style or substance? Like titties or a beautiful mind? A combination.

Pet Hate? Arrogant people

“Of course, it's been a fucking great year!” says Afrojack, aka Dutch producer Nick Van de Wall. “I think we can all agree on that! I mean, 'Take Over Control' started out as a dance track, and now it's still rising in the Billboard charts. It's at 41 now, so it's fun to see that part exploding.”
In fact, this year seems to be the one that has broken him Stateside. As well as slowly creeping up the Billboard chart, he's jumped on the bill at the Ultra festival in Miami, the touring Electric Daisy Carnival and Electric Zoo in New York.
“Those were crazy festivals, 40 or 50,000 people for one stage. Creamfields was fun, but Creamfields is fun every fucking year.”

Van de Wall is also another evangelist about the scene in Las Vegas, like so many of the Top 100 this year. It seems that Sin City has finally decided that its pulse should be 4/4, rather than set to the time signature of R&B. He now has a residency at the swanky XS venue, and is rather excited by it.
“It's the most beautiful club in Vegas,” he says. “Every time I play there, you can see all of America in one place. It's like a satellite view. All the kids go there, all the VIPs go there and all the rich people go there. The whole world that is in America, they all go to Vegas.
“But it's not like it's commercialised over there. It feels bigger, but even now it's getting huge in America and there's much more marketing going on, bigger festivals and bigger crowds, it's still seen in American society as something that's underground. And that's why I like it. And it doesn't just have to be techno to be underground.”

Production-wise too, this year has been pivotal for Afrojack. Tracks like 'No Beef' with Dim Mak boss Steve Aoki and a remix of the track 'Techno Fan' for indie types The Wombats have him bristling with pride, but the work that might raise his profile further this year, particularly in the US, is his work with David Guetta - producing a clutch of tracks on the Frenchman's star-studded 'Nothing But The Beat' album, with the likes of Timbaland, but notably their collaborative track 'Lunar'.
“I'm really proud of that record,” he says. “It was supposed to be really crossover, but there had to be some tracks on the second CD that were mind-blowing, electronic tracks. So we came up with 'Lunar'. It's not necessarily an easy danceable track, but it's the biggest technological thing I've ever done in my life, engineering-wise,” he says. “It's the fattest thing you'll hear, I hope, in the next year or so. I still don't know how we did it, but we did it!”
Let's hope he keeps doing it.