By Umer Nangiana
For more than two decades, the world has known Paul van Dyk as one of Germany’s most successful musicians and as one of the ultimate superstars of electronic music. With his album tour, The Politics of Dancing 3, Dyk is coming to the city on April 16 at Indigo, Sheraton Doha, for one night only.
As an artist, DJ and producer, Paul has surpassed various milestones over the course of his career, including having sold more than 3.5mn albums and being twice voted the world’s No1 DJ.
He has remixed the likes of Madonna, Justin Timberlake, U2 and Depeche Mode. Earning a Grammy nomination and accepting the ‘Order of Merit’ from the state of Berlin are just two of Paul’s numerous accomplishments and accolades for his talents.
Matthias Paul, better known by his stage name Paul van Dyk, is an award-winning electronic dance music DJ. One of the true superstar DJs, Dyk was the first artist to receive a Grammy nomination in the newly added category of Best Dance/Electronic album for his 2003 release Reflections.
He was named the World’s No 1 DJ in both 2005 and 2006, something less than a handful of DJs have ever achieved. He was the first ever DJ to be named No. 1 by Mixmag in 2005. By 2008, he had sold over 3mn albums worldwide.
A trance producer starting in the early 1990s, Paul quickly achieved popularity with his remix of Love Stimulation by Humate on the record label MFS in 1993 and with his hit single For an Angel but, in recent times, he no longer likes to describe his music as trance, but rather simply as electronic music.
Dyk grew up in East Berlin. Living there, he worked as a broadcast technician and began training to become a carpenter. He claims his musical education came from radio. Because when he grew up there were no record stores to buy music. So he kept in touch with the world beyond the Berlin Wall by secretly listening to the popular but forbidden Western radio stations RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) and SFB and mixtapes occasionally smuggled into the country and copied among school friends.
Shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dyk and his mother were given permission to leave East Germany and moved to Hamburg to live with his aunt. In 1990, he moved back to Berlin. His first appearance as a DJ was in the Tresor in March 1991.
After several more dates, he was given the chance to perform at Juergen Kramer’s Dubmission parties in the Turbine club, together with the young resident DJ Kid Paul. The shows were called Paul vs Paul.
With Cosmic Baby, he collaborated as The Visions of Shiva. Their single Perfect Day was released by the Berlin independent label MFS (Masterminded For Success) Records, run by English expatriate producer Mark Reeder and manager Torsten Jurk.
In February 1993, Dyk and Kid Paul hosted an instalment of the weekly three-hour HR3 Clubnight radio show, performing for a nationwide audience on German radio. The second and final Visions of Shiva single How Much Can You Take? was released, and Dyk and Cosmic went their separate musical ways.
The musician’s performance is brought to Qatar by AliveQatar, Iconic Qatar, Global DJs, ILQ (iloveqatar.net) with the support from What’s Goin On Qatar (Official), Qatar Happening, Ohala, Prime Power, and Doha Nightllife.
TUNE IN: DJ Paul van Dyk performs at an electronic dance event.
