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Written by IS Team
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Friday, 02 May 2008 |
 Everyone knew Paul van Dyk would scale new heights of success in 1998 but no one could have predicted how far he'd climb. His long-awaited remix collection, 'Vorsprung Dyk Technik' , was released on November 2, in the wake of his first top 40 hit - 'For An Angel '98', which entered the national charts in August at number 28, spending ten weeks in the top 100 and two weeks at number one in the dance chart. Paul van Dyk's music is primed to blow craters across a landscape much wider than anyone might have thought when the fledgling DJ emerged from the Berlin dance scene .
So where did all this start? Well, in Eisenhüttenstadt in the old East Germany: a state where the premier Erich Honecker reacted to the Soviet policy of glasnost with the retort, 'If your neighbour redecorated his flat, would you redecorate yours?', and freedom of movement and creative activity were destinies less likely than a lifelong career in a Trabant factory, labouring under the impression that Western music stopped with The Beatles and Elton John. Paul van Dyk spent his last few years in this dying outpost of state-control socialism developing, but unable to feed properly, a growing appetite for house music.
But seismic political and social upheavals throughout eastern Europe led to the fall in 1989 of the Berlin Wall and, as East and West Germany headed towards reunification, far-reaching reforms in the East permitted adventurous souls to up anchor and set off for whatever and wherever they fancied - in Paul's case, the organically expanding and occasionally exploding rave/club scene in Berlin, where he arrived armed only with his primitive mix tapes and started DJing in March 1991.
His prescient records are informed by the knowledge that electronic music must convey emotion if it is to swerve anonymity and earn the love of a broad public rather than the casual attention of a one-night stand club crowd.
Long unarguably the top DJ in Germany, he has not been bound by the German scene - rather, he's become a worldwide ambassador for it and a personal embodiment of its qualities. He maintains a home base in Berlin, but wherever you are, he will be with you soon.
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