Louk - My Year In Hard Dance

What's been your biggest achievement of the year?

Playing Defqon 1 again and getting to play in Germany, Slovenia, Ukraine and also playing regularly in Holland, and licensing one of my all time favourite tracks to Compulzion! Production wise, well it's been quite diverse with releases on Detox and other imprints under aliases, though I slacked off a bit due to working quite a lot. And getting the legend Sa.Vee.Oh to do a remix for us which topped the Hard Dance charts on this store, infact topping it a couple times this year was a good buzz!

What moments will you never forget?

The random adventures, jet lag, parties on the moors, rocking crowds and expansion of my business, and the release of Hindsight - The History CD mixed by Mark EG + M-Zone, which I did all the licensing for.

Who's been your favourite newcomer of the year?

Johann Stone from Iceland. A little trancier than normal material on the imprints but people are taking serious note of his material.

Who's been the artist of the year for you?

Hard trance wise, Wragg + Log One, Nomad and Thilo + Evanti have consistently blown my mind, also Busho and Side E-Fect have constantly featured in my set. For techno, Andreas Kraemer back on form with some amazing techno with his collaborations with Dano (as DJ Update) has been rocking my world. DJ wise, Jake Nicholls impressed me so we played a vs set at Nature One and he's going to have an amazing year in 2012.

What's been your favourite label of the year?

The usual favourites - Atmosphere, Analogue Is Dead, Digitally Infected, Hard With Style, Detox, dRUCK, consistent as always! I could probably name about thirty techno labels too.

What do you think has been the best track of the year?

Biggest reaction has been my remix of 'Outside World' by Sunbeam, but although I am very happy with it, my personal favourite without a doubt is 'Run For Cover' by Wragg + Log One vs Iain Cross. Nomad's mix of Dave Joy - First Impression has rocked too!!!

What's been your favourite event of the year?

All of the international gigs, always nice to travel abroad and experience new cultures! In the UK my favourite has definitely been Uprising at the O2 Academy in Sheffield, such a wonderful crowd of die hard music fans!

What's the funniest thing that's happened to you?

Stupidly left my bag with my CDs for Defqon 1 in HQ in Amsterdam when we went out the night before, a 65 euro taxi later to get them back. We missed the lift back from the Festival to our hotel as well and that ended up in a random adventure.

What do you have planned for the next year?

Producing some quite different material for a new project, as well as some hard trance and techno, some new releases on Compulzion, a lot of gigs (returning to Holland, Germany and many more) and there's an abundance of outdoor events that look very promising too. Bring it the fuck on!!

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