Joris Voorn is to tech-house what Fibonacci is to numbers: Precise, ubiquitous and timelessly applicable. With a career spanning thirteen years, he remains the audio equivalent of viagra: he goes deep and satisfies against the odds. Girls love him and the boys stand queuing for another back room prescription. EG caught up with him at Village Underground, London’s club-cum-cultural nexus, to ask what’s really on his playlist.
A pre-gig interview with someone of Voorn’s calibre can end up a glorified function of the PR machine. You jog through anaemic, sanctioned scripts with one eye on the clock, hoping the homogenous queue of rayban/lycra clad floozies make it to the toilet, form another cheap line and throw up over something other than your will to live.
Voorn, conversely is considered, tangibly pragmatic and just thirty minutes before his set, genuinely engaged and engaging. Despite coming under recent attack for it, he’s willing to talk Brexit, Trump and controversially for someone in his post Israel / Lebanon, U.S bound position, immigration: ‘I play for the people’ he says soberly ‘I don’t play for the regime’.
Doubting the efficacy that moves like Dave Clarke have made recently, he ‘won’t stay away from the U.S’. He seems happy to talk about everything with targeted zeal. Everything that is, apart from himself: Voorn is to modesty what his Twitter antagonist DJ Sneak, is to pointless.
People always tell me ‘STICK TO YOUR MUSIC’. ‘Music is a-political at the moment which is fine. My music is a-political, its escapism, which right now is very important.’ (I thank him for committing a public service, he sort of laughs )
It’s no holds barred:
On Brexit: ‘It’s simply stupid. Who decided that it was a good idea to allow the population to make this life-defining decision? Those who didn’t vote, I guess they probably thought it wouldn’t happen’. He worries the same thing could happen in Holland.
On immigration: ‘Unity is possible in any way… People should have the right to visit any place they want to… its sad to see what Trump is trying to do: trying to divide rather than unite people. When I play at a party its about uniting people, people coming together from any layer of society and that has always been characteristic of dance music’.
See what I mean?
Hero.
Photo Credits: The Media Nanny & Jos Kottmann
There is a tragic irony in the idea that someone with large-scale influence, least of all someone who is well informed in doing so, being censored by the industry for putting his ideas and his passion for people into the public domain.
Which is loosely where is latest project ‘Spectrum’ slots in. Together with Dutch photo-wizz, Jos Kottmann, Voorn has transposed a life long passion for photography into a project that lays focus away from the DJ booth, away from his celebrity and into a vignette-style, crowd-satiating selfie. A lucky bunch at Village Underground got to walk away with their own pro-bono pic. The idea, to capture a spectrum of people from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds, through the medium of light and colour. At 4am, the venue is still almost at capacity, the vibe, Josper-hot and the tunes a heavy mix of minimal, muscular techno underpinned with elements of house.
Joris Voorn plays his cards right: He knows where his heart is, where the not-so-poker faced clubs are and for tonight at least, its both hands and all his mind, on you his crowd and on perfectly synchronised Traktor / Model 1 ‘decks’.
