It's no secret that most who don't like commercial dance music DJs like David Guetta, Afrojack and Steve Aoki think most of the time, the jocks show up with a pre-recorded set.
Deadmau5 himself believes it to be true, and we all remember the fan created video that recently surfaced with Aoki, Sander Van Doorn and Laidback Luke, which seemed to show just how little work they actually do.The debate actually goes back to a video (which has long since been removed) supposedly showing Steve Angello playing a pre-recorded set at Dance Valley some years back.
Now it seems that Afrojack would like to bury the hatchet once and for all, claiming in an interview with Toro on New York’s 92.3 NOW, “I, seriously, have never seen anyone play a pre-recorded set.”
“Most of the comments you see on the Internet about pre-recorded mixing,” he goes on to say, “[are usually from] 12-year-old kids who don’t know shit about DJing. I’ve been DJing for 11 years, everyone makes edits. Everyone has an edit of an edit of an edit. Like a five minute long edit with three tracks in there. And then you have big shows with laser lights and all this stuff that’s synched,” he continued. “They play [the edit] from a laptop, but it’s just that part. After that they go back to DJing. I have yet to see a pre-recorded mix DJ [become big]. I’ve never seen it.”
He went so far as to bring Danny Tenaglia into the debate, saying, “I remember Danny Tenaglia… when he played Ultra,” says Afrojack. “He had one edit of 20 minutes where he would go and dance at the front of the stage with the crowd. It’s part of being a DJ. It’s entertaining. But doing a whole pre-mix thing, I’ve never seen it.”
Listen to Afrojack on Pulse Radio.