From: Berlin
DJ style: “Trance.”
Best known for: “Trance.”
Fave tune of 2018: “Paul van Dyk & Plumb ‘Music Rescues Me’.”
Breakthrough DJ/producer of 2018: “Jardin.”

Paul van Dyk, the winner of the No.1 DJ crown in 2005 and 2006, has been easing himself back into the game since his terrible accident in February 2016. Falling through the stage at the A State Of Trance’s 15th birthday gig in Utrecht, he was in a coma for weeks and it was feared he may never walk again. Thankfully, he’s back DJing and making music now — although he’ll never be quite the same again.

Let’s hand over to Paul to tell us what he’s been up to this year... “At the beginning of the year I released ‘Breaking Dawn’ with Alex M.O.R.P.H., which was the last single to be taken from my ‘From Then On’ album,” he says. “In the summer I began a new Ibiza residency at SHINE at Privilege’s VISTA club. To be somewhere that wasn’t Amnesia for the first time in so many years — essentially doing our own thing, under our own steam — was wonderful, refreshing and truly liberating. I produced the anthem for the night, which took on more and more meaning over our 11-week run there. Seeing the dawn hit VISTA’s windows on the final morning brought a feeling I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”

Paul has now just released ‘Music Rescues Me’, his ninth studio album — launching it at Printworks in London in the middle of October. It’s great to have the trance pioneer back.

Words: CARL LOBEN