DJ Fire, one of Bonzai's leading producers, talks to i:Vibes about Fire & Ice, Bonzai, his likes and dislikes, and much more... Read on...

Hey Jurgen, thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions, let’s get busy!


So how are you today? How was the weekend?
I'm fine! My weekend was ok, although my booking in Helsinki, Finland was cancelled only a few hours before I was supposed to take the plane... They promised to arrange some other gig, we'll see... I went clubbing in one of the top clubs in Belgium (Cherrymoon) instead!


Could you first tell us a bit about yourself? Hobbies, interests, pets, girlfriend/wife, …
Here's some info on myself... When I'm not working at Lightning (as merchandise/website manager), I'm producing during a weeknight for one of my projects DJ Fire, Fire & Ice, Freebase or Intimo. During Friday night or Saturday night I'm usually DJ’ing or clubbing... I'm also a big moviefreak, I go to the movietheatre at least once a week...
Other than that I watch a lot of movies on video/DVD. I also try to spend as much time as possible with my girlfriend Birgitte, with whom I've been together for almost 5 years now... I've been living together with her for about a year now. We've got 2 Persian cats : Pacha and Smokey.

Besides all this, I love to travel. I haven't been to a lot of places yet, but I'm planning to! Places I've been to on holiday so far : Miami, Florida (USA); Mykonos, Santorini, Samos and Crete (Greece); Turkey; Dominican Republic; France; Holland; Germany; London (UK). I'm planning on going to Ibiza for a week around the end of September.

I used to do a lot of sports. I played tennis, did some athletics and went swimming a lot. Now I only go to a gym to work out 2 times a week.


How did you start producing music? Was your family involved with it?
I started producing in 1997, through one of my best friends at the time (DJ Ghost, resident at Cherrymoon now). I actually introduced him in the dance-scene and learned him the basics of mixing... We've had a radio-show together in 1993/94. Ghost introduced me to some other guys and we started experimenting. After a few months, I formed the project Energy Source,
which was pretty successful at the time. My big break came with the first Fire & Ice release "Lost Emotions", in April 1998. This project I formed with L-Vee, who I met at the Love Parade in Berlin in 1997. We decided to go into a trance-project, with as main purpose: producing emotional trance.
My family wasn't really involved in producing music, they just get to hear everything first. If they said the track could score, I was pretty sure it would...

You are part of a famous duo called ‘Fire & Ice’, how did that start? How did you meet Laurent Veronez (aka Airwave)?
As I already told before, I talked with L-Vee on the Love Parade in 1997. We had already met at the Bonzai-offices before, but we had never actually talked a lot. We had a lot of fun producing the first Fire & Ice-tracks (like the classic "Out of Darkness") in a small studio, that used to be Laurent's bedroom in Brussels. After the first 2 releases, we moved to a bigger and better studio at Bonzai in Deurne, Antwerp. That's where we really got serious, with big releases as "Forever Young", "Neverending Melody" and "Beyond my Control"...

Your first release under your alias DJ Fire called Ulan Bator, was a direct hit, played by a lot of DJ’s, and now your next release, Jetlag, is already massive with John ‘00’ Fleming. You must be proud of that?
The first DJ Fire release should have been there a lot earlier actually. I already had the DJ-name Energy for about 8 years. It was very hard for me to change that. But as I couldn't produce under the name "DJ Energy" (there was already a famous one in Switzerland), it was a good decision to change.
I had to start out from scratch and tried to give the info on my name-change to as many people as possible. This resulted in a lot of interest, even from foreign booking-agencies. That's when I decided to produce a DJ Fire as soon as possible. So I went into the studio with my Fire & Ice partner L-Vee and we decided to give the DJ Fire-tracks more of a progressive touch. We tried to keep the Fire & Ice stuff mainstream and commercial and keep DJ Fire-releases a bit underground. This resulted in "Ulan Bator", which got to number 8 in the Belgian dance-charts and was in DJ-charts all over the world. I was pretty surprised, to say the least!
And now there's the new one called "Jetlag", that will be released in the beginning of September. Already hot and played by a few big jocks. So let's hope this might be even bigger...


If you are in a club and you see a lot of people going mental on one of your songs, being DJ Fire or Fire & Ice, what exactly do you feel / think?
It's always a great feeling to see people go nuts on your own music! I must say that I get a kick out of it... Sometimes I get goosebumps all over! It's really a sign that people appreciate the music you've made and that's what we do it for!


How do you work when you remix a song?
We usually have a short listen to the original and then discuss on how we can rework it to give it that special "Fire & Ice-touch" or "DJ Fire-touch".
Usually remixing goes very fast. We remixed some of the biggest ones, like for instance the one for Sonic Inc. (The taste of summer) in only 3 hours.
When we work on our own tracks, this usually takes a lot longer... But remixing is fun and usually (not always) a lot easier than producing your own tracks...


Is there a particular type of sound you would like fire & ice to be affiliated with, like an epic uplifting sound or do you plan to explore different genres under that guise?
We usually have strong drive, combined with strings and uplifting synth sounds. We also try to have a really emotional break with a melody that stays in your head. You could call that the "Fire & Ice"-recipe that we always use. Although I must say that our style has changed a lot since our first releases. We now sound a lot more professional than we used to.
Everything sounds really "big" and is perfect to play in big halls. We have advanced a lot since 1998...


How exactly does working in a duo work, do u work together, or on your own & send each other ideas?
We usually start out with an idea we have on how to work on a track. Because L-Vee is usually the guy behind the buttons, he always searches for good sounds and loops. I decide if they're ok and we work on from there. Usually it's a mixture of ideas and inspiration of the moment. But I must say that L-Vee is one of the easiest guys to work with!

When you produce a tune, what expectations do you have of the reactions that the fans will have? Is there a specific effort to direct the fans reactions to some feeling/emotion by the use of certain techniques/sounds?
We always try to put a lot of emotion in our tracks... This might be happiness or sadness, depending on how we feel the track should sound like. Our loyal fans immediately recognize our style and understand the meaning behind the tracks/sounds. So it's usually a state of mind we try to bring across to our audience. It's always nice to hear from fans that they really understand and feel the music. So you could say that our expectations are being satisfied completely.


Do you feel that you leave an imprint of your own feelings and emotions on the listeners through your music?
This question is pretty much answered in my last answer. I think you can hear in some tracks that there is a big part of the melody leading to a certain emotion. For instance: Silent Cry. Another DJ once told me he thought the track sounded really like a summertrack, even though it has a kind of melancholic feeling. That's how we wanted the track to sound! So all we could say then was: mission accomplished!! The same with "San Antonio". This had to have "Ibiza" written all over it and by the reactions of a lot of people it really did. They told me it sounded like a track you had to listen to on a beach-party while the sun was going down...


With who would you like to collaborate? A producer, singer, or maybe someone like a classical composer to create a melody?
I used to have a lot of admiration for Oliver Lieb, but I believe he hasn't really evolved. If I could choose right now, it would be Sasha or BT. They are 2 of the greatest and biggest in the business at the moment.


What is the one attribute/asset that makes you Fire and Ice?
The true asset that makes us Fire & Ice is the emotion in the music. So "emotion"...


What song that you produced represents you as a person the most? Through emotions, feelings??
The track that represents me the most would probably be "My Galaxy"... This track has so much power and emotion in it, I still love it after 4 years...


Will there be a Fire & Ice album in the future, or maybe a DJ Fire album?
I hope that there will be a Fire & Ice album in the future, although there are no definite plans yet. The same for a DJ Fire album, there might a mix-album in the future. There are no plans for an album of my own tracks, because there just aren't enough DJ Fire tracks yet...

Any other plans of breaking into new areas, for example Push doing an R’n’B song?
At the moment there isn't any breaking news. We might be trying to go crossover with Fire & Ice by using female vocals to give it more chart potential...


I’m going to say some words, and you reply with the first word that comes up.
Love...........................................................................my girlfriend Birgitte
Hate...........................................................................backstabbing people
Bonzai .......................................................................colleagues/friends/my job
Trance.......................................................................still my favourite music
Laurent.....................................................................good friend/Fire & Ice
Belgium.....................................................................homecountry
Fear...........................................................................dying young/fatal diseas


And now, the mp3 debate? Airwave was about to call his album off, cause people could download his album of the net? Where do you stand in the whole discussion about mp3’s?
I don't support mp3, although short mp3-clippings are a good tool to promote future releases. I don't like it when people put full-length tracks on the net, that way an artist loses a lot of sales... So mp3 is ok, but not for all purposes... I don't like download sites like Audiogalaxy and others like that. They (partly) ruin the music-industry.


Do you have anything to ask our readers, or just something to say?
I'd like to encourage the people to still visit the clubs!! The club-scene is really going down the drain worldwide! And all this because of less visitors in clubs. So people, don't stay at home and party!!


Thanks a lot for taking the time out to answer all these questions, and good luck with the rest of your productions :)