Dash'ing through riffs

Since his big break in 2007 with Till the Sky Falls Down, Jeffrey Sutorius aka Dash Berlin has been unstoppable, quickly rising up the ranks to become one of the top DJs on the EDM scape. The Dutch producer sat down with us for a chat before his show in Bengaluru recently.

He is greeted to cheers and fans screaming  his name on repeat, and he admits that music has been his thing ever since he could remember. “I started mixing cassette tapes with vinyl on my first turntable. I was drawn to electronic music, thanks to my sister who would bring me cassettes from her work as a dancer at night clubs. Those were the baby steps to becoming a DJ,” he recollects. After that, his gigs as a sales assistant in giant record shops only sealed the deal for him. “If not for a DJ, I’d have probably been out of a job,” laughs Jeff, who believes he is heavily influenced by Coldplay and U2, and hopes to ‘rework’, not ‘remix’ the latter.  

Currently, Jeffrey is working on a sequel to his album, We Are: Part II after Part I about one-and-a-half years ago. “People who listen to us or come to our shows will recognise some of the tracks that will be featured in the album – not necessarily in that form though,” he tells us, prepping for his show as part of Vh1 Supersonic Arcade.

After working steadily on his rise to fame, he of course can’t wind up without dishing out some pearls of wisdom for the young and those who want to get behind the console. “There will be upsides and downsides to it, but as is for everything in your life, you have to be very persistent in knowing what you want.

With persistence also comes good passion for music,” he says. “From there on you meet bumps on the way, which your character will tell if you can handle or not. The higher you go up the ranks, the more problems you could meet on the way to eventually get there. It gets difficult, mentally, physically or both – not everybody is up for it, will be willing to deal with it or handle it,” adds Jeffrey.  
The glamour on stage, people dancing, having a wonderful time and the light shows may be a part of the deal, but it isn’t everything he says.

“It’s not always like that. It’s not always a party mood for people who are on the stage or who are in the business. Sometimes the going gets rough. You have to go through some setbacks to go to the next level, like how I started. So that’s life in general. You need to see the bigger perspective.  It’s not easy,” he concludes.