Track by track with Ferry Corsten

“I didn’t really dust off the old gear from the ’80s era I was drawing on. I do love that old gear, though. There’s a purism to working with the real old hardware and stuff, but nine times out of ten those things are just a nightmare to connect with the CDJs or whatever. Forget it man.

Intro

“This starts the album with some Morse code. It was just me really feeling out just how engaged the listeners would be. I was wondering if there would be any nutcases around the world who would take the time out to decode the hidden message.

“What was it? Oh, it spells out ‘Ferry Corsten’, and the name of the album, ‘L-E-F’ [laughs]. I hope someone made the effort.”

Are You Ready

“This was the first track proper, and it was put here to really open the album. It really sets the tone of what’s to come. I imagine most of my fans would have been expecting a trance album. This track was a bit more housey, with more of an electro vibe to it, and that sound would get explored more as you go along.

“It was me saying, ‘OK. This isn’t going to be the one thing you expected straight away’. They would get more of my classic sound later on, but for now I wanted to shake things up a little. It’s a diverse album. I’ve always been that way with my albums.”

Fire

“This features Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran. I was listening to one of their albums [1990’s Liberty] and I came across a track that I wasn’t too familiar with called Serious. The first line of that song is the one that I use here [‘Oh, woman you make me feel like I’m on fire’].

“My management in the US were also the people who managed Duran Duran. I made a demo with the sample of theirs in then sent it to them. The band just loved it, and loved the idea. I got the go-ahead, and after that I recreated some of the instrumentation, and it was done. It was also more of a housey track, but also the kind of track that works really well in a trance mix, which is what I made for some of my live shows at the time.”

L.E.F.

“Yeah, this is a club banger. I’ve always had a soft spot for vocoder voices, as well, so I use that through here to go ‘Loud. Electronic. Ferocious’. That’s me doing that. Just like when I did Rock Your Body Rock, that was me as well [laughs]. I like to mess with vocals sometimes.

“It was a good track to put at this point in the album to keep the energy up. It was important to sequence the album like that, with lots of builds and drops – like a DJ set.”

Into The Dark

“This track features another ’80s musical icon, Howard Jones. I ran into him at the Amsterdam Dance Event. We were just talking about music and hit it off.

“Yeah, he’s a legend, and just the type of person I was looking for when I was putting this album together, so it made perfect sense to try and work with him. He was great. He dug my music and, of course, I was into what he did back in the day, so we decided to give it a go.

“I made a simple demo for him and he wrote this really cool song over the demo, which pretty much became the song. If you listen to it, it’s very ’80s. It has that [Roland] 606 drum sound and a very analogue vibe. It gave the whole album an attitude.”

Galaxia

“This is an update of one of my biggest trance tracks from back-inthe-day. The original Galaxia was a B2 track on an EP I released in ’96 under name Moonman. The A track was Don’t be Afraid. I was just going through all this old Moonman stuff and found Galaxia again. I thought it could do with an update.

“The original was super, super basic. I thought I could breathe some new life into it for the album.”

Beautiful

“This started out as the house track,

Forever. It was actually written by Ben Cullum [Jamie Cullum’s brother] and features Debra Andrews on vocals. I’m not sure how I got hold of the acappella. I think it was through my publisher.

“I’d just picked up the Roland V-Synth, too. The V-Synth had this great feature where you could sample something and make it ‘elastic’, if you will. Then you could spread it out all over your keyboard, or do robotics.

“It was almost like a vocoder, but with a different effect. It did something really cool, like what you’d do with Melodyne now, but live on the keys, which was really cool. I just loaded in the chords of Forever, and as I started playing around with this robotic voice on the keyboard, I struck trance gold [laughs].”

Possession

“I really just wanted to make this song a lush, lower-tempo trance track. It came out really cool and definitely has this magic kind of feel to it. It features Denise Stahlie on vocals. I was working a lot with two guys from Holland at the time called Adrian Broekhuyse and Raz Nitzan. They were songwriters over here. They introduced me to Denise, and she was perfect for this track.”