Five Tracks: Vato Gonzalez

If you rock with anything considered "dirty house," you have to give props to Dutch producer/DJ Vato Gonzalez. Hailing from the city that Afrojack is from, Vato's been doing his thing his way, bringing the dirty house sound to Spinnin', Mixmash, 3beat, Cr2, New State Music, and Mad Decent / Jeffree's, with Dim Mak being the latest label, releasing his banger "Volfied Riddim." He recently sorted out a Five Tracks for us, giving us an idea of bits that he not only uses to get crowds hype, but some bits that influenced him from outside of what you'd normally expect from the dirty house don. Here are Vato's Five Tracks.

Not all music has to directly tear cracks into your cranium; sometimes socks can be rocked in much more gentle ways. When Olivier sent me the first version of the tune, I knew it was one of those tracks I'd play every set of the season. That groove! Instant audio boner. So, set that YouTube player to full volume, maximum quality and get into a good old fight with the neighbors for playing this at a near suicidal volume!

Some songs start out with a great idea, other tunes come together as the result of great artistic minds. Truthfully, I was just smashing together all the sounds I found to be “super frisking awesome” and sounded exactly like nothing else. This experiment of sorts got a little bit out of control. People started asking me about it every time I played it. My fellow DJs did their best trying to read the display of my CDJ. After Steve Aoki got word of it, Guetta started playing it and before I knew it I was a video game character on a Dim Mak promo video. Life has funny ways, I tell you.

As far as the term “rare groove” goes, this is definitely one. It takes a long time to build up, but when it drops it's like Machu Picchu on an acid trip. I love playing this song as the audience looks at me like I'm from another planet at first, but about 30 seconds into the drop, they uncontrollably start to bounce as if they had no control over their own bodies. Great stuff to warm up a room or to undo some damage after DJ crap-for-brains played the Beatport Top 10 before the crowd even had time to grab a pint.

"I am the god of hellfire, and I bring you FIRE!" These were literally the very first words I ever heard of a non-mainstream, radio dance tune. I got my greedy little hands on a mixtape by a friendly neighborhood DJ and when I played it for the first time, I just went completely mental. I had never heard such violent music with so much energy. After an episode of raving uncontrollably at full volume and one of my parents seriously questioning my sanity, I decided that creating music with this amount of energy is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life!

Wait, dancehall? Yes, dancehall. Where do you think the rhythmic elements in my productions and my tendency to call my tracks 'riddim' comes from? The Netherlands has a very large Caribbean community and my hometown of Spijkenisse (yes, where Afrojack also comes from) is one big, multi-cultural mess that got me in contact with the sounds of Jamaica and beyond. This history led me to still produce a moombahton tune every now and then. I still love the slow riddims! Funny fact you might not know, Hardwell and I used to make dancehall back in the days before we got on the EDM trip.