Making the mobile phone call to Holland at 9pm EST, someone who is not Sander answers the phone. She sounds a bit suspicious and after rapidly firing off a dozen questions, says to call back in two hours. At 11pm someone else picks up the phone and asks the same dozen questions, only faster. Finally, Sander gets on the phone.

SK: Hi, sorry, I’m just checking out tunes.

RA: So I hear, sounds pretty good.
SK: It’s a new Annie Lennox remix – Peter did it – sounds a bit like “Touch Me In The Morning”, by…. Who was it by? Ah… [Thinks] Rui da Silva!

You’ll have to bring it down to Australia for Renaissance, which we should talk about…
Okay

Let’s begin with Renaissance’s image change. Renaissance is re-inventing itself a little bit – would you say you are similarly undergoing any sort of change?

Musically I haven’t really changed although I’m a bit more secure in showing a few more sides of what I do in clubs. More or less the CDs I did before were a part of what I do, but they were a certain part of the night, they were not as varied as I am… For some reason during the process of making this compilation it came together as I really wanted it to be. In terms of music, I think it features me in the wider sense.

So how is the Everybody CD different from the Renaissance CDs of old?
I wouldn’t really know what you mean. I mean, the fact that it’s on Renaissance is great, because it’s a brand which has a certain quality mark/ stamp around it. It sort of felt like it’s cool to have [my album] with that [reputation behind it]. But in terms of the CD itself I think I’ve done a compilation which is a lot about me and it’s great to have Renaissance backing it up and being willing to release it the way it is.

But I’ve been very much involved from A to B in terms of artwork and the way I wanted it to be presented to the world – I’m happy that Renaissance were as open as they were in term of going along with me and how the artwork looks and what it represents and what it should be. I wanted the whole CD to be about the music instead of about a cool superstar DJ idea, I really wanted to take that myth away. What I try to do is make the music speak for itself and let the artwork just be the artwork. I think if you look at the CD and you put it in you listen to it and you already have a smile on your face hopefully and then when you listen to it, you’re like ‘Oh yeah, I like this’, or whatever. It’s away from where Renaissance were. Obviously, I think they were a bit more serious and I think it’s good to sort of take that away from the dance scene a bit, cause it’s all about fun in the end.

So it’s more about fun and personally I agree whole-heartedly, but what about the serious people? Do you face alienating them?
Dance music’s about having fun on the dance floor, it’s about dancing. It was never really meant to be this sort of… [stops himself from saying what he was going to say]. It’s about losing yourself and ninety-nine percent of people do that and I really wanted to show some of the more hardcore people that are very much involved in this music that it’s okay to analyse and to be critical and to take it seriously ‘cause at the end of the day we’re in the spotlight and we gain a lot from this financially and so on and see the world, so there’s definitely room for criticism - there should be - but in the end on the floor, on Friday night or Saturday night it’s about having fun and enjoying yourself and releasing yourself.

The discs are labelled Attempt One and Attempt Two – this is obviously part of the fun aspect.
That’s part of it. Don’t take it too seriously. I do try to sort of make it into a smooth ride, but in the end I want this CD to be played at pre-parties and after hours where there’s fun to be had. I still do this with a passion, I don’t do this to become the best DJ or the coolest DJ.

Or is it perhaps for people who can only attempt to dance?
[Forces out a laugh to be polite] Yeah, maybe.

The blurb of the CD says something like music is returning to pre-90s state? What exactly do you mean – have we come full-circle?
Again, if I were to over analyse then I would probably do what everybody else does and it’s like, I don’t really think about this – I’m not a philosopher. I’m someone who creates and plays dance music. I want to create a soundtrack for a weekend in the end. Have we come full circle? No, I believe that because the scene was so diverse [in the early nineties] and divided into different scenes and you’re either this or you’re that… it was very segregated.

If we want the sound to grow and become more accepted and whatever, we’ve got to take the seriousness away from it because it puts people off. I’m going out to have fun, have a drink and see a girl, whatever, and I don’t wanna be fucked with all this bullshit with how it should sound and it doesn’t sound good when it’s this or that. I think a lot of DJs are now going ‘hey wait a minute, we can cram all these different sounds and scenes and directions together and make it into one interesting collective of music’. Which I think for a night is great, cause a night could go in waves.

Sometimes I have issues with this because when I DJ out I do the same thing. I don’t sort of bring this one sound and then three hours later it’s the same sound and for some people this is exactly what a DJ should do. For them, that’s a foolish thing. I like to go against that, because I think a night should go through different phases and it should touch different emotions instead of just this one idea of how it should be. And again, with the CD I’ve opened up to this idea and it’s probably more eclectic than before and it’s probably more wide but I’m also not ashamed to spark fun – some of the tracks might even come across as a bit commercial or a bit ‘ooh, he’s using more obvious sounds’. Whatever it is, it’s just what I wanted – I wanted to get as many different styles together – that’s always how I’ve DJed, it’s the reason why I fell in love with this music.

It [dance music] supposedly should be very open and very democratic. A lot of people who used to love this music have been put away from it they went like ‘whoa, serious’. ]The hardcore people] went back to their group of friends and said ‘Oh yeah, been there, done that, I’ve seen it all and I only like it when the high hats are on the third’ or whatever.

So the English press were right when they declared prog dead?
I think the English journalists were absolutely right because [the scene] became parody of itself. While the DJs got carried away with being ubercool, I don’t know – I think they were exactly right with saying that it wasn’t very exciting anymore and that we should move on to the next thing that they thought was gong to be happening.

So you’re the face of Renaissance for the next tour: what can we expect?
I’m not going to come out and play some R&B and stuff, though I did play some R&B last weekend in NY, which was fun. I am someone who likes the eclectic and feature as many styles as I can and I like my DJ sets to really evolve into something. I’m probably more old-school than other people in that I like it to start off with a more housier and warmer vibe then slowly progress into something harder – or maybe not.

The only thing I can say is that this will be the first time I go to Australia where I’m gonna be featured in an environment which I think I do best, which is in a club. All the times I’ve been there I’ve played at festivals with loads of people and I always tend to be – at least I feel at my best, I obviously can’t say if I’m good or bad - but I at least personally feel at my best when I DJ in a club environment. It’s just the music I play is more sort of made for this I guess. That’s what I would like to say to the Australian people!

More of the interview (yes, there was more) features in Ministry mag number 12, which comes out November 12 and has Dido on the cover.