Hi my name is Joel in this episode of unplugged i talked to dj Isis van der Wel when isis was 12 years old she bought her first house record at 16 she was djing in the hottest clubs in the netherlands and soon she found herself touring the whole world nowadays she is seen as one of the first female pioneers in electronic music i visited isis at her home in Amsterdam we talk about what she’s trying to achieve with her music the importance of emptying your mind and what is needed to experience magic in life

so when you go back to your in your teens you were you became a big name i think pretty fast and when you look at the next few decades could you do you see different chapters in what you were doing yeah for sure so yeah after 10 years i think the end of the nights were very boring then everybody was recycling everything and there was no new ideas and the hype was so big and the attention you know there was so much energy from everywhere flowing to that rather uninteresting music because it was such a

revolution you know i mean everybody was like wow men and women can dance together they don’t have to go to dancing classes they can just dance together and there’s nobody being being stupid about it you know you can just do that and hey wow uh gays and and hedgerow stands together and uh actually everybody dances together you know so that was already so powerful that i guess the music got a little bit sight right there how was this for you that period well i really was very disappointed about the music and maybe

even a bit sad because i thought it was going to be the world’s revolution really i thought like wow finally you know where hippies got stuck in their ideology we can actually now make it uh realistic but then commercial the commercial world dived on top of it and next what is it for you what is make it realistic make what realistic uh what was your dream there i think um a revolution of love and respect you know like uh we there’s so much beauty in this planet and we can enjoy it much more if we

start to learn to share it with each other and um well there’s different energy fields that are pulling society in different directions and what i find interesting is what is the what’s the bottom line you know what’s what’s causing what’s happening is that what’s the um the intention of the people who started it and what’s left of it in the end and and i think that the first people to get back to the beginning of electronic music or how that all evolved um also understand love peace and happiness

you know and they and they also have more feeling of respect and sharing and a positive way of innovation but let’s go back to my process in that or how i’ve seen it evolve i think around the year 2000 there was a breaking point it was the time in i think 99 nights of the jaguar came out by underground resistance by rolando and um this is a big turning point in electronic music um first of all it had the acoustic strings in them and it was like an orchestra playing you know rather different than

most typical techno or house music was at the time actually kind of was in the middle because it has house vibes and techno vibes together um very up tempo and then there was another thing happening and to me a record that really marks that period in time is um bombo plug from isolay and it’s a it’s a trick as it’s the beginning of minimal basically as it’s down tempo relatively down tempo for their time it’s very empty has a lot of space and it evokes whatever came from there to me because we’re like hey wow we’re starting all

over again you know good let’s just wipe it and we’ll paint again and that happened and then the minimal scene went always it became techno and one side became very experimental on the other side and then i think around 10 years ago another 10 years later there was a big switch coming from that more experimental sound where yeah a lot of the hype went so there was the the music went slower um the bpms went slower so there’s this music allows a lot of possibility to uh enjoy it both as a listener

and as a dancer and it brings interesting prospects because all of a sudden you don’t have to be on the dance floor all the time anymore to enjoy that music you can also have a good conversation and not just be silent all the time and more mature people who are mostly a little bit more wiser than young people can also join the party for a longer period of time and this of course is very necessary because we’re all getting older and i believe that it’s also about connecting generations with each other

it’s not just like back in the days like you break from your parents you become a teenager you want to resist whatever was there and you want to find your own path and when you find it you become a boring person too you know it’s not like that anymore and it’s not needed anymore also so i i really see that it’s growing up and generations are joining each other and different backgrounds are joining each other and there are no more boundaries unless you build them in your head that’s where we are now

yes that’s where i ended up and there’s also no more boundaries in my dj set where i was felt forced to play the music people like and of course as a dj you can’t be selfish you can’t be a producer you know if you’re a producer if you just produce you can make whatever you like nobody will complain about it but as a dj it’s like being a band on stage you have a dialogue with the audience yeah of course you have a repertoire you stick to the repertoire in terms of i mean i wouldn’t play something i don’t

enjoy playing but i’m much more versatile and broad in my music than i used to be i’m definitely no longer a typical house or techno dj which i which i was back in the 90s yeah and it’s probably not just because that we are in different stage intense music but it has also something to do with you so so what when you look at yourself what changed within you as a human being and how is this reflected in how you dj or mac music changing me as human being well i think i’m more remembered who i am and i kind of forgot along the

way because if you’re a young person and all of a sudden your your mixed albums are in the national charts and everybody’s pulling you and pushing you and putting you in places where you might not even want to be or you shouldn’t be but you do it because you’re young and you’re you’re like oh wow what kind of world is this let’s go take a look oh and i put my energy in it and people like it and they want you you want to keep you there you know you’ve been you’ve been pushed to pull around in a way that

it is uh blurring your view so what was very good for me is to withdraw from the roller coaster i was in and um yeah become more meditative about what i’m doing in life and reflecting on my actions and also what i find important values and how i want to celebrate and the funny thing is i was with another very popular dutch dj which i i i don’t really hang out with because he plays very different music than i do but i don’t know for one or another reason we’re on the same table and we had a fortune cookie and i opened

the fortune cookie and uh it says remember what made you successful and worked that i was like oh that’s great let’s go back to where i came from and what my real drive is in life and not what other people want me to put my energy in if you put it into words what is your real drive in life um well um i had some visions and one of my uh the things i saw was always one was something i i saw later i found out the buddhists have been saying that for thousands of years already but i saw it also i was like

oh everything is connected with each other you know it nothing is separate we like to extract things in a way in a western world like we want to isolate it and pretend it’s a loose particle but nothing is loose everything is connected and everything influences each other so when i realized that i was like okay so what do i find important values what do i want to put my energy in and then i was very much inspired by the origins of dance music and the working of ceremony and ritual and i also believe that even if you go

to a dj set um and you have a crowd that is kind of like a ritual you know i mean you could compare it in a way with a shame and a tribe i mean unfortunately it has been forbidden to most westerners to enjoy a live fire real fire but i think that’s such a powerful ingredient you know if you can dance around the fire preferably outside uh under the stars or the moon it’s like that’s what we all should be doing at least once a month yeah i think but well we simulate that in our clubs and our parties but there’s

also places where you can still share these values and enjoy them together and there are some festivals and places i know and i’ve seen in the past 20 years throughout the world that it’s very clear that these groups of people are also inspired by those values the unifying aspects i call them the full moon the the the fire that burns and the music we’re all surrounded with at the same time which i think is part of the uh the the value anybody who has ever enjoyed dancing on a dance floor with the group uh have experienced

and it’s like here i also make jokes like in the ser in the 60s that make love not war i mean of course it’s still very true but i also say like dance don’t fight you know why why would you want to fight if you can dance yeah there must have been some really bad things happening to you that you forgot that so how can we remember what is right and how can we remember what is helpful for us as human beings living together with so many of us on this one planet we have and yeah i find that important and

inspiring you know i want to feed the the dancing part cool the amazing thing about dan’s music i think it’s not only unifying with each other but it also unifies with yourself like you can connect with yourself if it’s really good music you’re giving me goosebumps now as you say it yeah i think it’s very meditative and what’s also interesting aspect of the electronic music scene is that there’s very little lyrics i don’t i’m not against lyrics but i see that if you start using your your your the verbal part of your brain

um the um observing uh qualities are being corrupted like if you stop thinking for instance then you can perceive information in such a different way than if you are constantly analyzing and uh judging and and will color the picture you know if you if you if you have the evil the ability to empty your mind and and perceive then you can see and that that helps a lot if you exactly yeah was there a specific turning point in your life that it became more meditative for you or is it was it a gradual process

well yes especially because i i come from a very talking family my mom loves to talk my sister too i also like talking and everybody’s talking and there’s a lot of words and little books and newspapers and i started to experiment with these with these things like i like to be informed but i don’t want to have an information overload so what i do for instance is something practical like a newspaper i read half of the year no newspaper why because i want to have a life myself as well and if i constantly get

all that information of things happening far far away you know it’s so much so many things happening it’s not even everything’s in there you know it’s like get crazy but i want to stay informed too so then i decided hey how can i help i like the day in the night and i can help myself have the best of both worlds in this case uh by not reading at certain points like consciously not doing it and help yourself to stay critical about your own consciousness too but there’s other things that help me see

like studying history of dance music in general i’ve read a very inspiring book called drumming at the edge of magic and it was written by one of the two germans of the grateful dead named mickey hart and heart and the funny thing is that the book it starts in the stone age so it it comes from where we started as human beings on this planet like playing drums basically up to uh 1992 exactly the year that i started djing so for me it was like bible when i got that book it’s like wow it explains everything from where it

came from to where i started and it helped me understand a lot about rhythm and the law of entrainment which i also find highly fascinating uh well the funny thing is that you asked me what it is and it’s a dutch invention from the year 1662 if i say it right but somewhere in the 17th century one of the two brothers of hachens you know i’m not sure which one now but he found out that if you put two clocks next to each other they start ticking in the same rhythm have you ever heard about that phenomena

or women who start to have their period yeah at the same time if they hang out together now this is the law of entrainment and it says that two things but it can be objects it can be living creatures can be happenings that are similar but not the same they have the automatic uh uh way of being attracted to each other and they will start to form a new pattern together and you have it also on a synthesizer with an oscillator function where frequencies start to grasp into each other and form a new

frequency of vibration and it’s super interesting because it works it’s like the domino effect in a way and if you know if you’re aware of that principle then you can also make sure that you’re not being part of a negative domino spiral or maybe you cause a positive one and you choose to resonate with your surrounding in a more conscious way yeah and as a dj performer you play with frequencies as well of course in the frequencies of people in the in the area as well so you’re true have you ever experimented with this

consciously how this works well um it it we are all part of the same wholeness yeah so if i would want to change that of a group i better have very powerful music story to switch people’s mind who are not willing to get down with the with the project and if there is one person who have very negative energy you know it can ruin the party for everyone you know um so it’s a sensitive thing but you can help create a space where it’s more likely to flower in in a beautiful way and you can use also other elements

than music like you can touch the senses in many ways like with you can work with image and with with smell for instance i like to work with an aroma jockey i work with as well and a visual artist as well because together we create this organic flow yeah this speaks for itself basically so what have you been creating in the last couple of years well i started to do these parties under the name all is one back in 2000 when i i had to i was so fed up with the boring thing like yeah and then you play one o’clock and

the other one plays three o’clock and you have to stop now because it’s five o’clock and we’re going to close and it’s like why do we live by the clock you know why don’t we just live by the art or the atmosphere but um i understand how things have come to where they came and we’re all like children of the industrial revolution so it’s there’s a certain logic behind things i can see that but there’s also a logic behind um what i’m saying and and if you create there’s another thing i learned from the

book it says if you want to have magic in your life you have to set the table for it meaning you have to leave a space empty for magic to occur if you polish everything on forehand if you calculate and determine what things should be like you will block out magic for sure you will not find it because you cannot even have it you know you didn’t create any space for it and and that is what i’m trying to give or create or let it let exist basically it’s leaving space empty and welcoming the magic so you create a safe haven

uh or frame in which it can live or or creation can start by itself and i’ve also learned if you bring like-minded spirits together who can park their ego in a way that they they were still capable of doing what they’re doing but they’re not held back by personal interest and go for communal value and they want to build and create together then you can do everything you can you can grow beyond what your personal limitations would be that’s beautiful and and um i thought what did we forgot about here in europe and

i’ve been studying the indigenous tradition we had here with celebrating the the coming and going of the seasons basically the the season of the seed sowing the season of the harvesting and the season of saying goodbye and also death which we are a bit afraid of in this world but it’s an interesting aspect of life and also gives you the reference point to understand what you are doing and how to validate things uh in a in a real way and i found that there’s a lot of other people also have the need to

share in in in a ceremonial way celebrate in a ceremonial way and there’s a beginning and there’s an end and there are certain values that you respect communion values and they are about content and they’re about quality not about quantity and quantities like it’s that’s just numbers you know i rather have quality so yeah the past five years or so i’ve been experimenting a lot with that and finding a lot of other people who are also into remembering the ancient knowledge and integrating it with

the modern wisdom we got so how do we make this practical when you organize something what does it look like then well um i try to not program events like most westerners do so there’s no business frame like it’s not made to make money i mean it makes money sometimes so this makes a lot of money because it’s so successful but that’s not the intention intention is we are offering a certain celebration with a certain uh philosophy so whatever the philosophy is we let it be the inspiration of the rest of

the event it can be who’s going to play there or not what kind of image we will use what kind of food and drink we will serve to where it will be at and what kind of rituals will be involved because you can have like an opening ceremony or you can have a certain altar on which people can uh like for instance when we celebrate the the the seven it’s called it’s the it’s like the it’s the the event that was well halloween kind of comes from there you know it’s about saying goodbye to the the cycle of life and people do that

in their own personal way and they all can you know like somebody wants to remember a beloved one who passed away or we’ll just accept that it’s going to be winter again and there will be no more leaves on the trees and we might as well also think about what we’re going to lose from ourselves from the last season that is no longer of purpose for us and creating space yeah like like the way hindu is safe through shiva you know something that we also really do not understand well enough yet i think here

that the ending is a new beginning after the destruction there is a place for creation and it doesn’t have to be a violent destruction this could also be very natural coming and going of nature it’s beautiful so how did you get all this wisdom is like a continuous search for you in life to seek new sources or how does it work for you well i think that there’s been a lot of things already investigated by other people so what a big mistake is from mankind is that we have a tendency to destroy everything that was there from

the others you know like oh everything’s bad let’s destroy it all and we start all over again and it’s like right there was nothing good there are you gonna learn that all again you know you’re gonna make the same mistakes again and again and again and you can also say like hey what happened in the past and then rhythm is very interesting because you can see these patterns you know there’s always patterns and the patterns they keep on repeating so have people say if you want to know about the future just look at the past

and it’s like that you know and we’re living in in in a constant recycling of what we’ve been doing but the problem is that we haven’t learned yet how to be critical about ourselves and that is like kind of the arrogance of mankind that we think we’re superior to nature and uh we are superior to the ones that don’t do that look different from us and uh if we all keep on thinking like that we’re gonna definitely destroy ourselves so if we can step out of that thinking and start looking around and accept that every uh

part of the world there’s knowledge that we can learn from and we can see the parallels because there’s so many parallels then we can also see the patterns and one can see the patterns we can break them if we don’t like them but at first we have to recognize them and we have to accept that they are there and i guess rhythm taught me that you know that i can see how it works with rhythm and patterns and very conscious about it hmm that’s really awesome do you have certain um rituals or meditational practices in your own

personal life well not as much as i would want to but that’s why i like the full moon a lot i think if we would see the importance of unifying aspects such as the full moon which is there for every single living being on the planet you know because what represents a full moon the moon in general it comes and it goes right so it has already the the cycle of life in it it has the moment of disappearing and it is the moment of growth and it will go back again it will grow again it comes and it goes

and this is how life is so if we can learn from the moon itself then the moon is there for everybody it is not been owned by a nation and everybody can see it even if you’re imprisoned or if you’re stuck somewhere so if we can learn to worship the moon basically or the unifying aspect of the moon which has been a tradition for a long time already in many indigenous cultures but we can regain that that knowledge as a lot of westerners have done already but if we would share it and we would all appreciate it the the

unifying aspect then we really have a bonding element you know that is there for everyone and it’s for free and uh i think it’s a very harmless and and um yeah it teaches us a lot so it’s harmless and it’s informative at the same time it’s for free it doesn’t pollute i just see good things in the moon i had it earlier this week i was sitting in the sun on my own i was just so grateful for the sun like okay this is awesome that i can feel the warmth on my skin and just can live here and it’s the same thing with

the moon if you can um have a sense of wonder about it and that we share this with all of us together that can already be unifying exactly like you’re saying you first have to see it and otherwise it’s not going to happen yeah yeah or it’s just like a big lamp up in the sky you know like all these other lamps that are on the street it’s kind of like what it seems like at first if you can’t see any further yeah yeah but um yeah the seasons are also important in that on the behalf but that has an

issue because of course on every part of the planet seasons were different yeah but then in europe we have a similar path of seasons which we can understand and relate to and i’m sure that every part of the world it will work in that way as well [Music] so when you have a ritual around a new season or performance with a new season does does the music then change or can it remain the same or what happens i find it very interesting to see what music does inside or outside the city like inside the city i mean we all know the

music term urban but um i think urban to me is a lot of music that has an industrial signature like even yeah it could be tech now as well for instance or uh very polished stuff very urban and like if i go in the streets in the city i also feel like i need to dress differently because like oh people have fish in here and they’re like uh oh it’s weird if i walk barefoot i put my shoes on you know and um if i go outside in nature i feel not just that the other forms change but also the music changes like

you can hear the little details and the subtleness of an insect or a leaf waving in the wind you know things you can’t really determine anymore longer if you’re in the city as this car is coming and all this information and the just polluting your consciousness so you need harder music you need music that grabs you by the throat because otherwise you can’t hear it through through all the other noises and if you’re in the nature you can have very subtle beautiful silent stuff that makes a big impression

and uh yeah it depends a lot where i am what kind of angle how subtle can i go that’s also something i wonder sometimes and sometimes it also helps for us to ever with a group embodying some ceremonial event to have a real ritual or a cleansing you know there’s many ways of energetic cleanse i mean it’s like uh all these indigenous tribes have their own ways to do it but you can you can smoke places out you can sing them you know it’s all about energy and i think the intention is what’s most important there

the the means how people do it it’s a secondary in my opinion but uh yeah that sometimes helps or like when i do a live performance um and i have here for instance my little little instruments i use during performances um it’s just pretty subtle right yeah they’re they’re just details in the music that i accentuate with it can you show it yeah so when i do live performance or i also like to do this in the studio or when i do meditative reclining concerts i use a lot of small indigenous instruments

they’re like dried seeds they’re actually they are nature their nature itself and they have very sound and it’s also nice to let the sound arise from silence that is just silence and then slowly starts to live and how did you get this i collect them i collect these instruments i’ve been traveling the world and i find them or i i i find some other travelers who are sharing their uh their their stuff actually i feel very sorry now i don’t have my um one of my favorite instruments is uh it’s dried

leaves and it’s it’s a it’s a shaker too it looks like a broom i make jokes about it like where is the but it’s a it has a beautiful sound of the wind blowing through the branches and that’s already music you know and then you can you can shape it and you can also use it for instance i use this one which i also like a lot on track it’s already in there but it’s nice to uh use it when um [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so so where does your musical universe start and where does it end because you have i think you have a

broad spectrum of what you do as an artist to me but i i am playing or or making myself i assume yeah well i go from really quiet to fierce blow your mind music and i like to play with that but i can play you a track that we did uh i did together with moses wait that is not released yet but it’s a very powerful one it’s kind of a techno-ish sound but more organic um where did i put it here this for instance um [Music] is [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] so [Music] so [Music] fast forward so [Music]

so yeah it’s more uh this is more dark yeah there’s light there’s darkness too but it’s it’s not the machine darkness that feels like you’re being squeezed in a blender somewhere i mean i like to be pushed uh beyond my boundaries but i don’t want to be squeezed i don’t want to be slammed with a sledgehammer you know i’m not that depressed or happy that i enjoyed it being destroyed you know i i like to stay in tune with with myself and yeah the organic part of life but yeah i can i can also play uh very

meditative stuff and it has no beats you know and it’s just silence and uh might not even be for dancing is there any music you listen to yourself a lot of music yeah i there was a time i thought there was music styles that i wouldn’t enjoy listening to because of my prejudicium like everybody has these musical traumas i call them where in your life you get confronted with a certain style of music that just hurts you for whatever reason and then you think i don’t like it or people brainwash you at home say that it’s bad

music that we don’t listen to that music you’re like oh that’s not good that music and then until you wake up and see and then you’re like oh wow in every style there is beauty you know i mean not all the turks are good not everything is great and it could be a lot of nonsense there too but the essence or where it came from if you peel off the layers like an onion you will find underneath the treasure where it came from the root culture of whatever style there is in music and i i really i eat everything really i i

i i just there’s no limitations in what music i i like or listen to and what defines you then at being an old eater what is what is the essence of you there that i’m the one looking for the the parallels and the the unifying patterns you know where i see that hey this instrument sounds the same in south america in the in the andes with the indians if i go there in in africa or in asia i can hear that same instrument and then in slightly different shape but it’s the same thing i can see like so that was right you

know this is like this is the basics and then i try to blend it again like being the dj the bridge builder basically it’s like my my uh i guess that’s my real talent is to connect things together even if they’re really far apart you know and that that i really enjoy a lot so yeah i’m looking for parallels i’m looking for um yeah the pace of music and the history how it moves and yeah what role i fulfill in that you know my time where i live now in this part of the world or wherever i am at and then and then

trying to show others what you’ve seen in a way that they can also comprehend what it’s about and then i guess so my mission succeeded that’s really awesome so in the end you’re a connector of human beings yeah you have fire yeah i think that is uh in all aspects of life what i’m good at or what i i my underlying mission is i want to bring people together and i want to yeah bring out the best whatever i do thank you thank you [Music] you