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A Sandstorm swept over AHS on Monday, May 19th at 2:15 PM EST…Legendary DJ DeRude joined the Journalism class through Zoom from Charleston, South Carolina, where he was staying before his next show on his 25storm world tour.
Students from Mr. Tuffiash’s Journalism 2 class, LEAD section, and any others interested in talking with the EMD 90’s superstar from Finland were welcome to be part of the rescheduled interview. Tuffiash initially reached out to DeRude’s management in the first semester, mostly from his frequent use of the song in the new Honors English 12 courses AI and Ethics and Human Flourishing. To both his and his students surprise, DeRude’s management replied with a “yes”…
After the initial surprise of DeRude’s management sending back a “yes, he’ll do it” message in late February, a number of back and forth messages and a needed reschedule due to DeRude needing to tech his set for his Storm25 world tour moved the interview to Monday, May 19th.
“It {playing the song} started pretty innocently, just trying to get someone’s attention…and then I put the video on the Viewboard and the cheesy graphics were amusing. From there, I just started finding ways to have it cued up on the Crossley combo record/CD/radio set next to the standing desk,” said Tuffiash about the reasons for reaching out to DeRude.
Senior Ella Bounos assisted by bringing in her father’s 90’s techno mix CD, which included Sandstorm as track #2, which Tuffiash kept in the CD deck for most of the year.
Q. Hi, I’m Sadie. One of our questions was, “Our students and their families know you most for Sandstorm. You’ve been a part of performances of it by orchestras in New Zealand and Australia, played it to about 80,000 very fired up fans at the University of South Carolina’s football stadium, and also to 100,000 people in Finland on New Year’s Eve. Why do you think Sandstorm keeps reaching people generation after generation?
A. ” No, you know what? If you know the answer or part of it, please tell me because I know every millisecond of the song I know every sample and sound of the multitrack of it. I know how things relate to each other, equalizing and production-wise. But what I don’t know is why it became the phenomenon it is. There’s a lot of energy in it, and that I think is why sandstorm particularly is played at sports events. This track harmonically works so that there’s sort of a tension And then there’s release in the same package. And one more key thing is that a hit record usually is something that people can recognize in half a second after they first hear, the first note, the intro a part of it. And Sandstorm is one of those tracks that if you’ve heard it once, you pretty much recognize it the second time.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db5f-A-vSyw (link to the 2016 NYE show in Helsinki – “Sandstorm”)
Q. My question is, you’ve lived in the US and Finland. Are there more obscure artists from Finland you would recommend, especially out of to US listeners and vice versa?
A. I don’t know, I mean I always try to support my newer and older colleagues, and top of my head I would recommend you guys checking out Orchida or Oridia. So it’s spelled O R K I D E A Orchida. he’s actually two years younger than I am, but he’s kind of like the godfather of our dance music scene. He’s arranged illegal raids starting 13 years old in Helsinki, and he is a trance music artist and has released stuff under Orida for over 20 years now. And he is a really great DJ and really good dude, and at the moment I think his title is something like the head of music on our national broadcast company, one of their main channels called Ole L X. He’s one that you should definitely check out. Then there’s a guy called Ion Orion who also happens to be a radio DJ on Fridays on Ulle Axe. Another name is a guy called Yoto Y O T O. He does this house all kinds of house on a sort of groovier side of it, progressive side, tech house sometimes. And he’s touring in the US as well.
Q. If you had to add one acoustic instrument into your studio that isn’t in there already, which one would you add and why?
A. You know what? I’ll tell you a secret. My studio does not have one acoustic instrument in it right now. I always say that if it wasn’t for electricity, I probably would not be an artist. So, unfortunately, I was too into ice hockey and a couple of other things when I was a kid. And I never actually studied piano or any other instrument like that. We had our little Casio keyboard, and I did play, I don’t know… Old Macdonald or whatever, like the two-finger method. These days, I can play keys a little bit, but I still am not anything classically trained. So, it was a lot of programming back then, and today I do play keys and our house has a little baby grand piano, and I play that every once in a while, but my son, who is 16 soon, he’s played it since he was four. We also have a couple of guitars, my daughter, who is seven, and my son both mess with those as well. So, as for the studio, I think the mouth harp would be something that I could maybe play. So, I just think there’s a demand for a techno song with that kind of thing. (editor’s note – DeRude smirks here, he’s joking)
Q. in the AI and ethics class that we have here this year, and we’re wondering if you could share your own view on our core question for this year, which is what AI is to you in 2025, a tool for progress and/or a human replacement?
A. For me, it’s a tool. Unfortunately, in some cases, it’s going to be and already is a human replacement. For instance, if we’re thinking about stuff that used to be maybe still is called elevator music, sort of more insignificant stuff that is played in a background somewhere and so far it’s been created by humans and somebody has to pay something for that to be produced whether those are cover songs or original songs. But they are often either very cheaply priced or maybe even copyright-free. As long as you buy some sort of a package of it, or a subscription. The AI is generating stuff these days so good that you could easily replace a library music catalog with that kind of stuff. And it’s only getting better. And so in that way, somebody’s not going to get that job anymore. I personally am not worried for my job in that way because at least half of my work is me going out and playing music in front of a crowd, and that is not going to be replaced by an AI. I think the interest there might be all of you might one time go to a festival that it advertises like, hey, we’ve got this AI show and it might be really cool with lights and whatever and there might be even a robot doing something, but I don’t think humans will ever or at least not in the near future relate to that in a way that you relate to a regular human being the artist and DJ and the interaction that you can have with the human. And also, such a huge part of my music-making is that I make music for myself. I love the process of it and I try very hard to get in a state of mind where my music making is its just for my own fun and has very little to do with monetization and thinking about how that’s going to further my career. And so we try to think about it so that I can do what I want, and then we try and figure out where it fits or how we promote it, how we do tours, and whatnot. And I use AI tools in my work in a sense that, for instance, a company called iZotope makes mixing plugins that analyze incoming audio, and they can suggest, for instance, an equalizer starting point or mastering starting point for the whole track. And while I rarely use anything as is, they give nice starting points and also sort of like a reference point that I can use. That sounds pretty good. I’ll tweak this more and more and more or that sounds like crap. I know that I at least won’t go in that direction. So for my mixing, it’s brought some speed to it. I’m quicker with it. And then also the sort of non-biased reference is a very good thing for me personally. I don’t know how other producers feel about that.
Q. One of the other courses we have is human flourishing. And the last question that we have is, what do you think defines how to live a flourishing life?
A. It’s kind of like an all-encompassing thing. It’s so I don’t consider myself anybody to tell somebody how to lead or develop a flourishing life. But I think from my perspective is I have good people around me and I try to be nice to everybody who deserves it. But then I try to be nice to even people who are not so nice because I get satisfaction out of them or somebody close to them, maybe realizing that I was somehow a bigger person than they are if they were being not so nice. But I’ve always just kind of gone after my dreams and worked on that kind of work on that stuff that I like to do and at the same time having a little bit of goal oriented thinking but in my case it’s been a lot of happy accidents and sort of this naive belief that- or faith in things just happening the right way or something eventually happening the right way and u being successful when I just work hard so I do align myself with similar-minded people and people who equally sort of look for opportunities to say for financial success but also want to do cool things and not good things. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but if you guys want to ask more or more specific or if you guys want to expand, I’m an open book. You feel free to ask anything.
Q. Do you think that the release of “Sandstorm” in 1999 secretly either triggered or prevented the Y2K panic in any way?
A. This is such a dumb question… no offense. I would love to take that credit. Obviously, it would be great. putting all the Windows PCs on their knees and on that one second from 1999 to 2000 that would be great but unfortunately, probably I had very little to do with that. it was an interesting time… though and I did turn off my computer before the year changed.
