Dyen: The Empty Page After Momentum

Three years is a long time to wait when everything around you is accelerating. For DYEN, this meant understanding what belonged with him. Touring had transformed the scale of his career, but an album required a perspective that individual tracks did not. HERE WE ARE arrived when that perspective finally felt clear.

“Back then, I was still figuring out who I was as an artist. I knew what kind of energy I wanted to create on stage, but touring didn’t give me the right headspace to produce a full album and tell my musical story. I was chasing ideas, trying to prove myself and experimenting with different directions. Releasing an album then would have felt more like a collection of tracks than a complete story.

Over the last few years, I’ve travelled the world, played more than a hundred shows a year, worked with artists from completely different backgrounds and experienced different cultures. All of that naturally found its way into my music. I became much more confident in trusting my own instincts.

HERE WE ARE is a reflection of everything I’ve experienced, musically and personally. It combines the raw industrial sound I grew up with in Rotterdam, melodies that show another side of me, and influences from hardcore, trance and everything in between. Three years ago, I didn’t have that perspective. Now, I finally feel like people are hearing the real DYEN.”

Collaboration played its own part in that process. One session stands apart, partly because the person across the studio had existed in DYEN’s life as a listener long before they met as artists. Working with Mr. Polska could easily have been defined by the distance between their generations. Instead, that distance disappeared quickly.

“Growing up in the Netherlands, Mr. Polska’s music was everywhere. My whole generation knows him, so sitting in the studio together almost felt surreal. We went in to finish an unreleased track and ended up making ‘Balenci’ in one session. What stood out was how open he was. Someone with that much experience could easily tell you how things should be done, but instead, he was genuinely curious about my ideas and the way my generation approaches production.

That session reminded me that great music isn’t about age or genre; it’s about curiosity. We were coming from different generations, but chasing exactly the same feeling: making something that gives people goosebumps on a dancefloor.”

Genres have never been a particularly stable frame for DYEN. The harder end of techno has moved from relative margins into enormous rooms, and speed, once part of the provocation, has become almost a given. Another few BPMs will not tell you much about who is behind them. The more revealing question is whether an artist leaves a fingerprint when those distinctions begin to blur. DYEN senses the crowd is already listening for one.

“People are looking for personality again. They want music that feels honest instead of calculated for algorithms. You can see it in crowds reacting to emotional moments during a set, older influences returning, or artists mixing genres without worrying whether it fits inside one category.

Electronic music has always been about evolution. I think we’re moving away from strict genre labels and towards artists with a recognisable identity. People don’t just follow a BPM anymore; they follow people with a vision. In the long run, authenticity will become more valuable than constantly chasing whatever is trending that month.”

For a Dutch artist, history sits unusually close. Trance, hardcore, techno and the country’s wider dance culture were not distant movements DYEN discovered retrospectively. Their presence was ordinary enough to be taken for granted. Travelling revealed how differently that history is perceived elsewhere.

“Growing up in the Netherlands, you almost take it for granted until you start travelling. Then you realise how much respect people around the world have for Dutch electronic music. From trance and hardcore to techno and big room, so many movements started here or were heavily shaped by Dutch artists.

I don’t see that legacy as pressure. Every generation has added something new instead of copying the previous one, and that’s exactly how it should be.

This hard techno wave started because my colleagues and I wanted to raise the BPM of techno, and it slowly developed into what it is now. We got a lot of shit because people compared it to hardcore and every other hard genre, but it’s something different. It’s hard techno: a genre shaped by the artists, the sound and the raves that we love.

I hope my generation will be remembered for breaking boundaries between genres. We grew up with unlimited access to music, so we’re less interested in staying inside one lane. Hardcore, techno, trance, rave culture and industrial sounds all influence each other now. If we leave behind a generation that encouraged individuality instead of following formulas, I’d be really proud of that.”

Scale has a strange relationship with memory. Tomorrowland, Awakenings, Monegros, Rave Rebels and Tegendraads can map a year from the outside, yet the moments that survive for the artist are not necessarily its largest. For DYEN, one of them happened at home in Rotterdam, in the silence immediately before a set.

“My closing set in Rotterdam, after my own Reckless hosting with Rotterdam Rave, definitely stays with me. I had just finished my Reckless World Tour with 13 sold-out shows, and closing in my hometown with my friends and family felt like everything came together.

As artists, we often remember moments that almost nobody in the crowd notices. I remember standing there before the intro started, looking at the audience and realising how many years of work had led to that exact moment.

Afterwards, I wasn’t thinking about numbers. I was thinking about how something that started in my bedroom studio can connect with people from all over the world. That feeling stayed with me long after the set ended.”

Recognition brings another problem: people now enter a DYEN set already knowing what they expect from it. Fulfilling that expectation too faithfully would eventually reduce intensity to routine. His sets increasingly use contrast to prevent that, allowing pressure to disappear long enough for its return to matter.

“People come to a DYEN set expecting energy, intensity and a certain emotional journey. I respect that because they’ve invested time and money to be there. But if I repeated the same formula every weekend, I’d get bored very quickly, and eventually the audience would too.

I enjoy surprising people. Sometimes that means playing something much more melodic than expected, dropping an old hardcore record or slowing things down before bringing the energy back.

Those moments are often the most memorable because people don’t expect them. Growth happens not by abandoning your identity, but by expanding it. As long as it feels honest to me, I’m not afraid to challenge expectations.”

The largest change ahead has little to do with music. DYEN is becoming a father this year, introducing another measure of time into a life organised around airports, hotels and weekends away. The practical contradictions have not been solved yet. The priorities have already started moving.

“Even before my child is born, I notice my priorities changing. For years, my life has been airports, hotels and festivals. Everything moves incredibly fast, and it’s easy to believe you always have to say yes to the next opportunity. Becoming a father has made me realise that not every opportunity is worth missing moments at home for.

It doesn’t make me less ambitious. It gives that ambition a different purpose. Before, success was about bigger festivals, more countries and pushing my career further. Now, I want to build something that lasts. I want my child to see someone who followed his passion, but also someone who was present.

Balancing touring with family life won’t always be easy, but I’m already a professional at missing nights and getting no sleep. There will be sacrifices and difficult choices. For the first time, success isn’t only measured by what happens on stage. It’s also about creating a life I’m proud to come home to.”

An album can look like resolution from the outside. For the person who has spent years making it, completion can produce the opposite sensation. With HERE WE ARE finished and another world tour taking shape for 2027, DYEN has reached the less visible part of momentum: deciding what deserves to follow it.

“Right now, I feel like I’m entering a new chapter rather than reaching a destination. Releasing HERE WE ARE was something I’d been building towards for years, so afterwards there was a moment where I thought, ‘What now?’ Every big milestone creates another empty page.

I’m more confident than I used to be, but doubt never completely disappears. I still question ideas in the studio and wonder whether the next music will connect with people. I think that’s healthy because the day you stop questioning yourself is probably the day you stop growing.

What motivates me now isn’t proving that I can headline another festival. It’s seeing how far I can push my creativity while staying true to myself. Becoming a father changes that perspective too. I want to build something that has meaning beyond touring.

DYEN is becoming more mature, so my sound has to become more mature too.”