From Cannibals to Chemicals: Don Diablo Talks Music Inspiration

This past Friday, iEDM had the pleasure of sitting down and chatting with Dutch DJ, Don Diablo before his set at the Electric Zoo Festival in the Big Apple. Don Diablo has been producing for over a decade; gaining his first record deal at the age of fifteen. In addition to producing music on his label Hexagon, Don continues to excel in the industry with original hits such as ‘Universe’ and ‘On My Mind’ as well as his remixes and monthly Hexagon radio episodes.

This Labor Day weekend marked Don Diablo’s first time performing at Electric Zoo where he threw down some serious tracks including his newest track with Tiesto, ‘Chemicals.’ Don Diablo spoke about the creative process behind the track and what it was like working with Tiesto.

The original song was around for 3 years so I was happy to finish it. We have been talking left and right about doing something and I had this vocal and we ended up producing it together. The record was actually originally called ‘Cannibals’… and when I started working with Tiesto we ended up naming it ‘Chemicals’ and from there we wrote the lyrics and it was already very natural.

Don Diablo and Tiesto debuted their track at Tomorrowland back in July for thousands of fans in their home country and the response was overwhelming.

Tomorrowland was epic…millions of people were watching. People could quote what I was saying...I gave a speech and people could quote segments from it by heart. People can feel that its an emotional record its not just a put your fucking hands up kind of song. The song means a lot to me and it couldn’t have gone better. It’s great to see the two fan bases colliding. I think the song is a really good combination, you can hear the Tiesto vibe in the breaks…very anthemic and the drop is very Don Diablo …very housey.

As an artist who is often inspired by his personal life, Don Diablo shares the meaning behind ‘Chemicals’ as well as other tracks.

For me ‘Chemicals’ is about traveling around the world and seeing people and seeing that we don’t need language and all we need is music. In the end we are all just made up of the same chemicals.

When asked if there is always a deeper meaning to his tracks he stated:

In some of my tracks I just want to make a banging track and other times like in my track ‘Give It All’ it’s based on my own life lessons. And if you look at “The Artist Inside’ (where Don Diablo donated all proceeds to the Dutch Cancer Foundation) it’s a song for my dad who passed away…and my song ‘Mezelluf‘ it’s about facing my inner demons. Overall I think people can tell that my music comes from my heart and not just my fingers.

While the entire summer has been one huge highlight after another for Don, he credits Tomorrowland as the biggest moment of his year, I feel like it’s [music career] like a rocket that keeps accelerating and going higher and higher.

As far as new music goes for all of you eager Don Diablo fans out there, we can all look forward to a full body of work from him in 2016 as well as a continuation of Don’s fashion line!

 Check out Don Diablo’s ‘Chemicals’ preview here: