The Brag

Ben Gold
The Golden Child
By Marissa Demetriou
Ben Gold is surprisingly chirpy for 9am on a Saturday morning, but a few moments of chatting with the prodigal child of trance soon has you buzzing with the same infectious energy. When I speak to him, he’s preparing for his set at seminal British festival Global Gathering and working on new tunes – or as he calls them, “Dance floor weapons!”

At just 25 years old, Gold has moved from strength to strength since he began DJing at just 16. The UK producer’s tracks line the wallets of trance DJs around the globe, and have brought praise from trance dons like Armin Van Buuren and Paul Oakenfold, who lauded Gold as “definitely one to watch out for in the future” – certainly helping cement him as a force to be reckoned with within the trance scene. “It’s amazing what these people are saying. These boys have been there, done it and they’re wearing the t-shirt, so it’s an honour, really,” Gold enthuses. “I’ve gone through a musical journey to end up where I am now. If you work hard enough and bide your time, eventually you’ll get it.”

Gold’s upcoming appearance at Godskitchen with fellow heavyweights Marco V, Richard Durand and John Askew will be the first time he’s played on Australian soil – and when I ask what he has in store for us, the unbridled glee in his voice can only mean that we’re in for a treat. “A lot of new music. I base my DJ sets around records which other people don’t have, edits or bootlegs that I make myself, energetic stuff – and hopefully it’s going to go down well,” he explains, citing Orjan Nilsen’s ‘Between The Rays’ and ‘The Mule’ as his current favourites.

The Godskitchen crowd won’t be the only beneficiaries of his set, though; Gold explains that he gets just as much out of shows, funneling the high from a good night into his production. “My main influences are from my DJ sets. When I’ve just done a string of shows, I tend to be buzzing in the studio; I just try and grab things from everywhere and throw them into one track.” And while he’s eager to continue producing the kind of trance that has got him to where he is today, Gold is up for some new challenges too. “I want to start looking into doing an artist album, which I don’t want to rush – maybe do some strange collaborations, and show a different side to Ben Gold which hasn’t ever been released.
“The musical barriers are moving apart,” he says. “House influences are coming in, and the BPM of trance music is slowing down. You still get the high energy stuff which is consistent, but the slower tracks that a few years ago would be in the ‘warm up’ category are now the main records in your set. It’s always evolving, that’s important. You can’t keep listening to the same thing, the same beats and melodies.” And ever since the internet started to represent both one of the most valuable resources and one of the biggest setbacks for artists today, Gold has stayed well away from online forums and YouTube uploads of his tracks. “Sometimes you can read one bad comment and you take that as the overall opinion of your track. But that’s part and parcel of the internet,” he says. “I judge it all by the dance floor.”

Hoping to bring back “shedloads” of inspiration after his Australian tour, Gold is bursting to come down under and show trance heads what he has up his sleeve. “I’m really looking forward to coming to Australia – there were was a really good buzz on [Godskitchen] after the lineup was announced. I felt quite a lot of love coming from Australia.”

What: Godskitchen: A Trance Odyssey
With: Marco V, Richard Durand, John Askew
Where: Hordern Pavilion
When: Sunday October 2