Dave Pearce

Towards the end of February Dave Pearce’s monthly juggernaught trance night, Delirium, celebrated its first birthday at Ministry Of Sound. Pearce believes the main room at MOS “is probably the best one there is for trance. In terms of taking people on a journey with the music, there’s plenty of options to make it really dark and feel part of the sound”. I caught up with him briefly to chat about his euphoric new release, the coincidal Delirium Volume 2

How does Vol 2 differ from Vol 1, if at all?
It’s not completely different really. The way the album works is that it really is a compilation. I’ve tried to make it a recollection of the biggest tracks from the underground trance scene for the last couple of months as well as ones that I know are about to come out. Which is what we kind of did with the last album. Side one is more melodic and then it gets a little bit harder on side two, as we did on the first album. So it’s a similar format but we’re just introducing some new artists that weren’t featured on the last one.

What names should we be looking out for in 2008 in the world of underground trance?
John O’Callaghan, certainly with his performance in the last six months, is well on the way to breaking through. I would put my money on him as someone to look out for. I think he’ll develop the fact that he’s done a brilliant vocal trance record as well. This particular track, Big Sky, is so good that it shows his versatility. That will elevate him to the next level.

And looking ahead to the rest of the year for you personally, what are you most excited about?
I’m hoping to do a couple of gigs abroad and also a couple around the country aswell. I’m planning Ibiza at the moment and working out which DJs to work with in the summer. My main press for 2008 is building the whole Delerium thing and the other thing that I’m doing, which started on my radio show over the last few months, is the new Bedroom Producer where we get people to send in tracks that they’ve made at home and start to feature them on the Radio 1 show. We’ve had a really good reaction to that. It’s quite cool when you ring someone at home after they’ve sent you their track. It’s quite amazing actually because we also get people to text comments when we play the track on the radio. They tend to get quite a lot of feedback. In fact, one of the guys has got a label talking to him at the moment.

Now that the King’s Cross area and Turnmills are all closing down, do you think Ministry Of Sound has a bigger draw card?
It could well do. It’s terribly sad to see these venues going, even though I work at Ministry. You never want to see that situation happening. London should have, and always has had, a very vibrant clubbing scene. I think that people will at least know that if they’re into this sort of music that it is a great home. Maybe if they’ve been scared off because Ministry is traditionally known for its funky house. Plus you should come and see trance in this environment, it really is how it should be done. You get that amazing sound and that incredible atmosphere from the lack of lighting.