Despite the downpour and the mud that looks like lumpy gravy, from underneath his yellow rainhat like a smiling sun, emphasized by his surfer hand wave, Sander's "yeah dude" face beams out, every optimistic, so very Sander Kleinenberg!

Watch our Sander video interview

Sander's immense success has left him incredibly unspoiled. He starts off our video interview by poking fun at himself, "Hi I'm Garth Brooks, and I'm in a boy band called Passion. Welcome to my crib." (That's particularly funny if you remember he won last year's DanceStar Award for Best Remix for his reworking of Justin Timberlake's 'Rock Your Body'.)

But when we start talking about his passion, pushing the boundaries of technology and the electronic music scene by DJing both audio and video via live DVD mixing, he becomes much more serious. "This is the future," he states authoritatively. "Artists, DJs, producers and labels will release mixed DVDs... images mixed along with the music... that is the artist of the future.

Sander is on the forefront of DVD mixing, creating his own visuals to go along with the music he likes. Using two DJV X1's, which work for DVDs like CDJ100s do to mix CDs, he can mix video and audio simultaneously. He works with a video artist to create DVDs that make up about 25% of his usual DJ set, turning a regular DJ gig into a complete a/v experience. So where does he find these records begging to be merged into video art? Note by the usual record shopping. "I don't go out into stores really, I have one place - Massive Music, Joanna sends me a box of 200 records every month, she knows what I like." He then jokes, "she really is Sander Kleinenberg." And really, it's not the only place he gets his records. "I get CDs via ichat from my producer friends. That's how I get my Secret Weapons, the tracks no one else has. Those are the ones that I'll put images to, since I know I'll be playing those for a while, since no one else will."

For now Sander is putting images onto DVDs with other people's music, but a Sander DVD release is bound to happen. We couldn't help but wonder (and ask) what kind of footage would he include? "It might be like a Go On Tour With Sander, at least part of it." No behind the scenes? Sander can't resist the opening that questions gives him, "You mean Sander Gone Wild? Yeah! You'll see me naked in my bathtub, making love to my woman, I'll show everything!" We have a feeling that Sander's 'woman' with their brand new baby might not have heard about this yet!!

Jetting off to yet another city, ("the real work is getting on a plane. I don't like planes. People aren't paying me to DJ. The yare paying me to get on a plane!") on tour supporting his RENAISSANCE presents THIS IS EVERYBODY TOO double mix CD out now on Thrive Records, Sander imparts a bit of wordly advice. "For all the places you visit, there's a thousand more that you didn't." Musically and visually, we're right there with him.

-- words & video by Jennifer Warner