DJ phenom Markus Schulz sat down with our friends at Sonic Agenda and dished on Tomorrowland, mind-blowing sets, and his favorite festival memory. Here are some of the highlights.

We’re all familiar with your penchant for open to close sets, and how you blew fans minds last summer with your twelve hour set at Tomorrowland.

Thirteen! I went from noontime until one in the morning!

How did you approach such a massive undertaking?

I have very eclectic taste in music, and there’s so many different types of music that I like, but when I do these sets that’s what it’s all about. I’ll play a proper opening set with warm progressive tracks. And you know, a lot of the tracks that I’ll play on my radio show. Then I’ll get into the peak hour, what everybody would expect to hear at like a two or three hour set. And then do an afterhours type set where you hear the weirder, trippy music. A lot of techno with melodies and then a lot of classics as well. I think that it’s about being a DJ, you know. Sometimes, during those sets you read the crowd. You know what you want to do but you’ve got to read the crowd. And I find it challenging, and I find it fun.

So you would consider doing it again?

Photo by Chibcha via Flickr Creative Commons

Well, that was really hard. The hardest part about doing those sets is shutting down afterwards. Because your mind is constantly analyzing the crowd, thinking about “what am I gonna play next, where do I want to go,” and so your brain is just constantly firing. And then when it’s finished, to shut your brain down, to slow it down is the hardest thing.

I mean yeah, I’ll do it again, but I just remember how hard it was to shut myself down afterwards.

Tomorrowland is one of only many festivals you’ve performed at worldwide. What has your favorite festival been?

Well I’m very attached to Transmission in Prague, because I’ve been there for so long, it’s kind of like my residency. It’s spectacular. And the thing about having an event like that, that’s only one stage and you have the entire arena’s attention, is really awesome.

And then I think that EDC is obviously awesome. And Ultra is awesome. It’s in my own hometown in Miami, where I live now. Those are just some of them. I mean all of them are, if you’re on the right stage, with the right group of people, the right lineup, it can be very fun.

What’s your favorite festival memory?

You know probably the Tomorrowland solo set is one that I’ll never forget. And then Ultra this year. Ferry Corsten and I did our New World Punx set; that was really cool. And just to see how the crowd went from, how the stage went from half full to being completely full. It’s like, “wow.” It’s really cool to see when the fans support like that.