Dutch duo W&W has been galvanizing crowds since its chance meeting at Holland’s Trance Energy festival in 2007. Now armed with a heavy slate of singles, remixes and popular trance podcast Mainstage—not to mention a No. 14 slot on DJ Mag’s top 100 DJs poll—Wardt van der Harst and Willem van Hanegem take on Las Vegas by kicking off their Hakkasan residency this weekend.
You’ve said you don’t really like doing remixes, but your reworkings of Krewella and Armin van Buuren singles are some of your most popular work. Why have you done the remixes you have? It’s not that we don’t like doing remixes, we just prefer to focus on our own music first. We get a lot of requests, but with our heavy touring schedule, we have to say no to most of them. The most important thing for us is that we love the song we are remixing. With Krewella and Armin, that was very easy for us. We have another remix for Gareth Emery coming out [this week].
What went into creating your latest single, “Bigfoot”? Some people are comparing it to your previous single, “The Code.” We had a general theme that we came up with. The track had a pretty bombastic feel to it, and when Bigfoot was on the news, we thought it was the perfect title for this tune. We are fine with people calling it whatever they want (laughs). “The Code” was a big record for us, so hopefully “Bigfoot” will be the same or better!
What does landing a Vegas nightclub residency—particularly at a venue like Hakkasan—mean for you? We are very excited about [it]. To us, it is a reward for all the hard work we have put in over the last few years. We have heard amazing stories from our colleagues and the club has a great team in place, so we are confident that this partnership will be very successful.
You DJ’d a Phillies game last summer. What was that experience like? The idea was really new to us, but as we love sports, it seemed like a fun thing to do. When thousands of people stay after a great game and party on a gorgeous summer night, you can’t complain (laughs). It was an amazing experience, and we are planning on going back this season for sure.
W&W February 27, doors at 10:30 p.m., $33 men, $22 women. Hakkasan, 891-3838.
