At the end of the day, if I do a set at a festival and I only have an hour, which is kind of short for a DJ set, I know that I have to play at least six of my songs. Then the whole challenge is what do I weave around that. How do I stand out? Because at a festival there's probably fifteen songs every DJ's going to play every hour, for the whole day. That to me is more interesting, because I still feel like an outsider in this world.

The lifestyle is strenuous on the body, but it's stimulating to the senses and the mind. So there's a give and take. There are days the flights knock me out, where I feel like the human punching bag that is being on planes every other day. I think people sort of glorify it, like "Oh, you're at parties and there's booze and girls." But it's still work.

When you know what you like and what you want and you're able to nudge things in the right direction, that's more profitable than ever, because there's so much information out there. Everything's saturated. Tastemaker is probably the most overused word, but I still think it's important.

That's what a DJ is at the end of the day - someone who leads where the music goes. The only thing that's changed is that in America, people have woken up in the last few years and realized it.

There's a bit less elbow room and latitude to take it somewhere else, at least at festivals. In the club you can do whatever you want but at festivals, especially Ultra, nowadays the crowd wants to hear our songs.

The essential component of being a DJ is setting the mood; it's playing to the context. So that if you're not able to adapt from one context to another, then you're not a DJ.

Traditionally, with a DJ set, you just go hear DJ that has a good reputation and let the DJ take you somewhere. It was up to the DJ what he wanted to play. Typically in dance music, people didn't know most of the songs a DJ played.