Legendary hard house DJ Tony De Vit is set to return to the stage at this year’s I Love Techno festival in Ghent, Belgium, in the form of a state of the art hologram.
De Vit, seen by many as one of the most influential artists of his generation, tragically passed away in July 1998 but is set to dramatically return from the grave in hologram form to headline the festival’s Red Room, where he will share the bill with industry stalwarts such as Dave Clarke and Jeff Mills.
Michael De Brunn, a spokesperson for I Love Techno, explained the reasoning behind the strange line up addition, “We’re really just trying to mix things up a bit and breath a breath of fresh air back into the festival…I know it isn’t called I Love Hard House and we have Tony De Vit playing but we’re hoping nobody notices.”
“If you look at all the latest trends and fashions from around the globe you can clearly see that people today are massively influenced by the styles of the past,” explained De Brunn. “Music is the same, in the last few years we’ve seen the rejuvenation of disco and soul through nu-disco and nu-soul and we’re predicting that hard house is going to go through a similar renaissance in the near future.”
“So by having De Vit play as a hologram we’re staying one step ahead of the game and, in all honesty, we couldn’t have thought of anyone we’d rather have as the I Love Techno poster boy for nu-hard house,” continued the Belgian spokesperson. “It’ll also be great to see Tony back in the limelight and receiving the recognition he deserves for his work in the industry.”
“The beauty of the hologram is that we can make some minor adjustments to the artist’s look or music in order to make them more relevant to modern popular culture,” continued De Brunn. “In De Vit’s case we’re really happy with his musical input but by changing his look a little, adding a top-knot hair style, curly moustache and skinny jeans, we believe we can increase his global appeal.”
According to unconfirmed reports in America, Ultra Festival, are preparing to follow in I Love Techno’s footsteps by hosting the first ever all-hologram music festival, with one unnamed source commenting, “It makes sense to use holograms, most of the big name DJs over here don’t even mix live anyway so there’s literally no point having them on stage, in some cases I think we’d be better off just having a CD player or a donkey with a kazoo than some of these so called DJs.”
