Believe it or not, Marlon Hoffstadt (30) had actually just thrown in the towel. After ten years of DJing and producing, he was done with the night, he was done with the anxious feeling he suffered from during intensive touring, done with the panic attacks, with the uncertainty, and also with the snobs in Berlin . So he decided to leave his life as a DJ behind him. Which undoubtedly also played a role: he had just become a father. His friends affectionately called him ‘papa’ or ‘daddy’, so when he started making eurodance, trance and hardhouse between the companies – just for fun! –, he did so under the nickname that his friends had come up with for him: ‘DJ Daddy Trance’.
He laughs about it, via the Zoom connection from his home city of Berlin. ‘First of all, just to be clear: I didn’t give that name to myself, did I? That would be quite narcissistic and arrogant of me, because the real trance daddies are pioneers like Tiësto.’ He chuckles. ‘One day I posted an edit of ‘Hotline Bling’ on Instagram. Tiësto responded to that! And then another of my followers responded: “Hey Tiësto, Marlon is doing a great job as our new trance daddy, after you went out to get cigarettes sometime in 2012 and never came back.” Hilarious! I never expected that name to be so accepted.’
Yes, almost by accident DJ Daddy Trance became a HIT, his edit of Kid Cudi’s ‘Day ‘N’ Night’ turned out to be pretty much the biggest party starter of 2022 and in no time Marlon Hoffstadt became a superstar, the father of a new generation to DJs. DJs who are not averse to a pop edit here, a groovy hardhouse hit there and a trance smash in the finale. At ADE 2023 we saw how Hoffstadt created a colorful, sparkling rainbow with his records at his own Club Heart Broken party. At the end: pot of gold! He became our number 1 at the festival, and this summer the Dutch festivals will roll out the red carpet for him. This weekend Marlon Hoffstadt will be at DGTL and Paaspop, on King’s Night/day he will even do four major shows in the Netherlands, in May he will be at Awakenings Upclose and in August at Loveland.
This year he also started the Club Heart Broken label with good friend Malugi, on which he dropped his first single today: ‘Don’t Stop The Party’, another irresistible smasher, one that sounds like a sped up Vengaboys hit from the nineties and is guaranteed to appear in all his sets in the coming period. ‘Those vocals sound good, right?! How do I get that? Well, my publisher sent me a large database full of music for commercial producers and film supervisors who are looking for a certain sound, but cannot afford the “real” track. For example, if you want a track in the style of Madonna, you can just search for it. In many cases you can also download the a capellas separately, so I started messing around with that a bit. This vocal actually comes from a very slow disco track. I sped it up 20 or 30 BPM, and now it has a nice bouncy club vibe.”
