SANTØS: AFTER THE NOISE

There are two versions of a touring weekend, and SANTØS increasingly lives inside the distance between them. One is public: pressure, movement, bodies, a room responding almost instantly to decisions made behind the decks. The other begins afterwards, when Glenn leaves the booth and the scale collapses. Airports. Hotel rooms. The journey home. Silence after several hours spent trying to make people forget time altogether.

For a project built from the physical memory of early rave, hardcore and gabber, that contrast has become important. SANTØS began as a way of translating something Glenn already carried with him, long before there was an audience waiting to receive it.

“I’m Glenn, the person behind SANTØS. I didn’t start this project to fit a trend; it grew into my way of translating the energy I grew up with into something people can physically feel. My sets are built around tension, unexpected turns and release, mixing industrial hard techno with the raw spirit of 90s rave and gabber. I don’t want people to just hear it; I want them to lose track of time and walk out with that ‘what just happened?’ feeling.”

The 90s are not an aesthetic added retrospectively to SANTØS. Early rave, hardcore and gabber belong to Glenn’s foundations, sounds absorbed before production entered the picture. What survived was their raw energy rather than a need to reproduce their original form.

“Over time, I didn’t want to recreate the past; I wanted to translate that feeling into something new. The turning point was when I started blending those old-school influences with hard techno, while keeping groove and rhythm at the centre instead of making everything as industrial as possible.”

That shift also forced a reconsideration of hardness itself. In a scene where intensity can easily become a competition of tempo, distortion and impact, SANTØS became more interested in what happens between those moments.

“I stopped chasing the idea that harder always means better. For me, it’s about tension, groove and emotion without losing that raw energy that made me fall in love with this music.”

As SANTØS has grown, the life surrounding those sets has become more complicated than the moments visible from the floor. Touring produces strange changes of scale. A night can end surrounded by thousands of people and a morning can begin almost completely alone.

“From the outside, it probably looks like a constant adventure. Every weekend I get to visit countries I might never have seen otherwise, meet new people and do what I love for a living, and I’m genuinely grateful for that. At the same time, there’s another side people rarely see. A lot of weekends are spent travelling alone, waiting in airports, checking into hotel rooms by myself, and coming home alone after an intense show.”

That movement between extreme social intensity and solitude did not always sit comfortably with him. Over time, however, the hours alone have stopped feeling simply like the absence of something.

“One of the biggest things this life has taught me is how to be comfortable on my own. I used to find that difficult. Going from the energy of a packed room straight into silence wasn’t always easy. Over time, I’ve started to see those quiet moments differently. They gave me space to reflect, recharge and get to know myself better.”

The complication is that solitude no longer necessarily means disconnection. Social media can immediately restore the noise, only in another form. Other artists are touring, releasing and announcing. Their careers appear simultaneously, stripped of most of the waiting, uncertainty and isolation surrounding them.

For someone naturally ambitious, resisting that comparison has required a recalibration rather than a rejection of ambition.

“I still want to be the best version of myself and I never want to lose that fire. But constantly comparing yourself to other artists is one of the easiest ways to lose perspective. The only comparison that really matters is whether I’m becoming better than I was yesterday. But don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to do everything I can to get the absolute most out of this career.”

There is no attempt to make that contradiction disappear. Glenn wants perspective without becoming less driven. He wants a life beyond SANTØS without diminishing what SANTØS demands from him.

“When things get heavy, I’ve learned not to keep everything inside. I talk about it with friends and people I trust, and I’ve also gone to therapy. That has helped me a lot. It’s important for me to keep a life outside music too: simple things like training, spending time with friends and having interests that have nothing to do with the scene.”

If touring often compresses time, One Day Music Festival in Italy gave Glenn the opposite experience. Another artist cancelled, unexpectedly extending his set and giving him room to understand what his approach could become when nothing needed to be rushed.

“One night that will always stay with me was my set at One Day Music Festival in Italy. That was the first time I really felt like everything clicked. Another artist had to cancel, so I was given more time to play. Instead of pressure, it gave me space to shape the journey exactly how I wanted.”

The longer set allowed him to read the room rather than reduce it to a succession of immediate peaks.

“I could connect with the Italian crowd, read their energy minute by minute and respond to it. It felt like every decision I made behind the decks turned into gold. The connection was effortless, and for the first time I truly felt at one with the crowd. I walked off that stage knowing I was exactly where I was meant to be.”

Another night showed him the same relationship from the opposite direction. At the Arena, a delayed flight left Glenn arriving with tension already accumulated before he entered the booth.

“The flight was delayed, and by the time I got there, nothing was taking the edge off. Not even a drink could calm those nerves. I walked in carrying all that tension.”

Then the room intervened.

“The second I stepped behind the decks, the crowd’s energy took over. Every second pulled me out of my head and back into why I do this. In moments like that, the energy you receive from the crowd can completely change your state of mind.”

It complicates the familiar image of the DJ as the sole source of a room’s intensity. SANTØS might construct the conditions, but the relationship moves in both directions. Sometimes Glenn arrives ready to control the tension. Sometimes the crowd releases his.

Growth has also changed the way Glenn recognises achievement. Earlier milestones could be isolated and absorbed. Now one threshold seems to lead immediately towards another.

“Success used to be made up of smaller moments, and I probably allowed myself to appreciate them more. Now it can feel like a loop where you think it can’t get bigger, but somehow it keeps growing.”

That acceleration has changed the measurement. Visibility can arrive suddenly, but sustaining a connection is something else.

“These days, success for me is being able to keep doing what I love at a level that satisfies me and still feeling the same appreciation from people. It’s easy to have one viral moment or one track that connects, but staying consistent week after week is something else. For me, success isn’t only expressed in numbers anymore.”

It is telling that Glenn repeatedly returns to feeling rather than scale. For all the physical severity surrounding SANTØS, he rarely describes the project through aggression alone. Groove matters. Emotion matters. Memory matters.

“Of course, music can be an escape from everyday life, and I hope my sets give people that freedom. But beyond that, I want them to leave feeling like they were part of something special rather than just another night out.”

There is a useful contradiction in that desire. SANTØS draws partly from music Glenn remembers intensely, yet the objective is not to recreate somebody else’s memory. It is to create the conditions for a new one.

“More than anything, I want people to remember the feeling long after the music has stopped. That’s what I try to create every time I play.”

The scale around SANTØS may continue to change, but scale is no longer the most interesting part of the story. Glenn is trying to protect something smaller and harder to measure: the ability to enter a room without reducing it to another date, to retain the rawness of the music that formed him without becoming trapped inside its past, and to remain ambitious without allowing somebody else’s progress to determine the value of his own.

Touring has made the separation between Glenn and SANTØS harder, and perhaps more necessary. Moving from a packed room to an empty hotel, from collective intensity to travelling home alone, has forced him into a relationship with solitude he once found difficult. Friends, training, hobbies and therapy have become parts of a life that needs to remain larger than the project.

Perhaps the most revealing thing is that Glenn does not pretend these contradictions have been resolved. He wants perspective and still wants everything he can extract from his career. He has learned to value being alone while building a profession dependent on rooms full of people. He recognises the danger of comparison while remaining intensely competitive with himself.

SANTØS is still moving forward. Glenn is learning something more difficult: where the artist ends, where the person begins, and how to keep both intact once the noise stops.