FULL BIOGRAPHY

Introduction

Namibian born Pierre Pienaar is one of the most prominent names in the Electronic Dance Music, especially in the trance genre. He has racked up close to a 100 commercially released singles and over 80 official remixes under his Pierre Pienaar, P.H.A.T.T., Pierre Pressure, Melodia, ReBirth, JXS Project and Deep Sequence aliases, spanning over more than a decade and having his music licensed to respected record labels like Ministry of Sound, Sony / BMG, Universal, Warner Bros, EMI, Armada, Vandit, Flashover, Nukleuz, Tidy, Monster Tunes, Cloud 9, Be Yourself Music and Black Hole Recordings. He has been commissioned to do official remixes for the likes of Technotronic, Bob Marley, Roger Shah, Fabio XB, Lost Witness, BK, Ratty, CRW, Mario Piu, Ralph Novell, and Mauro Picotto among others.

He was the Head of Nukleuz Green which released prolific productions from the likes of Mauro Picotto, Alphazone, Mario Piu, Gigi D’Agostino, Tillmann Uhrmacher and many others which was the number-one selling vinyl record label in the UK for three years running and became Music Week’s number-one UK Dance label. In 2017 he co-produced “Stronger Together” with Grammy-winner Paul van Dyk (for Best Soundtrack in A Motion Picture “The Dark Knight”), which quickly rose to the number-one spot on the Beatport Trance top 100 and is considered one of the biggest modern trance classics. In 2019 Pierre was voted into the Top 30 of the Trancepodium Top 100 DJ’s poll.

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History

Simon Eve at DJ Magazine was quoted as saying that Pierre is one of the A-Listers in the scene, having headlined alongside TOP100 DJ’s like Paul van Dyk, Roger Shah, Leon Bolier, Ummet Ozcan and BK. His productions has also been playlisted on BBC Radio 1 (United Kingdom), Kiss FM (Australia), Radio 538 (Netherlands), 5FM (South Africa)  and Radiowave (Namibia) and is supported by music heavyweights such as Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond, Paul van Dyk, Carl Cox, Lisa Lashes, W&W, Marcus Schulz, Aly & Fila, Bob Sinclar, Dave Pearce, Judge Jules, Warp Brothers, Cosmic Gate and many more.

Pierre started taking an interest in DJ’ing at the age of 15, doing weddings and birthday gigs to generate enough money to buy himself a pair of decks. However, that dream almost came seemingly to an end when all his equipment burned down at a matric farewell function. He used the insurance money to buy Technics turntables to begin his DJ career as a club DJ.

During that period Pierre started to dabble with music production, getting himself a copy of Fruity Loops and reading tutorials on the internet and on music production forums. During the same time there were 3 other young producers doing the same thing, posting samples of their latest productions for people to give feedback on. Gaz West (Dark By Design), Guy Mearns (Guyver) and Alf Bamford (Technikal) along with Pierre built up a fan base amongst members of the upcoming production community and people started talking. Pierre and Alf Bamford decided to put their heads together on some tracks and from that spawned their first track “Darkside” which started getting DJ support from big DJ’s in the Hard Dance scene.

Pierre finished his matric year at the age of 18 and enrolled at SAE to study Audio Engineering in Glasgow, Scotland, working on his own productions when he had free time. He started to send out demos and it wasn’t long until he got a call from the Nu Energy Collective who offered to sign Darkside as well as Stratosphere from Alf and Pierre on his Dynamix label. This was the start of big things to come. At this stage Pierre and Alf have never actually met in person, all of their productions were done over the internet.

A few months after the release of Darkside, Pierre got his first solo production signed to the highly respected Audio Rehab label, one of the in-house labels at Alphamagic under his ReBirth alias. Working closely with A&R Manager Lee Stacey he released a string of successful solo singles on Audio Rehab and Execute as well as the follow up release from himself and Alf, this time featuring a remix from the legendary Anne Savage. The first single under Pierre’s new P.H.A.T.T. alias also got released on Alphamagic’s Phantom Trax label. Unfortunately, Alphamagic went into administration which was a huge setback not only for Pierre, but the whole scene.

After taking some time off to re-think his role and position in the scene Pierre started working on new

ideas and new sounds, and decided to concentrate more on his P.H.A.T.T. productions. This ended up to be a very good decision and soon Pierre was contacted by Simon “Brisky” Brisk, who was the head at Monster Tunes at the time, to remix on his label, including Sundawner – Krystal Dreams (The Theme Of Wildchild), Sunblind – Believe and the now legendary “Ratty – Sunrise”.

Meanwhile, Pierre and Alf collaborated on their biggest track to date…Global Panic. Tidy Trax quickly signed it and hype of the track started to build and spread throughout the clubbing community. They were toured to Australia and New Zealand and played in Sydney, Canberra and Auckland. This was also the first time that Alf and Pierre actually met each other in person.

When Global Panic finally got released it entered the national UK Dance charts at the number 10 spot.

As a DJ and performer Pierre has played and headlined many events around the world. In 2006 he did his first UK tour where he played for promotions and events like Twisted at the Fridge (alongside BK, Ed Real, Trevor McLachlan and Olly Perris), Tranzaction (with Charlie G and Rob Tisserra), Zoology and Addiction (alongside Ben Gold and Spencer Freeland). He has also toured Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, playing at high profile clubs, festivals and events, the biggest being H2O in Johannesburg, where Pierre performed to a crowd of 17000 people which was aired on MTV Base.

Pierre has also done guest DJ mixes for shows like DJ Tiesto’s Club Life, Paul van Dyk’s “Vonuc Sessions”, Judge Jules’ “International Show”, Sean Tyas’ “Tytanium Sessions” and “Future of Hard Dance” on Ministry of Sound radio.

His own weekly show called Euphoric Sessions was aired on Dance Radio in Germany, Pulse in Australia, Totaal.fm in Holland, Derek The Bandit’s “Sound Republic” web radio station in South Africa and Slinky.fm in the UK. Guests that has appeared on the show included the likes of Cosmic Gate, W&W, Matt Darey, Adam White, Sean Tyas, Mike Koglin, Gareth Emery, Lange, Warp Brothers and Andy Whitby among various others. He also mixed the bi-monthly “Nukleuz Trance Podcast” on iTunes, which was picked as a favourite by actor Nick Frost from Hot Fuzz, Paul and Shaun of The Dead fame.

Pierre got the first mixed CD compilation mixed by himself released in June 2007 on Nukleuz Records. Trance Sessions Solstice climbed into the TOP10 on the iTunes UK and iTunes US dance album charts and followed up with Trance Adrenaline vol.1 at the end of 2008 and Trance Adrenaline vol.2 which was featured as the trance release of the month in Mixmag.

His tacks keep getting licensed to top selling compilations around the world mixed by others as well. He has featured on various TOP40 compilations including “Gatecrasher’s Trance Anthems” which hit the number 1 spot on the UK compilation charts and stayed there for a month, beating off competition from the “NOW..that’s what I call music” series as well as the soundtracks of High School Musical and Twilight.

He has worked with the South African dance music stalwart, Paul Almeida, on various projects including a remix album for some of the biggest Afrikaans acts (Kurt Darren, Nicholis Louw, Shine 4, David Fourie, Manie Jackson, Die Campbells, Monique & Snotkop) for Select Music, remixes for Locnville (Just Music) and ChianoSky (EMI Records) and the remake of Technotronic’s massive hit, “Like This” on Universal.

In the last decade he has firmly planted himself as one of the trance elite with releases on Ferry Corsten’s Flashover Recordings, Paul van Dyk’s VANDIT Records, Roger Shah’s Magic Island and Alex M.O.R.P.H’s Universal Nation and co-producing “Stronger Together” with Paul van Dyk which reached the #1 Spot on the Beatport Trance  chart. He also reached the number 30 spot globally (number 2 in Africa) on the Trancepodium Top 100 DJ’s in 2019.

AWARDS / NOMINATIONS AND CHART SUCCES

  • 2005 Official UK Dance Charts (#10)
  • 2007 iTunes US Dance Album charts (Top 10 sales)
  • 2007 iTunes UK Dance Album charts (Top 10 sales)
  • 2005 Hard Dance Awards (“Global Panic” nominated for “Song Of The Year”)
  • 2015 Corsten’s Countdown 436 (“Orbit” voted #1 by listeners)
  • 2015 Corsten’s Countdown 437 (“Orbit” voted #3 by listeners)
  • 2017 Beatport Trance Top 100 (“Stronger Together” was #1)
  • 2017 Corsten’s Countdown 543 (“Neorah” voted #1 by listeners)
  • 2017 Corsten’s Countdown 544 (“Neorah” voted #1 by listeners)
  • 2017 Corsten’s Countdown 545 (“Neorah” voted #1 by listeners)
  • 2017 Corsten’s Countdown 546 (“Neorah” voted #2 by listeners)
  • 2018 Corsten’s Countdown 591 (“Atari” voted #3 by listeners)
  • 2019 Corsten’s Countdown 606 (“Miremba” voted #1 by listeners)
  • 2019 iTunes Namibia (“Miremba” was at #3 best selling of all music)
  • 2019 BelHits15 (Pierre Pressure Remix of Dana Rexx “Phoenix” was #1 on Belgian Radio)
  • 2019 TrancePodium Top 100 DJ’s (Voted #30 in the world, #2 in Africa)
  • 2019 Corsten’s Countdown 628 (“Red Dune Kalahari” voted #1 by listeners)
  • 2019 Corsten’s Countdown 629 (“Red Dune Kalahari” voted #1 by listeners)
  • 2019 Corsten’s Countdown 653 (“Epoch” voted #1 by listeners)
  • 2020 TrancePodium Top 100 DJ’s (Voted #26 in the world, #2 in Africa)
  • 2022 Beatport Trance Top 100 (“Home” was #3)
  • 2026 Beatport Trance top 100 (Pierre Pienaar Remix of Airscape – L’Esperanza was #3