Datsik is ready to spend the nights on his upcoming Firepower Records Tour in a vortex. For real. The Canadian dubstep DJ and producer (ne Troy Beetles) hatched the idea for the vortex-shaped DJ booth he’ll be using on the tour on an airplane flight earlier this year with good pal and fellow DJ/producer Excision.

“I was mulling over ideas and came up with this really cool concept…like a massive vortex, with all the visuals spiraling inward towards me,” Datsik, who recently tried the technology out during tour rehearsals in Los Angeles, explains to Billboard. “It’s really trippy. It looks like I’m floating in the middle of this concoction.” The images are projected both from in front and from behind, he adds, which makes the presentation “look seamless, really unlike anything I’ve ever done before. I basically wanted to make the trippiest possible thing I could, and this is the idea that came to mind.”

But Datsik does acknowledge that it presents a different kind of challenge for those working inside the vortex. “Honestly, I have to focus on what I’m doing or I’ll probably fall over,” he says. “I’m in the middle of all these visuals that are swirling inwards, pulsing. I look above me, to my left, to my right — everywhere around me, there’s visuals. It’s really weird but really cool at the same time. But I’ve got to make sure I’m focused on what I’m doing, otherwise a) I’ll fall over or b) have a seizure.”

The visuals for the tour, which begins Aug. 30 in Denver, will be produced by V Squared Labs, which also works with Skrillex, as well as a 50,000-watt P.A.. Datsik, meanwhile, promises a different kind of set that will showcase “tons of unreleased music” from his Firepower label artists along with “75 percent of my own tracks,” including from his debut full-length album “Vitamin D,” which came out in April.

“I usually play what I’m feeling at the time,” Datsik says, “but with this tour specifically, because it’s such a stacked lineup and there’s so many other DJs, I’m going to play a lot of my own tunes.” The Firepower lineup includes Delta Heavy, Terravita, Bare Noize, XKR, Getter and AFK, among others.

Datsik recently finished a remix for Linkin Park’s “Until It Breaks,” and he’s starting to eyeball his future work, which he says might step away from dubstep.

“I’ve been making it for a long time now, and I feel like everything is changing a bit,” he explains. “I’m trying to step out of the box and do something different. I’m making a lot of hip-hop again, which is awesome because that’s kind of where I came from. And there’s trap music now, so I’m going back on all my old tracks and making trap remixes of them, which is cool.” Datsik estimates he’s “25 or 30 percent” of the way towards a new album but adds that “I don’t know if I’ll put out an album. I may try to do a really cool (song) release and get tons of remixes for it. I haven’t made my mind up on it yet.”

[via bb]