Panteros666: Igniting smiles and raves worldwide

Panteros666 does not describe his career in terms of arrival. Even when the conversation turns to sold-out shows, viral moments or international touring, his attention remains fixed on process rather than outcome. He spoke with us about his effort, the music heritage he now carries, and how music circulates and how crowds respond to it over time. The language he uses suggests someone still inside the work, not someone stepping back to admire it.

When he talks about representing France on a global stage, the framing is practical rather than symbolic. It’s something he understands as a daily responsibility, shaped by attitude more than by sound alone. He associates French electronic music not with a strict aesthetic, but with a set of values rooted in openness and participation. “Every day I’m pushing my sound and vision to represent French electronic music on the world scene,” he says, before listing what he sees as its defining traits: “optimism, friendship, freedom, smiles and actively contributing to the rave renaissance around the world. I feel super comfortable thinking we are in a techno Olympic competition between all the national scenes,” he explains, “in a healthy way, because the outcome is all for ravers’ enjoyment, better music, more diverse and impressive shows making you feel unique.”

In his view, the audience is the ultimate beneficiary of that friction.

This outlook explains his comfort with contradiction. Large-scale festivals with CO₂ cannons and science-fiction staging coexist naturally, in his mind, with small club rooms and boutique DJ sets. He sees no hierarchy between them.

“As a French DJ, I love both; that’s what show I deliver onstage, playing what I feel are the best tracks from the scene while taking risks, like playing my own edits of long-forgotten niche Eurodance hits I made on the plane.”

The roots of that fluid identity lie far from the club. Before DJ booths and crowds, Panteros666’s relationship with music was physical and solitary. He spent much of his childhood and adolescence playing drums alone in a barn. Electronic music came much later.

“Day one of starting electronic music was being tired of academic drumming and buying a 30-euro groovebox in high school,” he recalls.

From there, curiosity took over. Chicago house, UK rave, and breakbeat entered his world alongside hours of hands-on experimentation. He played drums along to records by Marshall Jefferson, The Prodigy, and Stardust, downloading tracks on e-Mule and absorbing them without hierarchy. Geography quietly completed the picture. Growing up near the Belgian border in the early 2000s meant that Eurodance and trance were not rediscovered genres but everyday background noise.

"Everyone was listening to Da Hool, Paffendorf, Dr Alban, Scatman, ATB or Yves Deruyter without knowing it," he says.

Later, club culture brought a clearer sense of lineage through labels like Bonzai, R&S, Armada, and Kontor, whose catalogues defined how force and melody could coexist. Bonzai’s trance lineage, for example, has significantly influenced today's hard beats, creating continuity in the musical experience that Panteros666 embodies. This connection adds depth to his craft, linking the past with the present in an evolving soundscape.

That history explains why the balance between techno power and trance euphoria in his sets never feels calculated.

“I believe we don’t choose our musical foundation, we inherit it from where we come from and the life-defining teenage crush moments we have on music.”

For him, growing up between Amsterdam and Paris meant that hard beats and emotional uplift were always intertwined.

“It was always about hard beats and big feels, a mix of party-ready rave sounds and anthemic melodies that lift up your mood. We all love a satisfying light-hearted Eurodance vibe,” he adds, “as long as the beat grounds it into modern rave.”

As his audience in France expanded, Panteros666 resisted the language of breakthrough. Sold-out rooms accumulated, but they did not change how he understood his position within the scene.

"Deep inside, I still feel I’m at the beginning of what I can bring to the rave table," he says.

Progress, as he frames it, is incremental and internal: writing better music, performing with more control, translating imagination more clearly into collective experience. One moment did stand out though.

“Playing at EDC Las Vegas was a pivotal moment in my life," he admits, not because of validation, but because it confirmed that the music had travelled.

The air was electric with anticipation; lights dimmed as the crowd's energy rose. He stepped onto the stage, feeling the bass reverberate through his entire body. As each track unfolded, the audience's reaction was palpable, a sea of movement that mirrored the ebbs and flows of his set. It was in those moments of shared euphoria that Panteros666 truly felt the global reach and impact of his music.

"I got up there thanks to the people who’d been listening to my first trance-techno releases in the U.S."

That emphasis on audience became especially visible during his Boiler Room set, which circulated far beyond the room it was recorded in. The numbers mattered less than what the response represented. He speaks about rave culture as a worldwide family, one that should make space for joy without qualification. He admits to uncertainty beforehand.

“I was not even sure I’d be welcomed with my joyful music,” he says.

Discovering PLUR values within American rave culture proved decisive, reinforcing his belief in bringing his own identity into the space without fear of exclusion. Where seriousness and industrial restraint often dominate, he sees room for something more expansive.

“It makes me incredibly happy to grow a new branch with more colours, smiles and arms up in the air.”

Touring internationally has sharpened his sensitivity to context. No two nights feel the same, and even cities within the same country demand adjustment. Berlin calls for sustained pressure and minimal release, while Los Angeles invites communication and extended melodic moments. Preparation, for him, is not about fixed playlists but anticipation. He describes developing a kind of intuitive foresight, factoring in room size, set length and local rave culture before stepping into the booth. When those predictions fail, improvisation takes over. When they succeed, the crowd follows naturally.

“I love throwing unapologetic relentless party sets. I really need to catch people, otherwise I’m all alone in my booth waiting for the crowd’s connection.”

The safer route is obvious: low-effort tools designed never to fail. He avoids it deliberately. Those risks often take the form of collisions between eras, where 90s Eurodance sits beside acid-leaning trance techno. When he presses play, he invites the crowd onto what he calls the Panteros roller coaster, prioritising momentum over subtlety.

In the studio, the same maximalist instinct prevails. Ideas arrive quickly, driven by rhythm and emotional immediacy.

“I wake up every day with a new Y2K techno desire,” he says.

Tracks are filtered rapidly. If the energy hits, they survive. Chasing Dreams emerged from a desire to create a moment of suspension within high-intensity sets, inspired by the dreamlike pull of Robert Miles. Rather than relying on familiar edits, he challenged himself to recreate that atmosphere from scratch. Other projects push harder, including Fire 2, which extends last year’s Fire into more aggressive territory. Producing early-2000s-style trance, he admits, requires obsessive attention to detail.

“You need a zillion synth tweaks to hit the perfect emotion.”

Looking ahead, Panteros666 frames the future as expansion rather than reinvention. The past year saw his sound travel further than he anticipated, reaching Australia, China and Colombia. Rather than slowing down, he plans to intensify. Better outfits, harder kicks, stronger unreleased material. But the ambition is not purely musical. He increasingly sees himself as a connector, bridging techno tribes and generations, carrying trance emotion into contemporary rave spaces while keeping interactions human in a world that feels increasingly accelerated.

It is a modest ambition, expressed at very high volume.