AS one of the biggest names on the international DJ scene today, one would think that Paul van Dyk would be a larger-than-life, flamboyant character.

But, over the phone from Germany, the 35-year-old electronic music maestro appears surprisingly down to earth and maintains that this is the person he is all the time.

'When I'm not playing, I do what everyone else does,' says van Dyk, who will be spinning at Zouk tomorrow as part of his new album - In Between - tour. 'I watch TV, have dinner, play with my dogs, regular things.'

And he believes that therein lies his secret to success - that he is always himself, what you see is what you get.

'I don't have any fake image. The person you talk to is the person that I am. I don't put on a persona when I go on stage,' insists van Dyk.

'When I make my music I don't make any compromises, even if I'm only standing in front of a few people. To convince them that what they're listening to is the best thing, it has to be believable.'

Born Matthias Paul, van Dyk's success story sounds like a Cinderella fairytale.

As a kid growing up in East Berlin before the Berlin Wall fell, young Matthias was not allowed to visit clubs or go to the record stores to buy music. His only contact with music was secretly listening to the radio. Only after the Wall came down did he get the opportunity to go to clubs.

But then he realised that the music played at clubs were not what he expected.

He says: 'When the Wall came down, I went to the clubs and it was boring. It was such a one-sided view of what electronic music means.'

Luckily for him, and his fans out there, van Dyk would soon make his entry into the DJ scene, albeit by chance.

'I only started doing what I do by accident,' reveals van Dyk.

'It just so happened that one of my friends had passed on a tape that I had done to a promoter and I got my first gig.'

Over the years, he developed his own unique sounds that finds its roots from electronica but infused with inspiration from everything around him - his travels and life experiences.

Technology has similarly helped him make breakthroughs for the DJ-ing industry. Thanks to various clubs implementing studio equipment, van Dyk has been able to take any track and transform it to suit his fancy.

He adds that unlike many DJs out there, he does not pre-plan what he is going to spin when he performs, preferring instead to play to the crowd.

He says: 'I try not to have preconceptions. I have my own sounds but I play to the crowd. Imagine a piece of blank paper that is written on throughout the night. I know the colour I'm going to use to write on the paper but I don't know what I'm going to write.

'I feel the atmosphere, read the crowd and play according to that within the range of my musical sounds. At the end of the day, people invite me to their clubs to play to hear my idea of electronic music. If I just play whatever's trendy, you might as well just put on a CD. I'm not one of those snobby DJs, I don't play what I prepare, I interact.'