1) When and where you were born?
Niels: I was born on the 28th of August 1970 is a suburb of Rotterdam (The Netherlands) called Vlaardingen.
Gabriel: On the 9th of August 1981 in The Hague, The Netherlands.
2) When was your fist contact with electronic music and which record was the
one that has inspired you to become a dj and next producer?
Niels: My first contact with electronic music was when I was listening to my favorite weekly radio show, The Soul Show, a show which programmed only funk, disco and R&B. This show was by far the most popular show in The Netherlands. Suddenly, the host of the show began to play early house records from the USA and the first record he played was Frankie Knuckles – Tears, with the vocals of Robert Owens. In the same show, he also played D-Mob – Aciieeed. It was so different than the music I was used to, but I totally loved the energy of it. I ran to the local record store to buy these records and since that moment, I was hooked on electronic music.
Gabriel: It wasn't really a particular record that made me want to produce electronic music, but it was the year 1994 when I really fell in love with house music. Come to think of it, I would say the record that startled me the most was Kristine W - Feel What You Want. When I heard that one I was sold!! This record is still is one of my fav's.
3) When was your first production and for which label? Please tell us the influences that you have in your productions. Are emotions and a particular situation or other artists such as composers or producers as well?
Niels: My very first production was with my former Lock n Load partner, Frank van Rooijen. It was under the guise Mass Appeal and the title was “Shoot ‘em up”, released on a very small Dutch independent label 4th Groove Records. We were not influenced by any producers, we just produced and still produce tracks we fully support and which we can play out during our residencies and gigs. The dance floor and the energy of the clubbers were and still are our inspiration.
Gabriel: My first production was Gabi Deejay - Finally, on the Startraxx label, a small The Hague based imprint. It was my first record and it’s still very special to me. But as with sex, the first time usually isn't that special. ;)
4) What kind of equipment do you use in your production set up? Which one is
the software or hardware that you enjoy more to work with?
Niels: Back in the early Lock ‘n Load days (1999-2003), using soft synths and plug ins were not really applicable yet, so we used only hardware. Our equipment at that time consisted of the digital Mackie 24-8 mixing console, Akai S-5000 and Ensoniq ASR10 samplers, synths like the Roland JP8080, Korg Trinity, Juno 106, Juno Alpha 1, Novation Supernova, Access Virus B, Nord Rack 2, various compression and ffx equipment, Dynaudio Accoustics monitors and of course the mighty Roland TR-909. The sequence software we used was Logic for Mac.
Gabriel: Sometimes I use hardware, like some hardware synths, but I love to use my Mac and Logic only.
5) You are the owner of Selekted Music that is a new dance label set up along with EMI records in Holland. We would like to know why you decide to set up Selekted Music and if this means that major record labels have interest in dance music scene again?
Niels: First and foremost, Selekted Music is not a part of EMI Music. We are an independent record company and have our office in the EMI Music building. We do all marketing and promotion for dance related releases for EMI Music and are responsible for compiling and handling all dance compilations for EMI, but Selekted Music is not a part of the EMI Music label roster.
I started off Selekted Music after working as the Head of A&R at Mid-Town Records for nine years. During those days, it was all about quantity and not quality. I wanted to return to the basis: artists. In the Mid-Town period, I did too many one-off releases. There was no time and space to really invest in the career of the individual artist. With Selekted Music (the name says it all), we rather be selective and have a long lasting relationship with artists to really work on their careers, instead of releasing one record after the other and see if it will stick.
6) The first release in your label is your double tracker fantastic collaboration with Jochen Miller Cala Pada/Manoir. Would you like to tell us how this collaboration came about and if you are good friends too with Jochen?
Niels: The friendship with Jochen Miller goes back to 2002, when my former Lock ‘n Load partner Frank and I played as residents at a big Dutch club called Lexion. Jochen was also the resident there and we were a part of the same bookings agency. At that time, he wasn’t even called Jochen Miller, but DJ Jochen. We played on lots of gigs together in the past. In my Mid-Town Records days, I hooked Jochen and Gabriel up when Gabriel was the head producer at Mid-Town Records. We thought it might be a good idea if they would produce together. After Gabriel and I left Mid-Town Records, we kept on producing since and remixed each other’s records. On a personal note, we consider Jochen as a good friend and one of the most sympathetic DJ’s in the scene. And a hell of a talented guy!
7) Is there a motto or a special mission statement for Selekted Music?
Niels: “Are you selekted?”. That’s the motto we live by. ☺
It says it all: we’re selective in picking the artists we would like to work with. We’re not on the lookout for one-offs, but for artists we can have a long lasting relationship with. We rather have fewer artists and give them our undying attention, than a load of artists whom we cannot give an equal amount of attention.
8) What are the elements that will make a track to be released from
your label? Can you offer us your advice to any new producers out there, who are thinking to approach you, to release their music?
Niels: That’s not very hard to answer: we have to personally like the record. There’s no such thing as good music or bad music; it’s about music you like or don’t like. Music is a matter of taste and therefore not to be judged. I respect everybody who makes music and makes an effort in getting it released. The track doesn’t even have to be properly mixed, we have studio’s for that. As long as the idea of the track appeals to us, you’re selekted! One other really important thing for us: we have to like the potential of the producer behind the production. In the end, it’s about the whole package.
One word of advice (something that happens a lot): when you offer a demo, don’t include your gear list or studio set up in the letter! We’re totally not impressed by or interested in the studio equipment you use to produce your tracks. In the past, I signed artist who worked only on a standard pc with 20 year old speaker sets, but who made fantastic tracks. And on the other hand, I refused tracks which could be made in 200.000 euro studio’s. It’s all about the cook, not the kitchen.
Gabriel: My opinion is to make your music from the heart, how you want it and then search for a label that fits. Not the other way around, because your music can sound really 'forced'. It is very important that your music has a feel of its own..... and you shouldn't have to force that. It should come naturally.
9) If at the end a tune is selected for release do you like the idea of asking the producer to
make changes and the track to sound close to something you have in mind?
Usually that consideration is if it will sell or not?
Niels: Luckily, we’re working with producers at Selekted Music who are open to criticism. When we feel that a track is very good but not great yet, and it may need a bit of extra work, both the producer and ourselves will be a part of the process to make the track even stronger. In the end, the track is all about the producer’s creativity but when it comes to arrangements and the final mix, we want the best result possible. And yes, we think that a great record sells better than a good one!
10) Are you going to release material on vinyl or this it’s going to be digital only? If yes, does this mean that there is a resurrection for the vinyl market or you see the future going totally in the digital direction?
Niels: No, we won’t release vinyl, digital only. In this era of internet becoming faster and faster, and the growing global acceptance of downloads, we don’t see any resurrection of vinyl in the future. In fact, we expect for the CD and DVD as physical formats to disappear as well. In the near future, it will be all about hard drives and media centers. Music, movies, pictures etc. will be stored on a big hard drive in your home so you can recall it at any time. Compare it with an iPod with huge capacity. There won’t be any need for separate CD’s and DVD’s, it will all be stored as data. In our opinion, music will be treated in the future as “common good” like water and electricity: a customer pays a certain amount per month for music use and if you use more than you paid for, you’d have to pay extra at the end of the year. Just like the electricity bill.
11) Do you have an example of an artist from your label that you predict that he/she will be very big in 2009 and you are very proud that you help to get his break into the scene?
Niels: There are two artists in our roster of which we think big things will happen in 2009.
Chuckie, a tremendously ambitious and popular Dutch DJ, is certainly a man to watch in the coming year. In Holland, he belongs to the DJ top 5 for many years but outside of Holland, he is not that well known. At Selekted Music / Dirty Dutch Music, we only have begun working with him since April 2008 but we already see a huge progress in his international career. He plays more and more abroad, he remixes for the likes of David Guetta, Felix The Housecat and Joachim Garraud, he plays on F*** Me I’m Famous at Pacha Ibiza, his records are signed worldwide, he gets noticed by the international press… all signs that he’s on the right track. We take great pride in the fact that we’re part of the process and that hard work for an artist still pays off.
With our very own Gabriel Vezzola, also a part of Lock n Load, good things are around the corner too. He’s probably one of the most talented and versatile producers I know, and the fact he won the Danny Tenaglia - Music Is The Answer remix contest on Beatport a few months ago says enough. His Gabriel & Castellon project is doing great as well, with releases on Kid Massive’s label Audiodamage Records and Seamless, and remixes for the likes of a.o. Prok & Fitch. More and more producers are noticing his skills and remix requests are increasing every week. Another project of him is Lush 7, a minimal orientated project with releases on Dutch label Wasted, and remixes for Three Drives - Greece 2000 and for Noir and Patric La Funk, and future collaborations with for example the legendary Dutch DJ Michel De Hey.
12) Are you going to release a full artist album following the amazing success of the single “Who else could it be” very soon and from the many remixes that you have produced which one is your favorite?
Niels: For now, there are no plans in releasing an artist album, simply because there’s not enough material. There’s a big difference between the “early” Lock ‘n Load and the “current” Lock ‘n Load; to combine the two on one album would be stupid. After Who Else Could It Be and the remixes that followed, we finally found a sound which suits us very well so we’d have to make many more tracks. Besides that, an artist album has to be based on something; releasing an album now doesn’t make sense for us: we don’t have a chart hit at the moment and the Blow Ya Mind fame is long gone.
Our favorite remix from the old days is by far “Sabotage - Return to Ibiza”, released on Incentive Records / Ministry of Sound UK. It was a difficult mix to do because of a f*cked up disco riff we had to use, but it turned out great and Incentive absolutely loved it. Zomba Records UK, the company which released Blow Ya Mind in the UK, was a bit pissed off with this remix, because they felt that this remix should be a new Lock ‘n Load release in the UK, not a remix for someone else, hahaha!
Our favorite remixes from the “new” days are the ones we did for Jochen Miller (“Alive”) and our latest remix, the one for Cor Fijneman’s “Disappear”. Jochen Miller because of the wicked spontaneous trance riff Gabriel played in one(!) take, and Cor Fijneman because of the tremendous energy the remix has and the awesome vocals.
13)Your biggest hit record Blow your Mind as Lock n Load was released in various record labels around the globe and climbed in the highest positions of many respected dance and pop charts worldwide particularly UK. It was your aspiration to become so successful and famous and that hit had changed your life?
Niels: We didn’t expect that it blew up this much to be honest. It wasn’t produced with the intention of making a global hit record, we just did our thing in the studio and this record came out. After we finished it, we concluded that Blow Ya Mind is either a record that you love, or a record that you hate. It has many annoying ingredients: the horn, the high pitched riff, the ¾ beat breakdown, crowd samples… It was released on Blue Records, a label which I managed at that time. We released it and when it landed on the # 1 position of the Dutch Dance Charts within two weeks, we started to notice the potential of the record. Funny thing is, when I offered this record to license partners worldwide, nobody wanted to sign it at first. But when everybody started playing it and BBC Radio picked it up, offers were flying around are heads, hahaha!
It certainly changed our lives. The phone didn’t stop ringing for remix requests, DJ bookings, interview requests and agencies who wanted to represent us abroad. Instead of playing all the local clubs, we started travelling the world to DJ. Every weekend, we were on a plane to god knows what country to DJ, an awesome era! We experienced VIP treatments, limousines, 5-star hotels and playing in the best clubs and at the biggest festivals.
14) Your current top 3 tracks and your favorite all time classic and why? Is
this connected to a special moment in your life?
1. Passenger 10 – Mirage (EDX’s 5un5hine mix) (Armada Music)
A fantastic release on Armada, on which Maurizio Colella a.k.a. EDX gives is a bit of a Deadmau5 spin without being too obvious. The combination of a fierce club record with a massive trance riff works so amazingly well, that both electro / house DJ’s as well as trance DJ’s just love it.
2. Dave Moreaux – Once Again (Dirty Dutch Music / Selekted Music)
A very talented producer from Amsterdam, which is signed to Selekted Music / Dirty Dutch Music and operating as the co-producer of Chuckie’s material. “Once Again”, his debut solo release, is a 8 minute tech trip, which half way turns into haunting strings that just keeps on building and building into a raging climax. Watch this guy!
3. Andy Duguid – The Crossing (Black Hole Recordings)
A very sympathetic Scottish bloke who released probably the best trance / prog album in 2008, “Believe”. On this album you’ll find 11 jewels of which The Crossing is a clear favorite to us. The repetitive melody just never seems to end and it sticks in your head for days after hearing it. Tiësto already named him “Producer of 2008” and we couldn’t agree with him more. This guy has such an amazing ability to combine energy with subtlety.
All time classic Niels:
Franky Knuckles and Satoshi Tommiie ft. Robert Owens - Tears
This record defines my switch to house music, after being totally into hip hop, disco and funk. It was in 1989, I heard it on the radio and from that moment on, it was all about house. The vocals of Robert Owens, later on legendary in “I’ll Be Your Friend”, is sometimes a bit off key, but he truly is The Godfather of House Vocalists. A legend.
All time classic Gabriel:
Strike - U Sure Do
A record that marks my immediate addiction to dance music. I recently made a new version of it for my own DJ pleasures, just for the hell of it. Chuckie, one of the most popular Dutch house jocks, heard it when he was in my studio and he loved it so much, he wanted it for his upcoming Dirty Dutch compilation. The company cleared the original recording with the masterright owner, got permission to use my remix and it’s now exclusive on the Dirty Dutch CD! It might even get an official release in January 2009, fingers crossed…
15) In which countries you have performed as a dj? Where did you find the
best crowd and you liked every minute of your dj set? Is there a country
that you want to perform but you have not managed yet to do it?
Niels: We played in The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Germany, Norway, Sweden, UK, Ireland, Scotland, USA, Canada, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Hawaii, Poland, Russia, Israel, Morocco, Curacao…. Too many to mention!
The best crowd we ever played for was in Scotland, in a club called Room At The Top. The crowd there is totally insane, cheering so loud with every record you play, you can’t even hear what record you’re actually playing! Also, the British and South African crowd are very grateful people to play for.
The country we never had the chance to visit, which is definitely on the # 1 of our wish list, is Japan; a fascinating country with a fascinating culture. And although Blow Ya Mind was high in the Australian charts, and we had many offers to do a tour there, we somehow never played there. Despite many promises from many Australian promoters, we never played Australia. So that’s a continent we sure would like to perform.
16) Would you like to share with us your best and worst memory from a dj performance? Have you ever had a naughty experience with a groupie?
Niels: Wow… we have many best memories… Playing on a huge festival outside of Los Angeles, where there was a Miss Lingerie contest going on during our set with King of Porn Ron Jeremy as the jury. And as Ron Jeremy has a bad memory, I had to assist him picking out the winner of the contest… Or playing in Johannesburg at a party called “Splash”, a huge open air swimming pool where 6000 people were dressed in nothing but bikini’s, bathing suits and swimming pants and actually danced in the pool. Or playing at the Splash after party in Johannesburg in a totally packed club with 4 walls and no roof; instead of the roof, the club had sprinklers to keep the crowd cool… Or playing during sunrise on the beach in Tel Aviv, Israel with a rocking crowd standing between you and the ocean… It’s all good!
The worst memories were luckily not that many, but if I had to think about one, it surely is playing in a certain Dutch club and during the whole two hours of the set, from the first record to the last, everybody was requesting for hiphop and R&B tunes. Those were never ending two hours, I tell ya!
And in Germany after a 5 hour drive, during our first record we played, the police trashed the place, shut down the party and sent all people home, because the organization didn’t have the proper permit… 10 hours in a car and we played half a record!
17)Do you believe that dj mag Top 100 djs list reflect what really people like globally or you think that the results are influenced from other factors as well?
Niels: I think it’s a combination of both. Surely it reflects the clubbers opinion to a certain extent, but there are many cases known that DJ’s bought their way into the list. Many DJ’s are talking negative about the DJ Mag list because of the fact you can “earn” your position, but in the end, every DJ wants to be in that list because loads of promoters book the artists according to the list.
18) What is your opinion about Sensation White, Trance Energy, Dance Valley or Nature One? Do you like those big festivals or you prefer clubs and small intimate places? Why you think Dutch companies that produce those kinds of dance ‘spectacles’ are the most successful?
Gabriel: We feel that the big events and festival are more about decoration and show elements nowadays, not about the music. The Dutch audience is a very critic one. Not meaning this in a bad way, but since there are so many festivals in Holland which gets bigger and more spectacular with every edition , they are a bit spoiled. So you have to go bigger and bigger every time, you can’t afford to take a step back otherwise your event or festival will get bad publicity.
Niels: We started playing records in the early nineties, where there were no such things as huge festivals and 10.000+ events. So we definitely have a thing for smaller clubs. It may sound cliché, but in a club with a few hundred people, you have a close connection with the crowd, which you need to get your energy from. For the dance scene in general, it’s a good thing that events such as Sensation, Trance Energy, Dance Valley and Mysteryland exists. Dance is a global thing and the fact that so many people visit these high profile events and festivals every weekend, proves that the dance scene is a healthy one.
This might sound strange, but playing on for example the main stage of Dance Valley is a lot “safer” than playing in a smaller club. In a club, you’d have to work twice as hard to keep your audience. If you’re playing on a main stage in front of 15.000 people and you lose 500 of them, you still have 14.500 people left and you won’t notice it. In a club, you immediately empty it!
19) Danceradio.gr is one of the leading dance web radio stations. What is
your opinion about the web radio and do you have also a web radio show? Do you see internet vital tool in the expansion of dance music culture today?
Gabriel: Web radio and internet in general is a perfect tool to spread the music and the artist around the globe, and because the audience can find out what they like by themselves instead of being forced by national and local radio stations to «like» tracks. The web doesn’t have any borders and no FM restriction, so whether you’re in Amsterdam, Tokyo, New York or where ever, you can tune in to your favorite artists and favorite show.
Niels: We do have our own web show named “Selekted By Lock n Load”, a two hour show with our monthly favs in the first hour, presented by us, and a monthly guest mix in the second hour.
20)Have you ever regretted your involvement with the dance music industry? Would you like to tell us the pros and cons of the dance music bizz in particular?
Niels: The famous American journalist Hunter S. Thompson has a perfect quote about the music industry: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side…”
And that actually says it all. We all know it’s an industry full of crooks, but in the end, we simply looooooove it! The love and passion for music pulls you through it, no doubt about that. You have to be in it for the undying love for music, otherwise you won’t make it. If you’re in it for a quick profit or to be “a part of the scene”, get the hell out.
21) Your message to our radio web site visitors?
Keep supporting house music and most importantly, keep enjoying it!
And be sure to tune in to Selekted By Lock ‘n Load, every first Friday of the month between 22.00 and 00.00 CMT, on PureSound.fm! We play the biggest, baddest, most exclusive tunes for your pleasures!
Signing of,
Gabriel & Niels
Lock ‘n Load / Selekted Music The Netherlands
