FOR years Mick Boskamps hobby and
his job sat miles apart. By day he is the Managing Editor of Dutch Playboy
(not a bad gig, you might imagine), running the magazine and writing the
monthly Playboy Interview. By night he is a house music fiend, trawling
clubs, writing his Nachtboek (NightBook) column for Dutch dance magazine
Bass Groove, and making sure visitors have a good time. As he puts it, Im
a bit of an intermediary between English DJs and the Dutch party scene.
Now, his two jobs are coming together. Since my boss in America, Hugh Hefner,
discovered viagra he is partying all the time. The magazine is back in business,
says Mick. In these irony-obsessed, retro-loving times, Playboys kitsch-yet-cool
sensibilities are fashionable again: French DJ Dimitri From Paris has even
released a Live At The Playboy Mansion album. Whats most important is
boy meets girl thats the big part of nightlife, says Mick, whose last
Playboy Interview was all about party-loving insomniacs. A fairly sorted
character, you might think. So what the hell was he doing stomping around
outside his flat at 5:30am in the morning in his pyjama bottoms cursing
the cat?
Poor Mick had had such a nice evening enjoying Nick Warrens DJ set at the
Earth party at Amsterdams world famous Melkweg club. Hed been at home
writing his column when he heard the cat scratching at the door, gone to
let it in, and locked himself out. Now, after waking up his upstairs neighbour,
borrowing 200 Guilders and hopping into a cab to get the spare keys from
his mums, he couldnt help laughing. He was remembering the look on Nick
Warrens face when Dutch producer Junkie XL premiered his remix of The
Fall, the unreleased single from Nicks Way Out West act, during a live
performance. He was remembering dinner with Global Underground supremos
James and Andy, Nick, and all the leading lights of the Dutch scene: Stef
from Stef, Pako and Frederick, Junkie XL, Dutch veteran Remy, and rising
star Sander Kleinenberg. Even Rel from Tel Avivs Allenby 58 club, where
Global recorded their first ever mix was there. It seemed to make sense,
Mick mused, that the close-knit gang whod put Dutch house back at the front
of tastemaker DJ boxes were sitting down with The Fat Lads from Global
Underground, the label whod helped push them there. It gave him a warm
feeling. Those people play trance music but its very sparse, but you can
call it trance with soul. It touches you somewhere, notes Boskamp. It was
the kind of evening that had to end like this, half naked in the back of
a mini-cab.
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SOME say it was Sasha who signalled
the arrival of the Dutch new wave, putting not one but two tracks from an
obscure Dutch producer called Sander Kleinenberg on last years Ibiza set.
Or was it Dave Seaman and Nick Warren, both of whom included tracks from
Rotterdam producer Lucien Foort (under his Funk Function and Dutch Liquid
guises) on their Budapest and Buenos Aires collections. What these DJs had
discovered was a virulent new strain of Dutch dance music, one that eschewed
frilly noises for no-messing grooves of the harshest funk. Now Sander Kleinenberg
is the golden boy of the new progressive sound, signed up by Pete Tong
to FFRR, and the EP that broke him, Four Seasons, is regarded as a landmark
record. Now Dutch master Remy - whose Pumped Up was equally influential
- plays at Bedrock and John Digweeds production partner Nick Muir is swapping
remixes with Rotterdam producer Arno Asmus - better known under aliases
like Revolt. Everyone is talking about a concentrated new Dutch style that
stands coolly to the left of the kind of the hysterical trance fellow Dutchman
Ferry Corsten - SystemF - has popularised. Remy even says, "Its the music
Ive always wanted to make." And Nick Warrens fourth Global Underground
mix is coming from Amsterdam.
What English like about
the Dutch sound is its pretty direct; its progressive, but not UK-style
progressive. Its got more techno influences. Its a bit funkier and its
a bit harder, says Arno Asmus from Revolt, who likes to call this sound
the progressive house second generation, and whose day job is designing
record sleeves. His contribution to this mix, Revolts wayward, pummelling
rhythm track Dive Into The Deep, was recorded in a spare hour one afternoon.
I got some loops, and the melody slipped out, he says. I just thought,
What the fuck. Its always the stuff you do quickest people like the most.
The link he draws between two generations of so-called progressive house
makes sense when you gauge the influence DJ/producers like Dutch veteran
Remy had on the first wave of progressive in 1992. In London, Guerilla Records
was the dominant label of the time. Still referenced by Sasha, Guerilla
was run by William rbit, who developed some of the elements of its hard,
yet melodic and funky style into his production on Madonnas Ray Of Light
album. (To square the circle, Sasha remixed three tracks from Ray Of Light'.)
But as the progressive boom developed into the UKs first home-grown dance
style to be taken seriously (previous to this, British house producers had
disguised their records as American imports), progressive house began
to get a little pompous.
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