Martijn ten Velden explains ‘Defected Clubland Adventures 7’

16 May, 2009 | 3.57AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: dutch, martijn ten velden

Martijn ten Velden mixed the seventh installment of Defected’s ‘Clubland Adventures’ series and here in this interview the Dutch house man reveals the process that went into the mix.

Unike your standard DJ mix, Martijn ten Velden re-edited almost every single track in the mix in order to make a wholly unique set in celebration of Defected’s 10th anniversary.

Click through to read the full interview.

How come you followed a house path when the Dutch are so well known for their trance?

I moved to London 18 years ago and at that time in Holland house music wasn’t that big, it was never my vibe in Holland musically, even though there were some really good artists coming from Holland like Sander Kleinenburg, Fedde le Grande and Roog (the Hardsoul guys).

I really like what those guys do, so there is some good music out there now but at the time I was more drawn to London, so my whole musical background when it comes to house is totally UK based.

Is that why you moved, were you more inspired by the sound in London rather than in Holland?

Yeah totally, also in London there has always been more innovation, you can try out more things because there’s a bigger market for things and there is more openness to new styles of music, I mean so many styles of music come from the UK so it’s a really good place to try and find your own style because you have more freedom.

How would you say you’ve evolved since you started, how would you describe your personal DJing style and what’s your sound?

I like the mixture between tech and house, when it’s not too techy, when it’s still got funk, as long as it has got funk and a good groove to it I like it.

Basically it’s a very broad spectrum. So I would say I play house but it’s anywhere from normal house, tech house, even some progressive house, some deep house, it’s a mixture of everything.

And what about your productions what kind of sound have you aimed for with them?

Again it’s house but a little bit more techy. I really like some of the new sounds, when a new kind of production style comes out, that’s what really interests me. So I always try to come up with fresh sounds that are really now. Like the Chime remix I did for Defected last year, the intro is quite techy it has got all glitchy sounds but then it goes into a big house anthem and then it goes techy again, so that’s a kind of good example, between styles really.

Was that one of your biggest remixes?

My biggest track was two years ago and was ‘I Wish You Would’. We licensed the record to nearly every country in the world and it became a huge crossover record in Brazil, Australia, Spain and The Netherlands.

In the UK we shot a promo for it at a crazy old theatre down in South London and Luciana (the singer on the track) features in the video too. It was regularly played out on UK TV music stations like The Box, MTV Dance.

Video: Martijn Ten Velden ‘I Wish You Would’

Another really big one was a project under the name Splittr which I recorded with Mark Yardley from Stanton Warriors. We released a track called ‘All Alone’ on Eye Industries / Universal and there were some phenomenal remixes on it by the likes of Hook & Sling, Michael Gray, Chicken Lips.

You‘ve gone on to do a few more since then.

My all time favourite remix that me and Mark did on Defected was ‘Sandcastles’, I can still play it now, just sit in the cellar and play it, it’s wicked still. And then we did another one on Defected when we remixed Kings of Tomorrow ‘6pm’.

Also, you just did the Ultra Flavour remix as well, right?

Yeah, that’s been going down a storm everywhere. It was such a huge anthem so of course it was another great one to get my hands on and rework for today’s clubland.

We know you work quite closely with Mark Knight, what is it about Mark that you respect the most?

We used to do a lot more production work together but for past couple of years we’ve also done a lot of solo stuff. We still DJ together sometimes, it’s great because we knew each other before we started getting really successful and we have always enjoyed playing back to back: we have the greatest fun and get on a real vibe, that’s why we do it, because we love it!

We don’t go in the studio as much as we used to but we are actually doing a new track now which is the first production we’ve done together in four years. It feels good to hook up again on another MTV and MK stormer for summer 2009.

Let’s talk about your new mix for Defected because it’s not just a straightforward DJ mix, is it?

As it’s Defected’s 10th Anniversary I really tried to put a bit of that in there, and I also tried to mix some of my personal old favourites and with new ones to make the mix.

But then I ended up practically re-editing every single track, putting extra drums over the top, putting acapellas over the top, I just couldn’t stop because there are so many great acapellas on Defected, so I ended putting a lot of work into it to keep it really interesting, like putting lots of little snippets of old tracks in there from five, six or even eight years ago and tried to make it all sound modern and make it sound now. That was the aim of the mix.

Some of those re-edits have just been made available to buy separately. Can you explain a little more about those re-edits and how you used them?

Yeah, I would say almost every track on the mix was a re-edit apart from maybe two or three. On almost every track I changed the arrangement to make them shorter, more concise, added extra little drums and sound effects, extra acapellas or mixed the beats of another track underneath it, like a one bar loop of drums from another record by Defected, so I really, really went to town on it.

It sounds very exciting. Are we likely to see you do live remixing in clubs?

I do sometimes, it depends, because sometimes the crowd don’t really know the difference so it doesn’t really matter, but sometimes when I’m really in the mood I really like to go to town, when there is three or four CD players. I do really long four minute mixes, looping up one of the mixes and then throw in an acapella over the top which gets pretty complicated. I like to do that every so often for sure, because I love mixing and giving the set more of a “live” feel.

So the mix is somewhat representational of your live performances?

Yeah the kind of mixing style for sure but I think the first half of the mix is more of a warm up set, it’s more cool, calm, it’s almost like before you go out so it would be early evening for me. But the mix obviously progresses from quite deep and musical to a bit tougher, so it definitely represents me.

And you have a new single coming out?

Yes, my new single ‘Together’ is out on Phonetic Recordings, initially it has done really well, it entered the Cool Cuts at No.1 the week before Miami, so there has been a lot of initial hype about it, a lot of DJs are playing it. There are two versions - the original which is more musical and there’s a dub which is more pumping and groovy.

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