Remembering Lenzman: The Magic Was in the Blue Notes

The Amsterdam-based drum & bass producer, DJ and The North Quarter founder Lenzman, real name Teije van Vliet, has died following a three-and-a-half-year battle with kidney cancer. His family confirmed that he passed away on Saturday, July 11.

“For 3.5 years he fought with so much strength, courage, and love,” his family wrote, thanking the friends, artists and listeners who stood beside the family throughout his illness.

For anyone following the deeper, more emotive end of drum & bass, Lenzman’s records were easy to spot. His drums rolled rather than bludgeoned. Around them sat hair-raising piano phrases, voices carrying hurt or hard-won wisdom, and bass that guided the room without swallowing everything else. “Open Page” with Riya remains a defining vocal record, while “Bittersweet,” “In My Mind” and his remix of "Yagga Yagga" carried the same instinct.

From 2007, Lenzman released on Spearhead Records, SGN:LTD and other labels before finding a home at Metalheadz. His 2014 debut album, Looking at the Stars, brought soul, jazz and hip-hop phrasing into the label’s lineage without compromising either side. The Golden Age EP and sample-free 2019 album Bobby pushed that language further. His music could be meticulously finished, but it never felt scrubbed clean. Something deeply human always lingered.

When we interviewed Lenzman in 2021, he described that instinct in words that now feel inseparable from his work. “The most beautiful pieces of music are bittersweet,” he said. He put it more simply when discussing his studio process:

"The magic is often in the blue notes, in the ghost hits, the imperfections."

The North Quarter, launched in 2016, turned that outlook into a platform. Lenzman built a label where drum & bass sat naturally alongside hip-hop, neo-soul and jazz, with vocalists and MCs treated as central voices rather than additions to finished tracks. Releases from Redeyes, Objectiv, Fox, Satl, Submorphics and others gave the catalog range. Across them, the label explored drum & bass’s emotional spectrum without enforcing a fixed sound.

Lenzman also understood that drum & bass does not exist without its Black British roots. He spoke plainly about the scene’s lack of diversity and the responsibility to remember those who built its foundations. That awareness mattered, especially from someone with his standing.

He kept working after his diagnosis, returning to the decks after major surgeries and releasing music when his health allowed. He joined his friend and label-mate FD on “Cold Neon,” from FD’s late-2025 album From the Ashes, joined Fox and Satl on the track "We Blessy" and spent his final months completing an album with Redeyes.

When treatment ended earlier this year, the community gathered around him at a Phonox benefit featuring DJ Flight, LSB, Workforce, GLXY and The North Quarter family.

Drum & bass has lost a producer who knew that weight and tenderness were never opposites. Our hearts go out to his wife, Ashanti, his daughters, Riva and Nya, The North Quarter family, and the countless people whose lives he touched.

RIP Lenzman 🤍 🕊