The fourth edition of our podcast series is mixed by one of the founding members of the Triphouse Rotterdam crew; Khalil. Sit back and enjoy while he takes you on an hour long interstellar journey to the realms of beyond. For more background info on Khalil please visit www.myspace.com/khalil_r
Triphouse Rotterdam Podcast 004: Khalil by Triphouse Rotterdam
Please tell us a bit about your personal background and how you came in touch with electronic music?
As a young kid i used to listen to the radio a lot. Looking back commercial music was way better then it is nowadays! I recorded everything i liked and made tapes, aaah seems so far away now. My big brother also was a big influence, because he fed me a lot of tapes and cd’s. He was older and was already going to houseparties. I would listen to all of it, house, jungle and hip hop and some of it really blew my mind. There also was a very cool radioshow on Stads Radio Rotterdam, Planet E. I checked this out every week and it was here that i really heard house and techno tracks that would freak me out.
Come the age of 17 (2001) i started buying records and i was going to a lot of parties! Certain parties really provided a lot of inspiration. You had Future at Nighttown and Now&Wow just opened it’s doors. I was really caught by the vibe and started djing myself.
You have an outstanding reputation for finding some of the most obscure and ‘out of the box’ records, always three steps ahead of the masses. What is your secret to hunting down those hidden gems?
Well when internet just appeared and i discovered napster i just started downloading stuff like crazy. This was a great source for me and i found a lot of artists that were making brilliant music. It was suddenly so easy to get good music. So i listened to a lot of detroit techno ( derrick may, kevin saunderson etc) deephouse (kerri chandler, moodymann, nick holder etc) filter disco was big then, early isolee stuff also blew my mind. I mean there was a lot going on at the time. There were so many styles and i sank my teeth in all of them. So when i started buying records i knew there was a lot to choose from. I developed a hunger for finding undiscovered material. This basicaly never ended and this drives me to find the hidden gems you’re referring to đŸ˜‰
Besides the dj’ing you are also busy working in your home studio on your own material. Can you tell us a bit about your what we can expect from you in the future in terms of your own productions?
At the moment the first Triphouse Rotterdam Records release is being wrapped up. This will feature one of my tracks and this will be my first vinyl release. I’m very happy with this! The label will be an output for everyone that’s part of the Triphouse Rotterdam family.
As for my own productions, I have a lot of unfinished stuff that I’m working on at the moment. Unfortunately I’m not exactly the fastest or most disciplined producer. I also have a couple of collaborations going on with some talented producers, which should be very fruitful. More info on this will follow shortly.
What is your view on current trends in music, and where do you think it’s heading?
There’s surely a lot of stuff being released at the moment, and sub-genres just keep popping up.
So it’s nice to see that everything keeps evolving. What started as dub-step now has numerous variations, with techno, house 2step and even r&b influences. I also enjoy all the wonky, beats, avant-garde hip hop stuff that’s been going on lately.
And like always there are certain styles that are back in style, like Chicago house, disco and whatnot. A lot of old stuff that’s hard to find is being put out again. Sometimes through the proper channels but there’s also a lot of stuff that’s being bootlegged which is not so cool for the hardcore vinyl collectors. But what you see is that a lot of old music is being made available again for younger generations so that they too can discover all those golden oldies.
What I’m hoping for is that everyone will go back to deep music. After seeing almost every style get back into fashion I think it’s almost time that it goes back to deep, hypnotic, extatic house, techno & whatever. Back in the day when electronic dance music was new it was all about the feeling. Everybody on the dance floor got lost into the music in a state of trance. I really hope and think that this will happen! It might take a while for everybody to free their minds once more. But surely the Triphouse Rotterdam movement will try it’s best to make this happen!
