Sander Kleinenberg knows how dancefloors
work: he's instigated 'sweaty' scenes around the world, observing
what makes people move from Belfast to Buenos Aires. Ultimately,
the mechanics of the dancefloor revolve around just one thing:
good dance music. Sander knows about this, too. His own vinyl
creations are saturated in clubland so that they virtually
perspire dry ice and radiate glitterball shards from their
grooves. It's time to get back to basics, to stop watching
the DJ and get back on the dancefloor.
2003 will be Sander's year. His remixes of global pop/r&b
sensations Lamya and Justin Timberlake have topped dance charts
on either side of the Atlantic. His very own, newly inaugurated
record label, Little Mountain, is a labour of love intended
to release only the highest standard of music from Sander
and the most like-minded of souls. And through Little Mountain
comes the third and final instalment of his highly acclaimed
'Four Seasons' EPs, reaffirming what the 31-year-old stands
for as he draws a line on the first phase of his DJ/producer
trajectory and forges toward an expanding vista of new possibilities.
But it is, perhaps, his revelatory reworking of Justin Timberlake's
'Rock Your Body' that gets to the nub of Sander's current
mandate for dance perfection. Building on a Neptunes production
is no mean feat, but Sander manages it; stripping away all
superfluous trimmings and working the original song structure
into nine minutes of spellbinding house music wonderment.
He drops the track's original bassline, making it sound like
a lost Mantronix classic or something that would have provided
the peak moment of a Junior Vasquez set in mid-nineties New
York; darkly soulful, sexy, illicit and thoroughly irresistible.
"I've got this idea," he says. "I'm feeling
house music and club music are maybe slowly going back to
where it was pre-'90s, where a song is a song and you don't
bitch around with it." It's a damn good idea - and it
works.
As a kid growing up in the provincial eastern Netherlands
during the '80s, Sander would tune-in religiously to late
night radio shows playing imported r&b, electro and club
mixes direct from New York City. Names like Shep Pettibone
and John 'Jellybean' Benitez rang out with the romanticism
of a distant dancefloor. He developed a fascination for hip
hop, spraying graffiti, human beatboxing (badly) and, of course,
rapaciously eating up vinyl. At school he was known as 'the
kid with the headphones'. One day a teacher asked him if he'd
play some records at the school disco, so he did. Little did
he know that those fantasies would come true, that he'd be
emulating those heroes whose names he'd only heard across
the crackle of the airwaves and seemed as tangible as a character
in a comic book.
These days Sander commands respect as a DJ worldwide, with
residencies in Montreal, Ibiza's Pin-Up and New York's Arc
that allow him to indulge his stylistic experiments over eight
hours and more. Vaunted in the '90s as one of the 'Nu Breed'
of the world-conquering progressive house scene - aided by
his addition to the enormously successful Global Underground
compilation series - he is now numbered quite rightly among
dance music's elite upon his own merit alone. Clocking up
hundreds of thousands of air miles per year hasn't yet dulled
his passion for playing records he loves to clubbers in every
conceivable part of the world. "I'm completely in love
with the lifestyle and what it represents," he enthuses.
"People find it a clichut I do think it brings people
together. I love the fact that when I play in Kuala Lumpur
for 5,000 Muslims it goes as right off as it does in Northern
Ireland or in Tel Aviv. That is truly the fire that ignites
my engine."
It all kicked off when he moved to The Hague, administrative
centre of the Netherlands, in 1994. With no real dance scene
of note, Sander avoided the cloying, cliquey environments
of cooler cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam, allowing him
the space to create his own identity. "Back then I was
always the sort of a solo man," he says. "I could
smell it but it was not happening around me. I feel like I've
had to discover everything myself."
Hooking up with local movers and shakers, Sander began releasing
tracks through German and Belgian labels, Superstition and
Wonka Beats, setting up his own label, Deal Recordings. His
breakthrough came in 1996 as S&S Project, the single 'Y.D.W.
(You Do Me Wrong)' signed to New York's Strictly Rhythm, proving
a sensation that reverberated in clubs around the world. The
release of his first 'Four Seasons' EP also proved a definitive
moment. 'My Lexicon' and 'Sacred' won him admirers across
the spectrum of the dance fraternity; notably Sasha, who included
both the aforementioned tracks on his 'Global Underground:
Ibiza' compilation and was to become a close friend and collaborator.
"I think the 'Seasons' EPs set a general reflection of
what I do in a club,"explains Sander with customary humility.
"I hope that they'll be things that people will go back
to five years from now and go, 'Yeah, I'll play that'. I hope
that it has a sort of timeless quality about it - that's what
I try to achieve."
But Sander's ambitions lie beyond the confines of the club.
He remains fascinated by the possibilities of pop music, creating
hybrids that are at once immediate and intelligent, club-oriented
and credible. "I listen to Missy Elliott records and
I go,' Wow, this is so clever,'" he admits. "This
is cleverer than 90% of what I hear being made by underground
dance producers and it's kind of inspiring. Like, 'Dam, we
still have a long way to go!'" Sander is on his way and
doing things right. Listen up people.
