In 2003 Bert de Rooij finally earned enough money from his paper round to buy some equipment for mixing his records. Till 2007 he only pleased the crowd in his bedroom, which most of the time came down to nobody. Around the same time he came in contact with some mindlike people on the Pixel-parties in his hometown of Arnhem, in the east of The Netherlands.
On those parties he experienced techno on a lower bpm-level for the very first time. As a former techno-dj he was surprised to know that techno on such velocity was so full of energy and at the same time complex in using bass lines and rhythms. So in 2005 he started to play a kind of minimalsound.
Besides this genre he loved listening to jazz, indie, punk and electronica. A little more than a year later this love for variety in sound turned out to be the cause for his lack of interest for the most ‘minimal’ that was coming out in the recordstores. The most of it had nothing to do with the intelligent arrangements and complex use of sounds from the early days.
Therefore Bert shifted to quality (American) house in all forms with the warm sounds and domination of classic instruments. A second major difference was his newborn use of jazz in his sets. As a big fan of all the swinging, rhythmic jazz with a lot of use of brass instruments, rhodes and xylophones he always wanted to combine this with his house music. He searched every recordstore for tracks that could be defined by this characteristics and bought old jazz records on vinyl.
This unique sound offered him lots of gigs in The Netherlands in the years following. He played at parties like Amsterdam Dance Event, 5 Days Off, Source, Magnetronik, Pixel and Planet Rose and at venues like Paradiso, Club 11, Doornroosje, Studio 80, Trouw and for the first time he played a cross the borders in Germany.
At the same time he also started with producing his own tracks. In his tracks he likes to experiment with jazz, down- and uptempo house and electronic. His first release is scheduled on Doppelschall for early 2010.
Furthermore Bert began to organize the so called 8-Bahn parties with a group of close friends in the east of Holland and his ‘optiek’ parties in Trouw, Amsterdam. In 2008 he also started doing back two back sessions with his musical twin brother Dollkraut. Nowadays Berts style is a little compromise less discovering the best in house, hip-hop, electronica, (nu)-jazz and dub.
