We’re sticking around in Holland for the next episode in our seemingly never ending global record label odyssey. Given the quality of the beer here who can blame us?
In addition to all the different beers ‘of the season’ they bars in this corner of Europe all seem to offer, the music that comes out of this decidedly flat nation isn’t half bad either. Take the EevoNext imprint, for example. Run by Esther ‘Estroe’ Roozendaal and Stefan ‘Terrace’ Robbers, the organisation’s back catalogue is brimming with essential purchases. Keen to hear how they make it work we asked the female honcho to answer our six questions. This is what she had to say.
Describe your imprint’s output.
Stefan Robbers and I both run EevoNext together. It’s a continuation of his EevoLute label, founded in 1991. We try to bring ‘Elegant techno music’ which means we are aiming for a good combination of melodic, deep, athmosperic but also enrgetic techno in all kind of forms. (experimental, ambient, dance-floor orientated)
We try to work with regular artists who come out with an EP every year, remix each other and are part of the yearly combination. We usually also bring one artist album each year. Regular artists in our pool are Ian O’Donovan, Justin Berkovi, Colin McNeil, Stephen Brown, Dan Grain, Nadia Struiwigh, Art Bleek, The Moderator, TJ Kong, Terrace and Estroe. And they are all living in Holland, UK and USA.
What would you say makes it different?
We are not really aiming for ‘different’ but we are trying to share good music to the world. We listen to the demo’s our artists (and new artists) send us, picking the best ones suitable for the label. Both Stefan and I spend many hours per week to make it happen, trying to maintain a good releationship with artists and to promote the music as much as we can. We are really putting our heart and soul into it and we can just hope that some of that comes through in the music we release.
What is it that makes you keep looking for new talent to expose?
The constant urge to discover new music and the wish to help new people along. It’s nice to be able to give them a platform.
What’s the label’s pinnacle achievement so far?
Uhm….our releases differ so much, we have had some releases that gained a bit more attention than others and we do get licensce requests quite often but we appreciate all our artists very much. It’s nice to see that we are reaching more and more people, receiving great feedback from people we respect and demo’s from well known producers.
If people were going to hear one release from your camp, what would you prefer it to be?
Ok, I know this is a very diplomatic answer but I don’t want to give one specific producer or track more attention, but we do have some pretty exciting releases coming up; NEXT48 by Nadia Struiwigh, a very talented young producer which people should keep an eye one, with a great remix by Art Bleek). NEXT49 is the pre-release for my album which will come out on vinyl.
That’s pretty special because so far we’ve been a digital label only. Remixes by Aril Brikha and Ray Kaijoka by the way! And then the special number 50 which will be my album, Comfort and Closure, coming out on 14th November.
All being well, skip forward five years, where would you like things to be?
Hopefully some of the newer artist are a bit more know for their music, we will still be selecting beautiful music. Maybe we will release some more vinyl again, maybe we have an EevoNext evening every now and then.
