Olav Basoski Interview
An in-depth look into Olav Basoski’s past, present, and future.
Freely translated from and originally found on:
Special – Olav Basoski
The name – Olav Basoski – is for years on end one standing on the top of the bill. Since the nineties this legend, born in Haarlem (Holland) rules the dance floors al over the world with his mixing skills, remixes, and his own tracks…
He has done remixes all over the planet, and the list of his own productions is at least as long, and consists of a fair deal of classics like:
Pancake – Don’t turn your back, Sil – Windows, Sil – Villa Ducato and let’s not forget, the whole Samplitude series!
Also, he has done lots of collaborations on his behalf. He has shared his studio with the likes of Erick E, DJ Zki, Kadoc, DJ Roog, Armin Van Buuren, and others.
The former purveyor of the infamous Work-label from Amsterdam (together with already mentioned Erick E) is presently one the people behind Rootz records. That, already in the short time of existence, has gained an international reputation for releasing outstanding tracks like “Waterman” and “La Poema” (together with DJ Roog). This is the highest time to interview this busy bee!
At first, the inevitable question, how did house music come intro your life? And do you recall the first reaction you had? And, when did it occur?
I was already mixing for a few years. At that time, it wasn’t called djing, but mixing ‘ haha! A friend of mine had bought some 1200′s and we poached import stores for cool records. That all pointed out towards R&B and disco. The Jam & Lewis era, you can refer to it like that. Shortly after that I started going out. In Haarlem, you had a few clubs with a very high juvenile character, so it was not happening there for me.
There was also one club that plugged some more progressive music – “the stalker”. In contrast of what you are reading all over the Internet, it was not “Inner-city” that I heard for the first time, but Babyford’s “oochy koochy”. I thought ‘ ‘goddamn, what’s this’? Outrageous hard beats, way too much bass, AWESOME! I grew up with (in its own matter, great) disco records, all of them with that cozy and sweet song/melody, and then suddenly this came along. That was quite a scare, haha! I could not get that record out of my head… it happened about in the mid-eighties.
On a given moment, you began with producing yourself, how did that shape itself?
Well, I already had mixed some records for airplay, was a major fan of Ben Liebrand and Peter Slaghuis, and did some things for local radio pirates. Especially Peter Slaghuis did some nice things with samples. When in that time “Bomb da bass” and “Marss” and such appeared, which consisted out of nothing more then clashed samples, I had the urge to try that myself. Martijn ten Velden, yes, MTV, lived around the corner and had a relationship with the girl next door to me, so I saw him quite frequently. He had some things going on with hip-hop, and had a Roland 808 and 909 at home, which I could lend sometimes. It suddenly appears to me that perhaps he has learned how to make beats.
Dj Marcello (Chemistry) came over to my place frequently, and when I played some examples for him, Martijn jumped up and shouted: “no man, this is how it should be done!” At that point he programmed some things on that 909 and Marcello was very satisfied with what he heard.
Alright then, what I did, completely sucked. But it suddenly appeared to me what the direction was that had to be taken. Because I already had a small sampler for making those radio mixes, I experimented with that 808 and 909. Lots of fiddling with midi cables, things that weren’t synchronized with each other… pff, hahaha!
I did the best I could, and traveled far and wide in the search of record labels willing to listen to my tapes. Absolutely nothing happened, until I suddenly was asked by Dureco, where I also ran down the door with my tapes, to listen to an old record of them, “MDMC”, they wanted to re-release it, but could use a more modern sense in it. And out of nowhere, I sat in an enormous (seriously, enormous!) studio, WITH engineer, building a remix. In two days I was taught so much from that engineer, that I knew what was my calling.
How did you meet Erick E?
In the meantime, I had opened a little studio with Alex Romano in Haarlem. In there, I fiddled with beats and loops. DJ Zki, who also lived around the corner, and worked in THE local record store, contacted me with Rhythm Import in Amsterdam. My first demo they rejected big time, but wanted to release the second. Later on I made with Zki – “Sil ‘ Windows’ and ‘World Series of Life – Spread Love’.
Erick-E, at that point was still referred to as E-one, haha, was the buddy of one of the employees of Rhythm Import. It appeared to Peter Duijkersloot, the owner of Rhythm, that the ideas that Erick-E had, could contain some potential, if I worked them out. Although at first, it didn’t seem to work properly. The first raw edit of ‘Pancake’ was made that day. Much later, with an intermission of at least a year, we had another go with ‘Pancake’. And it suddenly fit, that track had become bloody awesome.
In the start of the nineties you made a sound with Dj Zki and Dobre on Fresh Fruit and your own releases on Work that became internationally known as the “Amsterdam Sound”. Everywhere in Holland you could see people with work shirts and record bags. How did you experience that period?
Zki and Dobre had an immense success with Fresh Fruit, that really determined the sound. That, to be honest, was the Haarlem Sound. I can recall that I was recording Pancake for Erick and said to him: “they’re not going to put this on vinyl’. The next day we received a call, Rhythm didn’t want to just to release ‘Pancake’, but also wanted to give us our own label. And so the Work record label was born, the tougher nemesis of Fresh Fruit. It did not appear to me like that, because before we knew, we here making records day in day out in my little studio, and making remixes for labels all over the world, the phone was red-hot.
Besides producing you are also spinning frequently in Holland and abroad, what’s the most bizarre story that you can recall at this moment?
I called Armin van Buuren, if he was into going to Moscow, to do some gigs, and that turned out to be a ridiculous weekend. Armin did not stop babbling about Russian mafia, and flying with Aeroflot. Encountered some idiots in that club, who threw drip mats to my head, because I was not playing records that where hard enough, pfff.
Canada 2001 sucked even more, I came back from Ibiza, had to do a fast gig in Amsterdam, went on to London, and via Amsterdam again through to Canada. I missed the first flight because of a fire on our national airport, so I landed a day too late. Immediately went through to Calgary, in a thunderstorm, so that plane went every direction imaginable. And straight on back to Vancouver. At that point I was already awake for about 30 hours. The next step was a gig in Tokyo, but went ill in Vancouver. I lay there hallucinating for about a day or 10 in a hotel, at my own costs. That was a month to remember…
You are internationally famous for your awesome loops and low-down beats. Are you spending a lot of time digging for the rights loops? And do you immediately think: http://www.RootzRecords.nl
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