Fact: The quality of a music producer can sometimes be determined without listening to any of the music he or she has produced.
In some instances, all it takes is a quick peek at the labels a producer has released on to get an idea of how talented, versatile and regarded they are.
Nymfo falls slap-bang in the centre of this esteemed category. The Dutch don’s back catalogue is practically an encyclopedia of the finest labels in drum & bass and the list of people he’s collaborated with reads like the cast of a blockbuster movie.
Hospital, Metalheadz, Critical, CIA, Fokuz, Samurai, Commercial Suicide, RAM and Dispatch are all among the labels that have backed his music, and his next release comes out on the latter of those imprints; a 4 track EP on Dispatch set to drop at the end of February featuring a few very enticing collabs…
“The feedback on the whole EP has been very good so far. Those who have heard it love the collab with DLR in particular, it’s probably the strongest track we’ve ever done together because it’s a proper roller and elements from both of us can be heard in it” he says. “There’s also a collab with Total Science who I regard as absolute legends of the scene.”
“I like to incorporate different styles in my music and I did that on this EP,” he adds. “I like diversity in drum & bass; if I hear two hours of just liquid or neurofunk I get bored, so I try to mix things up both in my sets and my releases.”
Nymfo’s forthcoming EP is yet another one to add to the burgeoning list of releases to look forward to this year. But before it drops, we decided to find out a few things about one of the most versatile producers in D&B you might not have known…
He started out as a gabber DJ…
“When I started DJing almost 20 years ago, gabber was huge in Holland and the first rave I ever went to was a gabber night, so that’s the genre that I first fell in love with. For the first six months of my career I played gabber under the alias Nymphomaniac… My old mates know about that but not a lot of other people do. I was only around 15 or 16 at the time, far too young to have a name like that! There are still some pretty big gabber raves in Holland and definitely still quite a few gabber-heads around…
“But it became quite boring playing gabber music all the time as it’s quite repetitive, so I went to a record shop and bought some Metalheadz releases. I went home, started mixing them and thought ‘yeah, this is definitely more interesting!’ I fell in love with the jungle sound and I guess Headz was the first label I really got behind, along with Dope Dragon and Renegade Hardware. I managed to sell all of my gabber vinyl to a guy who was asking for it on a forum and it went for a lot of money because they were original pressings. I bought some D&B records with the money…”
He has never smoked a cigarette in his life and has never touched any drugs…
“I’m from Holland and live in Amsterdam so people always assume I smoke a lot of weed, but I’ve never touched it – or any drug for that matter! I was always scared to get addicted because I knew a lot of people who smoked it every day and they became very lazy as a result. I didn’t want that to happen to me. When I was a kid, people told me that drugs are bad and I shouldn’t do them – so I listened.
“Smoking weed is so normal over here as it’s not illegal. Maybe if it wasn’t legal it would have been more tempting as a kid. If you say to a little child “don’t touch that!” they’ll inevitably touch it, and I think the same applies to weed in a way – the appeal isn’t quite so high, if you’ll excuse the pun… I guess this puts me in a very small minority, especially considering I’ve been around for quite a long time. Hopefully this will increase my longevity and I’ll be DJing until I’m 80!
“I do like to drink, however. A lot…”
He tells everyone to use Mixed In Key, but doesn’t actually use it himself…
“Mixed In Key is a tool that some DJs use to help them keep their mixes in key, as the name suggests. I advise it to a lot of people but I don’t actually use it myself, which is a bit ironic. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people using it, but I like to keep my mixes as natural as possible. I saw my friend using it once and thought it looked wicked so started passing it on to others but then always think “why did I say that? I don’t even use it myself!”
There you have it; Nymfo is a former-gabber loving, (almost) clean-living, pitch-perfect DJ.
And here’s what he has lined up this year: “I’ve got an EP coming on Spearhead in May and I’m just finishing an EP off for CIA Records too, as well a a track for their ’20 Years Of CIA’ compilation. I’ve also done a track with Maduk for Hospital. I’m not exclusive to a label so I like putting music out on labels that I respect.”
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