Sander Kleinenberg Biographie

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 clich?ut
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.