SEPT 15TH 2006|| SEA || JUNKIE XL (LIVE) / DJ Flave @ ELEMENT FRIDAYS!!!!
JUNKIE XL (LIVE) NETHERLANDS, NL
http://www.junkiexl.com
One of the busiest men in the music biz, and a celebrated musician and solo artist in his own right--now with a brand new album TODAY marking his fourth full-length to carry the JUNKIE XL name--Tom Holkenborg is also one of the most popular young composers in Hollywood. He contributed score to films like The Animatrix, Team America and Kingdom of Heaven, as well as plenty of video games (Destroy All Humans, Xbox's Forza Motorsport) and commercials. Not to mention the fact that he's a producer and revered remixer who masterminded one of the biggest remixes in history: the 2002 resurrection of Elvis Presley's "A Little Less Conversation," a No. 1 smash in 24 countries.
As such, the multi-instrumentalist lives the type of life that budding--and even highly accomplished--musicians dream of. He hears his creations on TV, in movie theaters, on the radio, in clubs and record stores. But while he has virtually conquered every medium, not all offer him the freedom he's afforded as the one-man band Junkie XL. When remixing, or making music for movies, commercials or video games, the Holland native has to work within certain, sometimes narrow, sometimes roomy parameters. With Junkie XL, he's afforded an opportunity to do whatever--and go wherever he wants--musically and creatively. It's an opportunity for him to be entirely himself.
And with the new Today, he's probably more himself than ever before. Reverting to the more guitar-based sound of his first two discs, Today is lyrically more personal, musically more cohesive and focused than any other Junkie XL disc. "My previous albums would go all over the place, from reggae to funk to techno, whatever," Holkenborg says. "The last three albums were big, conceptual albums, with a whole theory behind them, and for this album, I just went back to basics. I wanted to make 10 great tracks. This album is more of just one thing; it's really a vibe that I'm in right now. So that's why it's called Today. It's pretty much where I stand right now in my musical development."
Part of going back to basics was making sure that these tracks were threaded together with one continuous sound, in this case a warn, melancholic feeling, which brought Holkenborg back to the guitar while writing the songs in the early, winter months of 2005. "That's exactly the atmosphere in which I made this music," he says. "I began by sitting in the living room, or in the studio downstairs, dimming the lights and recording guitars--taking bits and pieces of those recordings to shape the songs. I based all the music on guitar melodies and riffs. They may have been treated afterwards extensively by sounders and programmers, but all the guitar and bass guitar parts were played live and recorded in my studio. All the songs just started from there."
An often gorgeous journey through Holkenborg's musical interests, Today is occasionally shot through with riff-rock immediacy, and more often recalls the melodic beauty of New Order, while sometimes throbbing and pulsing like a house record. Instrumental highlights include "Mushroom," an atmospheric track that Holkenborg describes as "almost like U2 on ecstasy"; "Such A Tease," the first track created for Today; and "Honey."
While he has in the past employed various high-profile voices onto a single album, this time, with the disc being a much more personal effort, he settled on just one singer, newcomer Nathan Mader who also co-wrote the lyrics for "Drift Away," "We Become One" and "Even In This Moment." Long-time friend and collaborator Lucas Banker was also involved in writing the lyrics used on Today. The opening song "Youthful" highlights Mader's vocals set against a backdrop of Junkie XL-filtered guitar licks. "'Youthful' is a track that's very much about who I am as a person," says Holkenborg. "Like all of us, I've been through a lot of crap in my life but still underneath there is that young kid with youthful innocence that still comes out and shines like the sun."
While he still plays live about 60 nights a year, living in L.A. has proved agreeable health-wise, and creatively. In Amsterdam he was working in a cellar-based studio often logging 18 hours a day, and seeing little sunlight. Now he makes music just blocks from the ocean in sunny California. Since moving to L.A., he says he learned, from his movie work, the usefulness of maintaining one consistent vibe throughout a project, a lesson he poured into Today.
Born in Lichtenvoorde, The Netherlands in 1967 to a musical family, Holkenborg started playing drums when he was eight years old, already keen on the weird psychedelic-pop of Pink Floyd and King Crimson. Two years later, he took up the piano and at 14 he began playing the bass. Not long after, he discovered the keyboard while working in a music store and by that time he was determined to make music his life.
Cutting his teeth in Weekend At Waikiki, a Dutch new wave group inspired by Talking Heads, Yello, The Clash and Peter Gabriel, he began mixing his twin loves of rock and electronics. The industrial-inspired Nerve followed in the late '80s/early '90s, and issued two LPs on the Play It Again Sam label (Front 242) during a time when Holkenborg's reputation as a freelance producer and remixer began to grow, via projects for such metal heroes as Sepultura, Soulfly and Fear Factory.
At the time, Holkenborg began slaving endlessly over his various projects in his subterranean Amsterdam studio. His friends joked that he was a studio junkie, giving rise to the Junkie XL name. The "XL" stands for "expanding limits" creatively and musically. "I called myself Junkie XL from the point of view that once you're completely overworked you never want to go there again," Holkenborg says. "The 'XL' stands for broadening your vision-I found that a decade in studios had given me a huge advantage compared to other dance producers in that I knew how to put layer on top of layer."
With the help of guitarist Dino Cazares, Holkenborg debuted Junkie XL in 1997 with Saturday Night Teenage Kick--a fusion of breakbeat and rock that spawned such hits as "Billy Club"--hitting the road for a tour of Germany with Prodigy and conquering such international festivals as Fuji Rock and Roskilde and making a name for itself in the burgeoning U.S. rave scene. Big Sounds of the Drags followed in 2000. Dancier, while heavily influenced by '60s psychedelia, the album featured the club hit "Future in Computer Hell (Part 2)," which helped spawn a new genre of progressive dance music while bolstering his rep in Europe and in the States. Simultaneously, Holkenborg's reputation as a remixer and composer was mushrooming, via commercials and work on such films as Resident Evil and Blade, all of which came to a head after his remix of "A Little Less Conversation" was used in a Nike World Cup 2002 commercial. Credited to JXL, instead of Junkie XL--so as not to offend--the single shot to the top of the singles charts in Great Britain, Japan, Hong Kong, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, The Netherlands, Australia and Mexico. The ensuing Junkie XL disc, 2004's Radio JXL - A Broadcast from the Computer Hell Cabin, was a virtual, dream-like pirate radio station, with the voices of Solomon Burke, Peter Tosh, Chuck D, Dave Gahan, Robert Smith and others strewn across clever, beat-laden Holkenborg creations.
DJ Flave Seattle, WA
http://www.myspace.com/djf
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