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about | the story

 

slamtheflap is an audiovisual artist who likes doing stuff and making things to entertain his fellow humans. He approaches everything in life with a deep philosophical technique that he refers to as the ‘Do things and make stuff’- technique.

This technique has blessed him with a broad range of love and experiences in different fields like designing, editing, animation, branding, losing buttonholes, DJing, writing, remixing and producing, ...just to name a few. His creations are based one or more slices of his ‘Interests Pizza’ of music, comedy, art and design. And food.

However, his favorite thing is bringing it all to a stage and performing live to share vibes with happy dancing humans. He’s very into happy people and keeping them happy. He’s like a feeder of happiness wanting to make them even fatter with happiness.

"The blocks are never far away."

"The blocks are never far away."

LEGO
His creativity sparked at a very young age when he played with his first set of LEGO blocks. Despite LEGO’s great intention for him to build a ship, he didn't. Not once in his life he made what was pictured on the box. This was never his goal. Even his three legged cat, called 'Driepoot', knew he didn’t care about the ship! He just wanted to have new kinds of blocks to build new crazy combinations. Many years later he would use audio and video as Lego blocks, to make new things, with the same fun as when he was a kid.

"Custom made iPhone LEGO holder. Why not?"

"Custom made iPhone LEGO holder. Why not?"

TECHNICS
His father was a local radio discjockey in the eighties. He had his own evening show called ‘Musica Maestro’, which was quite popular and had a large range of listeners. He took his then eight year old son along to the radio station, many Friday nights. The place felt like magic and the kid loved everything about it. All these buttons and faders on the mixer, the red 'ON AIR' lights, the walls filled with thousands of vinyl records and of course hearing all these tracks with the thrill of having an audience of people listening at home and calling in.

But there was one thing that fascinated him the most and these were the studio’s Technics turntables. Despite his father yelling many times, he couldn’t stop sneaking around to touch the platter and see the red dots move while records were playing. From that moment on he knew, one day he would own his own pair of Technics and do whatever he wanted with them.

 

DUTCH MASTERS
His first steps in wanting to be a ‘part of music’ instead of just being a listener came with the discovery of Hip Hop culture and later on mainly the element 'DJing' and its subculture named ‘Turntablism’, which is using your turntables as a musical instrument to create new music. He first heard about it while listening to the legendary Hip Hop show, ‘Dutch Masters’, which was on Dutch national radio in the nighties. Besides all the fresh new tunes from overseas, they also introduced him to the very much alive Dutch Hip Hop scene in the Netherlands. The way Dj Knowhow mixed and scratched all these records together fascinated him, show after show.

True love for the sound of scratching was born and never left. And as it turned out, it came from the same turntable he was fascinated by as a kid, the Technics SL 1200. By then, it had become an iconic product for DJ culture in general. A couple of years and some cheap belt driven turntables later, finally a pair of Technics SL 1200 entered his life and they never left his side. After watching a bunch of VHS tapes of DJ battles, he was completely blown away and he knew he wanted to perform as a ‘Turntablist’. Just a small selection of his biggest influences during the first years were Dj’s like Q-Bert, Mix Master Mike, Craze, A-Trak, Mike Relm, DJ Shadow, Jazzy Jeff, Kypski and so many more.


AUDIO VISUAL
For the past 15 years, Slamtheflap has been performing as a Hip Hop Dj throughout the Netherlands and Belgium. Bringing ‘Turntablism’ to many stages, always representing and introducing crowds to the culture of ‘Turntablism' and love for scratching. Throughout the years he shared the stage with many legendary Dutch Hip Hop artists like Typhoon, Opgezwolle, Kohfie Konnect, Extince and many more.

While Hip Hop was going through some “less inspiring” years, he started to play around with video to keep DJing interesting. After touring some years as a Hip Hop Dj in a theatre production. After the tour, even though it was a success, he decided to leave the stage behind for a while to keep on exploring scratching with visuals.

One night he ended up at a party called Soulfully Yours and he heard something that was new to him. Sample based house music filled with breaks and samples he knew from the Hip Hop culture. This completely blew his mind. He started to discover so much more new dope music to play with. Meanwhile Serato released their 'Scratch Live Video'. This made his dream of scratching with video an affordable reality. It became an all you can play buffet on the turntables from there on.

New kind of bookings followed and he returned to the stage using his longtime alias ‘Slamtheflap’, ready to entertain happy dancing humans. From 70 to 130 BPM, anything goes and nothing is a challenge, as long as it’s good music and keeps you dancing.

Since last year the fun of doing live DJ routines, like the good old days, completely came back in full effect when the Pioneer S9 entered his Dj setup. It was like the first time he touched the Technics at that radio studio as a kid.

He has so much fun with the effects, especially the ECHO effect. He even started recording his routines on video.

And the fun is not stopping anytime soon. Check out his TREMIX #2 with music from Dutch Artists Bizzey and Yung Felix.

 

Slamtheflap has been combining his passion for music and comedy since 2004. Enjoy this piece made with jokes of one of his favorite comedians, Mitch Hedburg. 

As as producer he makes many things, like this music for the artist DOES. He needed a fresh tune for his Instagram webshop account when launching new video of products. 

He shoots and edits video in his own style. This is a 'behind the scene' movie for the international artist DOES.

He's an active member of the formation MORO ALLEZ, a live remix showband. Besides being the DJ and Producer of the band, he also creates all visual content seen during their live show. This teaser was made to introduce the band to the world.