Sauce

Sander Kleinenberg mixes it up as a full-time Dad and full-on DJ. On the line from the dance party capital of the world, I caught up with him to chat about his new Renaissance compilation CD, and balancing home life and night life…

Hey Sander, how are you?
Hey David, yeah, very good.

You sound like you’re at home?
Well, I’m in Ibiza, and I have been for a while during the week with my family. Yeah, enjoying some time off. It’s all good.

How is it being a DJ in the whole club scene with a family? I don’t want to get into the whole private life thing, but I know, being a journo in the music industry, it’s hard to cope with the whole nightlife type thing.
Well, I’m not gonna lie – working nights is not always handy when combined with the regular routine of being a Dad… you know, every downside has its upside… when I’m home I’m really home. I don’t have a nine-to-five. There’s relatively a lot of freedom in my job so, apart from the two, three gigs a week and the odd tour here and there, I think the balance is okay. You know, it is definitely different from other people out there and you have to… you do have to have some sort of routine – you need to be in balance; you can’t get drunk every day. But I think that applies to every Dad, I guess. It’s a change, definitely.

How did the connection between yourself and the Renaissance label develop?
Well, they do compilations, don’t they! I’ve come from a place where, musically, I’ve had a lot in common with the other DJs that were featured in other Renaissance compilations… we started the relationship and they give me the wonderful freedom to work under my own terms and with my own ideas; they give me a lot of creative freedom both from the point of view of artwork to actually choosing the music and all that. They’re a great, great bunch of people to work with.

What was your approach to this Renaissance – this is Sander Kleinenberg Renaissance production? Was there an artistic concept you took when you decided to do this or did it develop as you went along?
Well, a mix review is a mix review, and I think the ninety, ninety-five percent of what a mix review [entails] is getting amazing, or hopefully relevant music… put them on a disk and try to make sense of it all. It kind of, hopefully, reflects what’s current at the moment – takes this moment in time and gives some kind of [meaning to it]…

Would you say this is a good representation of what you play in the clubs or is it a little bit different to what you’re mainly playing?
I think mix reviews are always… your aim is to have it reflect what you do in general, but you also want mix reviews to be fairly timeless and you also want mix reviews to be a little bit steered away from the hype and sort of the… happening records because a mix review loses its value as soon as you cram it full of music that’s made for clubs, you know? There’s a big difference between what you listen to in your home environment or behind your computer or in your car than what you would listen to… in a club. So, you know, there is definitely a difference but the intentions are obviously trying to reflect… where you are musically at, sort of, and you wanna be taken on some kind of journey, so there’s always a… beginning and end, slowly building towards some sort of crescendo, at least. That’s how I view them and how I look at them. When I come from concepts, I try to be… I do take care of my artwork; I want it to look nice and have that extra added value that definitely comes out of the music… making it as good as I can get it.

When you’re deciding on the track selection and the order of the tracks, do you give a texture rating to each track and then you sort of look at it in terms of building from say a one up to a five and back down to a one, and back to a five; end with a one, or end with a five…
That’s a fair [description] of what you would do… you start collecting. You start going like, “Okay, this could be the beginning of a CD…” you know what I mean? You slowly come up with a selection – out of a hundred tracks there’s about four five sections of where I could place them and that’s sort of how I go along. I have a beginning and an end…

http://www.sanderkleinenberg.com/

Listen to the full interview Below