Mijk van Dijk

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Mijk van Dijk (born October 11, 1963 in Geesthacht ; actually Michael van den Nieuwendijk ) is a German DJ and music producer for electronic music from Berlin.

Life and career

His father is Dutch. When he was 13 years old, the family moved to Soltau in Lower Saxony.

At the beginning of his music career, he was mainly involved in bands (including as a bass player in northern German funk bands and the Berlin group Jetzt !, a band from the almost world-wide environment). In the late 1980s he discovered his passion for synthesizers and drum computers and as a the first house wave reached Europe, he became an avid partygoer in clubs such as the UFO . In autumn 1988 he founded a project together with Hannes Talirz to produce his own house tracks. As a journalist he worked for the trendy magazines Frontpage and Network Press .

In 1990 Mijk van Dijk published his first solo production LoopZone - Hate / Les Enfants Du Paradis on the Low Spirit music label . During the hardcore techno wave in 1991, van Dijk continued to release under the pseudonym Loopzone together with DJ Tanith . Later both found the record label Bash Records together with Jürgen Laarmann . After switching to the MFS label in 1992, published under the pseudonyms Microglobe and Mindgear . In the same year he started working as a DJ and released the world's first mixed trance compilation ( Tranceformed from beyond ) together with Cosmic Baby . A year later, van Dijk founded the Marmion project with Marcos Lopez and has two big club hits ( Schöneberg and Firechild ) on the Superstition Records label . This was followed by a collaboration with DJ Hell , which resulted in two tracks that can be found on Hell's album Geteert & gefedert .

His first album was released in 1994 under the pseudonym Microglobe on MFS, the concept album Afreuropamericasiaustralica , which reflects van Dijk's concern for the state of planet earth . The lyrics of the techno-trance-house-and-ambient pieces revolve around pollution , xenophobia and the longing for a more responsible way of dealing with one another. To do this, van Dijk uses voices alienated with the vocoder , sampling and spoken texts. All pieces are mixed together in a non-stop mix. Hard disk recording was not yet widespread in 1994, so he arranged all the pieces in the production phase so that they could easily be cut together in the mastering process. This album earned Mijk van Dijk a lot of critical acclaim. In 2010 he released the album again, this time digitally and in an uncut version as Director's Cut on his specially founded label environ-mental recordings .

In 1995 van Dijk remixed for artists such as Moby and The Hypnotist and wrote the soundtrack for the computer-animated video film Escape to Trancecyberia by the then still young label Studio K7 . In 1997 he composed parts of the film music for the cinema debut of the director David Jazay ( Kiss my blood ). That year he also started releasing records under his DJ pseudonym Mijk van Dijk .

In the meantime, he tours all of Europe as a DJ as far as Australia and Japan . In Japan in particular, he is becoming one of the most famous international DJs. Collaborations with Japanese DJs such as Takkyu Ishino and Toby Izui as well as publications on Japanese labels such as Sony and Frogman Records followed.

In 1995 he produced two pieces for the soundtrack of the PlayStation adaptation of " Ghost in the Shell ". As a big fan of Masamune Shirow , Mijk van Dijk wanted a Shirow work as the cover artwork for his mix compilation Multi Mijk on Sony Music Japan. Shirow contributed one of his first CAD graphics. Other soundtracks for PlayStation 2 games followed, such as the car racing game Ridge Racer V and the battle robot simulation Armored Core 2. His biggest hit in Japan, however, was his remix for the song Niji by the Japanese techno pop band Denki Groove around Takkyu Ishino and Pierre Taki .

In 1996 the title Spring: The Wildlife of van Dijk's single Mijk's Magic Marble Box - The 4 Seasons Of The Mind was used for the German television commercial for Renault Mégane .

His first album under his own name was released in 1997 on Superstition Records under the title Glow . In interviews, van Dijk described it as a continuation of Afreuropamericasiaustralica's idea , only that this time it was not about the outer, but the inner world. In the lyrics he dealt with the conscious and subconscious, some texts seem to be influenced by Japanese mangas such as Ghost In The Shell and in the piece The Eternal Afterhour Of The Soul van Dijk reflects on possible forms of existence after death, obviously influenced by the death of his father.

Van Dijk was a frequent guest at the Berlin Love Parade . In 1997 he organized a love mobile together with the Berliner Ensemble . On a discarded Russian T-34 tank, actors from the Berliner Ensemble recited texts from the Walpurgis Night scene by Goethe's Faust , which Goethe had subjected to self-censorship at the time . In addition, van Dijk played music using the video game Depth on a PlayStation .

In 1998, collaboration maxi singles with Thomas Schumacher and Claude Young appeared on Superstition as a harbinger for van Dijk's third album, Teamwork , which was released in 1999. It consisted exclusively of co-productions with befriended DJs and producers. In the same year van Dijk devoted himself to another art project: for the 100th release of the Superstition Records label , he composed the track Super 100 , which consisted only of samples from the first 99 Superstition releases. He continued this concept in 2003 on the label's 10th birthday with Decade - The Mix: Ten Years Of Superstition . With the help of the music software Ableton Live , he produced a mix CD that consisted only of fragments of previously published Superstition publications. With both Super 100 and “Decade” van Dijk emphasized that, as in the so-called mashup genre, he only used raw material that was available to everyone else who owned the corresponding records. Decade was the last release on the Superstition Records label . Before that, Van Dijk's artist album Everyground was released on Superstition Records in 2002 .

In 2002 Mijk van Dijks took part in the CD The Kinski Files . The producers involved were given access to original recordings of Klaus Kinski's famous recitation of Jesus Christ the Redeemer from 1971, the publication of which had been banned by Kinski's heirs in 1999. Van Dijk produced the piece Tanz den Jesus Christ for the CD , titled in reference to the NDW group DAF ( German American Friendship ), which he admired, with original sounds from Kinski.

From 2006 onwards, van Dijk published again regularly maxi singles, u. a. with Tom Wax and Martin Eyerer and under the pseudonym Plato. He also continued his collaboration with DJ Hell and produced remixes and mix compilations. Van Dijk also co-produced two tracks on DJ Hell's 2009 album “Teufelswerk”.

In addition, he created music for fashion shows , etc. a. for Berlin fashion labels such as Sisi Wasabi, Claudia Skoda, Majaco, Scherer-Gonzalez and Macqua, as well as the London label Maharishi. With DJ Hell he produced the music for the fashion shows of Michael Michalsky and Joop .

In 2008 the DVD We Call It Techno! , a documentation of the first techno years in Germany. for which van Dijk was also interviewed. His remix of Frankie Bones We Call It Techno (released in 2000 on Bash Again Records) appears several times on the DVD, incorrectly referred to as the original.

In 2010 Mijk van Dijk went back to his roots in funk bands and devoted himself to so-called NuFunk . He founded the group The Chaenge with the singer Florian Schirmacher (including in the groups Wareika, Federleicht, Hatikvah) and established the solo project mijkfunk . With both projects he produces new funk with strong influences from electro , u. a. on his own label nuFunkFiles . He also presents the radio program motherfunk on BLN.FM and an Internet radio DJ mix show on Berlin's visual radio station place2be .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Felix Denk, Sven von Thülen: The sound of the family: Berlin, techno and the turn. Suhrkamp Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-518-46320-8 , page 412
personal data
SURNAME Dijk, Mijk van
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nieuvendijk, Michael van den (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German DJ and music producer
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Geesthacht