When Fred Meijer and Adriaan De Koning met at a Utrecht DJ talent contest in 2009, little did they know that they would morph into a dangerous pair of dubstep and drum & bass producers.
Sinister Souls later became a solo project with Fred taking the reigns on his own to keep the project moving in a forward direction. So forward, that the first volume of a special remix project of Sinister Souls tracks released with PRSPCT Recordings has just landed with an almighty wallop.
Chronicles, Volume 1, features 6 remixes by bonafide darksmiths Myselor, Zardonic, TR Tactics, Merikan, Counterstrike and Zombie Cats & Shannan.
After finding their first tune in the hands of hard dubstep master Excision, the then duo skyrocketed to success after success. A later meeting with PRSPCT ended with the signing of a big contract and a ketchup sealed pact.
In this deep talk with Fred, we find out about the origins of Sinister Souls where Fred sharpened his teeth as part of Utreg Massive and the critical middle-man role played by Black Sun Empire which essentially launched Sinister Souls into the stratosphere.
We learn about the hardship faced by Fred when putting on a brave face to fans and peers while Sinister Souls was in a transitional period. He also tells us about the exact moment he knew that Sinister Souls would no longer produce dubstep and make the change to the drum & bass production we know today.
Moreover, we learn of the logistics needed to make a remix project like Chronicles work and so much more in this inspiring insight into the world of Sinister Souls.
Chronicles, Volume 1 is out now, so be sure to keep your hands and legs inside the vessel at all times, buckle up tight and read on below, as we delve deep into the mind of Sinister Souls…
Can you tell us a bit about how the Sinister Souls project first started?
It started back in 2009 as a collaboration between me and Adriaan De Koning who was a fellow DJ I met at DJ talent contest in Utrecht. I was playing my first solo set in De Helling and I was part of a DJ collective called Utreg Massive which I joined in 2004. Me and Adriaan started producing, and the bar for drum & bass was quite high, especially in the early days when producing wasn’t at the push of the button. So then we wanted to produce drum & bass but it just wasn’t there yet, and dubstep was coming up and booming, so we decided to make some. I had never sent anything to a label, I was a producer that just sat in his bedroom just producing the whole time. Adriaan on the other hand sent the first tune we made to Black Sun Empire and they sent it to Excision. All of a sudden, we had our first release on Rotten, which back then was like the biggest dubstep label there was. That’s what skyrocketed Sinister Souls from just nothing to something.
That’s amazing! What made the transition from producing dubstep into producing D&B happen and why that particular time?
I actually know the exact moment when we didn’t want to do dubstep anymore. We started with drum & bass after we did the first album, Beat The Drum Hard on PRSPCT. We started entering drum & bass and were having lots of talks with producers who were in our tier or higher, getting lots of tips to work with. We were still doing dubstep because it was the primary thing we were getting booked for and during sets, we would switch to drum & bass later. In 2013 or 14, we got the stems and audio channels for a collab, we were working on it and I was usually the one with the mouse in my hand because I can work fast. Usually, we always had good ideas and this particular time, we both thought “this is just another dubstep track,” so that was the last time we made dubstep.
How did you find taking the reigns of Sinister Souls by yourself?
There came a point where Adriaan was focusing on his video direction career a lot which I also supported because he was very good at it. We would usually sit in the studio together and make a tune but when he went home, I would still spend hours in the weeks after working on the mixdowns. After thinking about it a lot, I brought it to light with him and he reacted super chill about it. Then we figured okay what we could do is represent ourselves as a duo even though things were moving in a different direction for us. We did that for a year and in 2018, I got to the point where I really don’t like lying, it took a lot of effort for me to, I’d rather just tell the truth. So we decided to make it official, and I didn’t want to let Sinister Souls die. Everything we built up through the years, it just felt good to continue because I was still producing the same music, nobody noticed the difference so that was fine by me. Plus Adriaan got a proper goodbye in 2018 at PRSPCT XL.
That’s really nice and props to you for keeping a brave face through this period. Speaking of PRSPCT Recordings, what’s your relationship like with them?
So before PRSPCT, we got into the agency with Subway which was the biggest Dutch dubstep agency out there and we were part of a sub-label called Scum. We were working on an EP called In The Filth. One of those tunes was dubstep, but it had hardcore kicks in there. Gareth and Joffrey, they shared the same office and apparently, Gareth heard the tune, and he was like “I want that for PRSPCT.” Gareth invited us for a talk, he hates dubstep, but he saw the value in what we were doing being the new kids on the block. He gave us a chance, so we signed a big contract, just working there. There was money thrown on the table and ketchup for blood to write down and seal the pact. We took a picture of that and posted it online, social media wasn’t that much of a big thing back then. We started working on a couple of tunes for Gareth and then he wanted more, and more, and more. All of a sudden, we had our first album on PRSPCT and because it was drum & bass oriented, it was a lot more viable for Gareth to get us gigs.
There’s a special remix project on PRSPCT that is happening. How did that become a thing?
The first time Black Sun Empire ever did a remix LP, first thing that came up in my mind was, how awesome would it be to have people you look up to or appreciate, have like new iterations of music that you made that you like yourself, and then they create their own vision of it? First off, I wanted to have enough tunes to be happy with to actually give the option. Secondly, it’s a large project to handle, a lot of communication and a lot of people counting on you. It has to be remixes from one label, because it just felt wrong if I would grab a tune from one label and just grab a tune from another label. But I realised two years ago, there’s a lot of stuff on PRSPCT already, like three albums, fourth one coming up, lots of singles. So I opened up my MacBook Pro from 2013 to see how many of the projects I could actually render the audio files from to have a remix made. There was a lot of potential so I started thinking of who would I actually want on here?
With a project like this, do you approach the artists directly?
With certain people, I would ask them in person, but a couple, I just asked through social media that’s how it came to be. I would send Adriaan the stuff that’s going on but I was the one that actually initiated this. I would ask him for advice and who he thought would be good for this. When it came to collaborations that had to be remixed, I would discuss it with that artist. Ultimatum, which I did with Pythius, we decided together, like who would be best for this, and that was Merikan, hands down, you know, he would kick it out of the park, which he did. A couple of artists that didn’t finish a remix in time for volume one, will be on volume two. Also, because I didn’t want to shoot the best shots in the first one, I wanted to spread it out a little bit so it’s equally distributed. But then still, if you look at volume one with the artists on there, it’s pretty epic.
It’s definitely epic! So will there be more than two volumes for this project?
Right now, it’s just going to be two volumes, I’ve never thought about like the option of having a, like a third volume, but this actually opens the door for the future. I also want to look into just producing for myself, this eats up a lot of my time. I’ve been doing some remixes and collaborations too because they’re like quicker projects, still as much fun of course. I think it’s important as an artist that you don’t only focus on remixes or collabs, but that you show the world, this is what I do by myself.
Is this solely a Drum & Bass project or will you delve into other genres?
I’ve asked all the artists to stay between like 172 and 176 BPM. The reason I did that is because I want to play these tune live. Some of the work that I did, which was like 120 or 140BPM, I don’t play those tunes. I just make them because I like making something different, but I always prefer having new material to play live. People come to see you like the producer you are, when you play live, you play your own tunes. You don’t go to like a Korn concert and have them play a Limp Bizkit, that doesn’t make sense. So me as Sinister Souls, when I play a set, I make sure 70% of the tunes that I drop are my tunes, because that’s why they come, right? So that’s why I asked remixers to try to stick within the drum & bass genre. But that doesn’t mean that some of the tunes that are being remixed were a different BPM before.
There are some very well established artists that you’ve mentioned on this project. Will you be showcasing any up-and-coming talents as well?
Definitely, yes. I’ve got two or three on the second volume already, because I wanted to give them a little bit more time to develop the remix that we’re working on. I personally always like to give up and coming artists a shot. Like if you look at every single album that we did, except for the first one, because we were the up and coming artists, we always give a spot to somebody else. I think the best example is one of the last EPs that I did was Trinity on PRSPCT, which had C-Netik, Counterstrike, who are established artists, and then the third one was with Shmidoo from Czech Republic. He’s such a humble and nice guy.
When I say the word remix, what’s the first tune that comes to your mind?
The one that I like the most, is the Evol Intent remix of The Legend by Technical Itch. I love it, the first time I heard that I thought, that tune is bonkers, a wall of sound. Another one is the Black Sun Empire remix of Unicorn by Eye – D. When you say remix, those are the first tunes that come to mind. Both tunes are quite old by now, I’m a very nostalgic kind of being. If you ask me what I like, it’s always stuff from 20 years ago.
What can we expect from Sinister Souls in the future?
Mostly what I’ve been doing before, just enjoy making music. Everything that I have that’s been built, I couldn’t ask for more. It’s amazing, I started doing something that I enjoyed, just making music, and suddenly, I get to see the world. Everything that comes my way, I appreciate. I’ve had these talks with other artists before that they’re talking about Spotify listens, but I’m fine. If I put too much strain on it, I feel like I’m going lose it and it’s not going to be fun anymore, I am very afraid to lose that feeling of having fun with producing. I want to do a new EP and there’s two things on my bucket list still. One is for producing and the other one is for DJing. The DJing thing is a tour in America because I’ve had Japan, Australia and New Zealand. But I haven’t been to America yet. The other one is doing an EP for Blackout, that’s the bar that I’m looking at. A while back, I sent them a tune and one of the guys were interested but I bailed out because I wasn’t happy yet, I’m happy that they’re interested though.
