With a series of lush progressive tracks and a DJ style that binds together the most pristine examples of progressive house and deep trance, Sander Kleinenberg has slowly built a solid reputation in the European club scene, playing top venues like The Rex in Paris and Space in Ibiza. But even though the 29-year-old Dutch jock has been selected as part of Global Underground’s elite Nu Breed series, he insists he’s not out to challenge those who came before him.

“Apart from me making music, and apart from me being an experienced DJ, I haven’t really thought about it,” insists Kleinenberg via telephone from his home in The Hague. “I’ve basically been doing what I do for a long time, and I’ve been playing the kind of music that I’ve been playing for a long time and it just got picked up. I don’t really see it as, ‘We’re new, and we’ve got something fresh.’ No. We do the same thing, and every DJ twists it in his own sort of way, from Tenaglia to Steve Lawler. Everyone does his own thing.”

Kleinenberg picked up the decks as a teenager, spinning at school dances and playing to the crowd until he discovered electronic music in 1991. Things picked up considerably with the releases of the “My Lexicon” single and 4 Seasons EP, both of which garnered Kleinenberg accolades from the Sasha/Digweed dynasty. Kleinenberg built up his studio as slowly and as gradually as he did his own DJ career, starting with an Akai MPC and going from there.

“Every time you get a remix or you get an advance or whatever, you invest in how you think you’re going to improve with what you’re doing,” he advises. “So I use software and digital technology for about half my productions. I have a digital desk [Mackie digital 8*bus], which is easy, because you can work on four different projects at the same time. I’ve got the G4 with some plug-ins, and recently started working with Logic Audio, which helps you out doing some tricks which you couldn’t do without recording onto hard disc.”

As for the other half, Kleinenberg fills out the sound with some analog gear and live instrumentation. “I’ve got the [Juno] 106, which is great for creating some analog sounds, and I’ve got sequential with some analog stuff in it. I just recently brought a Waldorf Q, which you can sort of control in a digital way, but it still is an analog keyboard, but controlled at your convenience. I have the Pulse, which is also a Waldorf [mono analog synth]. I use my [Akai 5000 and 6000] samplers a lot, just the effects that are in there and reverse it and filter it down and filter it up, just try and create my own sounds, really.”

Since winning the respect of clubbers and DJs alike, Kleinenberg has managed to take his DJ style to clubs and festivals throughout the world. Like most DJs, he can go all night if the sound system is right and the crowd is up for it. (He eschews the effects-oriented mixers for Euro brands like Rodek.) Most important for Kleinenberg is the energy he’s able to create within a crowd, the anticipation of what may come next.

“When you have a club situation with four hours or if you start out a bit earlier, you can take them from the deeper side of house and build it up and try to create some excitement and try to create some magic,” he says. “And the way to do that, obviously, is by programming your music and go to where it’s something bigger at the end of the night. It’s really hard to really fingerpoint where that works or where that doesn’t work. On a good night, for me, what feels like the best way is to have a crowd which is in front of you like, ‘Where is he going? I like this, but…’ I like to create that sort of twistiness about it and all of a sudden, when everybody is really dying for it, you break it down and deliver something. Usually within a set that I do, that comes three or four times within a cycle. If I have five hours and I have the time to play with people, I’ll start and take it to a point, drop it a bit again and take it to another point. That’s the way I try and do it.”

– Justin Hampton