Funkerman - AKA music-fixated Dutch DJ/producer Ardie van Beek - started his career not in house but in the heady, heavy, hedonistic world of hip hop. “It’s true, I started off as a hip hop DJ,” he smiles. “I really enjoyed the music and was fascinated with what they did cutting and scratching and working with turntables. Public Enemy and Eric B & Rakim made me search for more of this music. It made me a collector of soul and r n b because there was so much sampling in the music I was finding. So I went backwards to disco, rare groove and especially long twelve inch versions that had some extra parts. That was my passion.”
With a deep understanding of hip hop and the rules and regulations of vinyl culture, Ardie has always known what ingredients are needed to cook up the perfect club track. As Funkerman, he’s about to drop his best record to date – the turbo-charged hip-pop-house hit ‘Speed Up’. But how did he get to this point from the world of hip hop? “What happened, which I found frustrating, was that hip hop got more rules and it wasn’t so free any more. Then I started hearing house music and once again it was a world without rules. So that for me was moment when I found a new music I could relate to. It had the same appeal as hip hop.”
Drawn to the beats of Todd Terry and Derrick May as well as a select few Dutch DJs like Eric Nouhan and Dimitri (“in the UK nobody knows them but they played funky riffs”), the early club damage Ardie experienced “had a more industrial sound. ‘Dominator’ was getting started, the records had amazing conga beats and things I had enjoyed in old hip hop,” Suddenly, that unsteady jump started to make perfect sense. “Also, the vibe was so much better, it was really open for anybody. When we were there with the music, everything was OK.”
See, music rules Ardie’s world. Before he was even listening to house for the texture of a hi hat, he has working at home, twiddling on his computer as much as possible. “At the age of 13, I started making hip hop but gradually together with the leap I made as a fan I started to produce house.” But were they any good, we wonder? “I made HUNDREDS of tracks before I got any good,” he laughs, but the first one was called “cadillacs & baseballbats”. It was for Black Hole. They started a sub label for house music and I did a few records for them.”
What’s in a name? Ardie started his DJ career at a club called Spock, “one of the first places in Holland where house music was played. Before trance and house got separated, I started playing on the Friday back when Thursday & Saturday was Tiësto – we’re talking fifteen years ago! - It was a small room but they had a more alternative room and I went in there to learn how things worked and I soon realized the audience could go and look in the other room. “So the challenge became to get people staying in your room. Trance wasn’t a part of me – I liked the soul and funk so I stayed in that corner.”
So it was Friday night where Ardie’s alchemic mix of funk-fuelled house and soul was born. “A key record was L’il Louis ‘French Kiss’ & everything the French did really inspired me. When pushed, he says Daft Punk’s Homework is “the best house album ever made.”
He also started working in a record shop - it was a place where you heard new music, the internet wasn’t that big so as a social thing it was big and you had to go there to hear the records first!” How things change. “Everyone wants to tell the guy behind the counter why they like tracks so because I was producing it made me realize that the way a record sounded – mixed, engineered and mastered, all the technical sounds – was really important. So for the first time I got into reading and how engineering worked and why a song sounded good on the dance-floor. Everyone always wants the record where the volume and sound were big, Now, that’s not necessary and you can listen to everything that’s going on in the world. It’s a different race now. But I really like the change, music is more open and it’s better for getting house music to a new level.”
So his ears were now attuned to the music – now all he needed was business acumen. “When I stopped, I went to work for a record company who did pop and house music and started doing A & R. Because I knew producers – I already knew Fedde (Le Grand) and liked the productions he made – he was interested in underground house so I made a decision to start my own label – and that’s how the collab with Fedde was born. Fast forward to the present day and the dj/producer is positively obsessed with making top tracks & together with Raf & Fedde Le Grand they run their own independent house and electro-tech-label, Flamingo Recordings.
“We had trouble getting our music to the record companies because they wanted house that sold well – meaning cheesy – but I don’t make that and that was the reason we started Flamingo, because the bird is free to fly free and so are we.”
The label has now been running for four years now and the biggest record is, of course, ‘Put Your Hands Up’ plus Ida Corr ‘Let Me Think’ . then there was Camille ‘ ‘The Creeps’ and ‘Take No Shhh’ by Fedde which was also released by Defected last year. Which brings us nicely up to date with ‘Speed Up’ with a singer called I-Fan who sounds not unlike a certain Justin Timberlake. No bad thing. “I didn’t know who Justin was six years ago. I really like JT but it’s more Quincy Jones’ work with Michael Jackson I admire!” Again, no bad thing there either.
“The last year has been a great year,” he concludes. “Fedde and I have two studios and an office and what’s happened is really amazing so now everybody wants to listen to our music and that’s the big difference. After that track we didn’t have to bug anyone any more! Labels like Defected have thousands of people trying to get their attention but after you have a hit record for the industry, people listen. I’m the glad the way everything evolved. We want to make house music in a pure form. Hip hop now is a very adult music, it sounds great and you can hear it’s made in a good studio with the right people. And house music is the new disco – so we need a new mentality and step up and make better music without selling out. The key is not to make the same record twice – Fedde didn’t! My goal is for house to turn house into the European version of hip hop.”
We couldn’t agree with him more.
