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Biography Rene van Aken
Rene van Aken was born in Haarlem (Holland) on 29th October 1970. When he reached the age of 10 he got his first record player, and the interest for music started. With a tapedeck, a microphone and a cassette players everything was cut together in short mixes. Some of this material is still available (but only for a good laugh offcourse).
The 1980's en 90's were a time of records players and vinyl. Rene bought his first vinyl 12 inch disco single in 1894 it was: Chaka Khan - I feel for you . Inspiration those years (1980 - 1994) mostly came from a dutch remixer Ben Liebrand with his minimix every Friday on radio Veronica.
On the age of 18 Rene started playing live as a dj, mostly in local clubs in Haarlem. He always had a preference for house music but also kept listning to the people on the dancefloor. As long there was a party. In this time he created a wide love for music.
The mixing skills got better every year and between the age 24 and 28 he joined several dj mixing contests. This worked out very well as he won almost every contest by creating a powerful set with technical dj tricks. A great help and teacher was his best friend Vincent Burggreave.
The mixing contents:
- Denon cd mix championship 1992. This was thé first mix championship with cd players (and no record players). He won the first Denon double cd players in Hotel Arena in Amsterdam. See Article
- Bacardi mixchampionship 1994. Bacardi prices in every round. In the qualifying round 1,5ltr, half final 3ltr and the final a big bottle of 5ltr. He went home with the total of 9,5ltr. With his buddy Vincent he had some good evenings (and bad mornings).
House mix championship 1996. Qualifying round, quarter finals, half finals and the final held in clubs all over Holland. The final in Experience in Enschede was a bad day, he ended 3th place.
- Dj of the year Locomotion 1997. The Locomotion was one of the biggest clubs in Holland with room for more than 3.000 people. Qualifying round, quarter finals, half finals and the final, he won everything. The price was a Dateq 7.3 mixer. See Article
Radiostations is a special chapter in the life of Rene van Aken. Between the period of 1988 and 1999 he made 215 short mixes for radio stations around city of Haarlem (Holland). He worked for 2 years with the famous dutch dj Giel Beelen (3FM). One radio dj named Richard van Keulen became a very good and close friend and has an endless support.
On a fixed time, mostly friday evening, this short mix was broadcasted. Sometimes it was a bootleg remix of an existing song, sometimes an own production. Making those remixes started with a tapedeck and later he bought his first sampler a Roland workstation W30. Also 2 mixes were broadcasted on Tros Dance Tracks as the famous dutch item “bond van doorstarters”. In the year 1999 2 mixes were broadcasted on Radio 538 at the “Ruud de Wild show”.
At the end of every year (between 1988 and 1999) he made a yearmix. The best records of that year a one hour mix. Because this mix was broadcasted on radio there was always a deadline. One year the time between finishing the yearmix in the studio and broadcast was approximately 15 minutes.
Most of those yearmixes were made on a tapedeck with 100’s of cuts of adhesive tape. In 1997 the computer took over but the time to spent on the yearmix was the same or even longer. In 1999 by a computer crash the first 15 minutes was lost and he could start all over again. 2 weeks of work down the drain…
Around the year 2000 Rene was at his best playing several gigs in clubs over Holland and international:
Locomotion - Zoetermeer
Escape - Amsterdam
Macanti Plaza – Amsterdam
Melkweg - Amsterdam
Opera - Amsterdam
Time out - Gemert
Experience – Enschede
Break Out Tour 2000
NRG – Kreta
Summerdance Party – Aalsmeer
In the year 2005 Rene decreased playing live and he made room for creating his own productions. As this is a long road to perfection he took some piano lessons and got better in understanding the harmony of music. He likes to collaborate with other dj and artists.
In 2007 the first 2 tracks officially came out on record label http://www.myspace.com/expanddigital. In 2010 another 3 tracks on the Italian label http://www.polenarecords.it. Check the tab “discograpy” for all productions and remixes.
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