Rik Watts
Rik’s initial involvement with electronic music started in the early 90’s with his passion for hardcore. During this time Rik was travelling the world whilst working for the Dutch Navy and was coming into contact with a variety of early electronic music via the clubs and bars he frequented whilst on shore leave. He began to notice he favored the rhythmic beats of the early house and techno tracks he found himself listening to and shortly after returning from one of these foreign trips decided he wanted to experiment with these sounds for himself. Rik purchased his first belt driven turntables and mixer in 2000. Within a short period of time he became hooked and started to invest all his spare cash into vinyl from the up-and-coming dj’s of the time such as Richie Hawtin, Secret Cinema, Michel De Hey etc. As his skills progressed Rik purchased his first Technics 1200’s and Allen & Heath mixer whilst focusing more and more on the rhythmic techno sounds of the time.
In 2006 Rik entered his first djing competition the Twstd DJ contest in Amsterdam along with 145 likeminded hopefuls. Rik progressed to the last round of 14 where he performed at Club Paradiso in Amsterdam. This cemented Rik’s belief in the sound he was creating and added to his motivation to succeed. Shortly after Rik entered a local DJ contest in his hometown of Delft @ Club Speakers, which he went on to win. In the same year Rik sent his first demo mix to Partyflock which went on to be selected by Bart Skills as the best newcomer entry and resulted in Rik djing @Flockers in the Arnhem Geldedrome.
Leading on from this success Rik started hosting his own local parties in and around the Delft/Den Haag area, namely Funk You. As his sound became more noticed Rik found himself performing at larger local clubs such as Speakers in Delft & Mozaiq in Oud Beijerland. It was around this time Rik purchased his first CD mixing equipment and Macintosh based system and built his first digital home recording studio with the intention of producing his own blend of techno sounds. It was at this point Rik realized he needed to gain more knowledge on the basics of electronic and digital music production so enrolled at the School of Audio Engineering in Rotterdam, where he followed a course in Electronic Music Production. This is where he met Bas Struik, who also shared Rik’s passion for techhouse, techno and minimal techno.
Rik & Bas both graduated in 2009 and from there after started to produce their own blend of techno music. Their early collaborations started receiving appreciation from dance floors in and around NL and their first release on Phat Elephant records was released early 2011. Their double act evolved with Bas DJing (Traktor) and Rik performing live (Ableton). As a duo they performed a DJ set @ the Hall in Istanbul and @ smeerboel in Utrecht. One of their tracks has since been selected for use on the official promotional video for WTTF 2011. Latest gigs of Rik were @ Beach Club Barefoot in Scheveningen and Kranck in Utrecht.
Rik will be sometimes heard on Rebel Radio @ studio80. Gigs for 2012 are in Utrecht, Eindhoven and Amsterdam. Newest release include new tech-house material such as Pass the Test, It's a kind of funny, Loose your head & Settings on the LowEnd community label bases in Eindhoven-Netherlands.
So watch him!