Secret Cinema - Timeless Techno

Jeroen Verhelj has been churning out dance floor smashing tracks under his aliases Secret Cinema, Grooveyard and Meng Syndicate to name a few for almost as long as many of today's clubbers can remember. Tracks like Timeless Altitude, Mary Go Wild, Shake Ur Tech-Ass and Kurzweil invoke warm memories for many a seasoned clubber. The Dutch producer of many guises is playing a DJ set on the main stage this Saturday at Rainbow Serpent Festival for his long overdue debut Australian tour. Zac Kostos caught up with the celebrated producer for an insight into his lengthy career.

Pulse: Secret Cinema has been a name synonymous to dance music since the early 90's and you have written many club anthems under a host of different aliases throughout your time in the industry. For those of us that have been living under a rock for the last 20 years, enlighten us about what inspired you to pick up your first synthesiser and make music? Secret Cinema: My first encounter with the dance floor as a 16 year old, was full on house-music. In the middle of my puberty I got pushed into it by just going out. When I was on the dance floor I could feel the energy of the bass and the good vibe of all the people around me dancing the same rhythm, I was hooked from the first moment. I knew this was what I wanted, making dance floor music!

I bought myself an Amiga 500 computer with 512kb (yes half a megabyte) and a soldered sampler for 30 bucks and I made my first record as Meng Syndicate, Sonar System; an instant club-hit that was picked-up by Richie Hawtin and Speedy J who later also made a remix for it. My career had begun.

You have previously released some big tunes under several different aliases. Were each of the aliases designed to write music that was current or was it to express a different musical side of you that you wanted to explore? Well I haven't been doing a lot of aliases lately, that was more from the early period. Grooveyard; more club tunes, Night on Earth; techno, and Secret Cinema; techno for clubs....many more I had, but that was just to be able to make different styles of music. Nowadays I do it all under the Secret Cinema flag and that is sometimes difficult for people to comprehend. I notice consumers find it hard when you make techno on one side and more groove club on the other. “Huh, I thought you are techno?” Well actually I just want to make music, without losing the dance floor vibe.

For most of your career you have been based in Holland. Do you believe that the country itself has had an impact on how your music has evolved over the years? Yes, for sure. Holland likes it a bit tougher then anywhere else and you can hear it reflect into the sets I play and therefore the music I make. But basically I've been doing what I want for the past 20 years and the crowd still seems to like it. I must say, even more then before! I really like it that the tempo in techno has gone as low as it is now - anything beyond 135 BPM I just can't find any soul in. Sorry, too fast for me now, though in 2000 I started my live-sets on 138 bpm haha! No, I don't wanna go back there.

Speaking generally, you normally find artists start off as a DJ and then move into the "live" performance territory. Since the creation of your Secret Cinema guise you have performed mainly as a live act. What made you decide to start DJing? I did live sets for 15 years and I started to realize I was cutting myself off from many opportunities. My set is very energetic and big room stuff, so I could never play a nice small venue or even an after party somewhere. I also got so many demos and started a label and I wanted to be able to play this music as well, and I feel it lifted me to a higher level then before and the crowd seemed to like it a lot. At first I had my laptops where I performed my live-sets on and I downloaded a Traktor-like program called deckadance. So when I did a live set I could go somewhere else and do a DJ set as well on the same laptop. It all came together for me then. Playing DJ-sets with laptops was my thing. I have at least 5000 vinyls which I bought but never played. Now is better then ever for me - playing from my laptop gives me a fantastic feeling.

Over the years you have released your music on some very well respected labels and now through your own record label, Gem Records. What made you want to start your own label and what is the concept behind your brand? The label is for music that I like the world to hear and music that I want to play but can't find in any shop, from artists who have a unique sound by themselves, like Egbert and Peter Horrevorts and trying to take them to higher levels. There is no real concept, but just music that is longer lasting. I like to release music that you can still listen to with pleasure after 15 years...timeless music, timeless altitude.

Your upcoming debut tour of Australia starts within the next couple of days and is centered around the prolific Rainbow Serpent Festival in Victoria. What have you heard about this festival and while we are at it, the Australian scene in general. I learnt everything from the view of the Chameleon Records people and what I see on the internet. I feel that techno as I know it still has a long way to go. I feel there is more musicality in it's tracks here, which is a good thing, but also that there is a lot of high bpm Goa trance and such. Hopefully I can make a few people have a different view on techno, because most of the time you think it's just a track where nothing happens, but of course that is not true - t gives you just enough so you can fantasize for your own while dancing on a hypnotic rhythm. For me that is the real meaning of trance.

What have you planned for your performance at Rainbow Serpent - are you planning a DJ set or are you performing live? I will do a DJ set. I made an intro and I know the first track I want to play, from there it's all a journey unknown. I really need to feel the crowd and see when we can go tougher in the set. I know I'm gonna play a bigger crowd, so I will take the middle road and keep as many people happy as possible within the limits of my own taste. I feel I can go deeper here than in Holland where the crowd likes the more going up kinda music. But we'll see - I can't predict what I don't know of yet. I will try and feel the mood at the festival first and go from there.....and I'm really looking forward to this, since I am a brain holiday man as well!

We have seen allot of promotion of the Secret Cinema brand over the last 6 months down here, which seems to be circulating around the Melbourne based record label Chameleon Recordings. Tell us about your connection with this local label. They came to Holland last summer and Steve Ward did a set on one of our Gem Beach parties. We became good friends and we had a really good connection. They already did a few things with Peter Horrevorts in the past and also Egbert. It's great I can see them now here, in their environment and have a good time. They believed in my sound for a long time now and also worked hard to get me over. Such effort is fantastic and we decided I am also going to do a release on Chameleon soon. I had too many remixes to finish, but now that’s done and I can focus on my own music again, Chameleon being a priority for sure! And I love their ideas and I feel we have the same vision for music.

In our opinion, your debut tour is long overdue. We look forward to hearing what you have in store for your Australian fans! Me too!! I've been excited for months. Hopefully this will be the first of many visits to your beautiful country.

Listen to Secret Cinema on Pulse Radio