This post is also available in: Nederlands (Dutch)
I remember seeing house pioneer Orlando Voorn for the first time. He was sitting backstage at Winterwooferland at Paradiso in Amsterdam. I was quite intimidated by his grand posture. When we actually met, a few years later, I found out that Orlando Voorn is one of those rough diamonds with a big heart. In 2015 he told me the story of his first gig: “Johny was literally crying.”
“My first gig was at Flora Palace in Amsterdam. It was a DJ contest that took place during the day. I was only thirteen. I have been going out since I was very young and easily got into clubs like Majestic and Flora Palace.” (laughs)
He was going to win!
“Once I was inside, I saw this dude that I knew from other contests. He was much older than me. I believe his name was Johny. He asked if I was also competing? I said that I hadn’t brought my records. He immediately offered that I could borrow some of his. He was adamant: he was going to win.”
Jury
“Flora Palace was filled to the rim. The jury was completely American. Funny enough, I wasn’t nervous at all. When it was my turn, I had fifteen minutes to show them what I could do.”
Standing ovation
“Of course, I hadn’t prepared anything, so I just started playing and that went absolutely great. When I stopped, the audience gave me a standing ovation and the jury was smiling from ear to ear. In the end, I won the contest!”
Crying
“Johny was literally crying. He was the runner-up. Unfortunately though, due to my young age and Dutch law, they weren’t allowed to air me on tv. For this, they invited Johny. So, something positive came out of it for him as well.”
“I started drumming at a young age. From the drums I switched to the turntables. I practiced my balls of on those things. When I started, I used to work with a lot of rappers, but as time passed I started looking for possibilities to make music without needing someone else. This defined my path towards house music. A path that I’m still on till this very day.”
This interview with Orlando Voorn is originally published on DJMag.nl in May 2015.
Who is Orlando Voorn?
Orlando Voorn is one of the first Dutch musicians to establish a vital connection between Detroit and Amsterdam in the early 90s. He has long been recognized as one of the Netherland’s most original and ingenious producers in the world of electronic dance music. Orlando began DJing at the early age of 12 years old and later went on to win his first scratch competition at Amsterdam Club Flora Palace. Amazingly Orlando did this by borrowing records from his competitor.
After winning that competition Orlando Voorn continued to practice every day and was discovered by a Dutch Radio host named Robin Albers a.k.a. Jaydee, who was in charge of the Dutch DMC DJ Championship 1986. Surprisingly Orlando placed 1st in the Dutch competitions 1986 & 1987 for Holland which placed him in the world championships of DMC twice in the United Kingdom where he came in 3rd place 86 and 5th place 87 spinning with his own characteristic blend of hip hop, and electro music.
Towards the end of the eighties Orlando acquired his first sequencer and turned his hand to producing his productions. Orlando Voorn has a great vision for combining sounds, rhythms and key structures. Later on Orlando Voorn produced a couple of tracks based on sampling music. He met with Steve Clisby from a successful band called the American Gypsies in the early 80’s. Clisby was intrigued by the way Orlando Voorn put together a production based upon samples. When an agreement was established Orlando Voorn worked together with Clisby who would teach Orlando chord structures. This was a major step for Orlando Voorn as it changed his view on productions tremendously. As he no longer needed to use only samples but he could in fact create a track/composition from playing it all with keys, bass lines, piano’s, etc.
Later Orlando Voorn and Juan Atkins started to collaborate & produce tracks together at Voorn’s home studio where he remixed ‘Industrial Metal‘ while Juan tweaked the sounds to make them come out of the speakers a little more pulsating. Atkins & Voorn worked extraordinarily well together and Juan taught Orlando how to merge the sounds as well as how to change the standards of conventional productions. Soon after they would join forces and produce the well know track called ‘Game One‘ which became a classic record on Atkin’s label ‘Metroplex” and later it reprised on Orlando Voorn’s imprint ‘Nightvision” double CD Compilation 1996. In that same time span Orlando Voorn had met Blake Baxter and collaborated for the infamous ESP Records and under the alias The Ghetto Brothers they made 2 EP’s with timeless classics as ‘Ghetto Disco’ and ‘Ghetto Blues‘.
Orlando Voorn also did recordings for a legendary Detroit label ‘KMS” an imprint of Kevin Saunderson using yet another alias, where he created a dance floor destroyer track called ‘Flash‘ which remains in many DJ’s crates at this moment. Orlando Voorn has a well know history of working with Detroit’s originator’s including Derrick May’s imprint ‘Fragile’ under yet another alias ‘Complex” entitled ‘Midi Merge”.
Orlando Voorn used many aliases back when he started to produce records in order to present various styles of music without limitation to producing only techno. Orlando Voorn has never limited himself to one particular style of producing. You could easily say that he is incredibly versatile in switching between many styles that demonstrates him as a well known producer.
More Orlando Voorn?
Interested in observing Orlando Voorn while he’s producing a track? Check out the Dutch documentary below to see this legendary artist in action. The interview with Orlando Voorn starts at 32 minutes and a bit.
