An interview with Degos & Re-Done

By Rik Houwers 26 September 2016

Thijs de Heer, Peter Damen and Krijn Broekhuijsen (yes, this duo consists of three people) are better known as Degos & Re-Done. They started their career at Mythica Records, moved to Theracords several years later and now they make a new step and will join Nightbreed Records.

You joined Theracords in 2011. How important was the label for you guys?
Very important. We started our career at Mythica Records, but that label stopped and we were without a label for a year and a half. In the search of a new label we sent two tracks to Pieter (Dj Thera). These were ‘Warrior’ and ‘Take a Trip’. Pieter liked ‘Take a Trip’ a lot and that’s how it all started at Theracords.

Why have you decided to leave Theracords after all?
We’ve been with Theracords for six years now and after some time you want to try something new. We just started working on a collab with Bass Chaserz and while making the track we came in contact with Nightbreed Records. They were interested and so were we. This was at the start of 2016. We decided to talk with Pieter and Ingrid (the owners of Theracords/Limitless agency) about the interest of Nightbreed Records and the fact that we would like to join them. Our contract with Theracords wouldn’t expire till January 2017, but Pieter and Ingrid didn’t want us to be unhappy at Theracords, so we made an agreement that after the Theracords hosting at Q-BASE our contract would end. We can now take the next step in our career at Nightbreed Records.

D&R Why did you choose Nightbreed Records?
Everything went really fast after the collab with Bass Chaserz. We had a lot of contact with the guys from Nightbreed, especially Endymion and High Voltage. The Nightbreed group is really close you know. During the conversations with Nightbreed we got the feeling that it would be great to be part of Nightbreed and we got a lot of new energy. Nightbreed has a good vision and by that vision we were stimulated to make a few new big steps in our career. They have given us the chance to bring our experience to a new environment and made progression.

Together with Theracords, we decided to leave after Q-BASE. It gave us the opportunity to make plans with Nightbreed about the future. The last couple of month we worked very hard and we gained more experience on a musical level. This allows us to make a fresh start.

We are very thankful for the chances Pieter and Ingrid (owners Theracords/Limitless Agency) gave us. We will stay friends!

Now your are part of Nightbreed, does it mean you will visit their studio more often or will you stay in your own studio?
Krijn: Even better. We are building a new studio near Arnhem. There will be 2 studios, a bar and a foyer. It’s possible to go to The Hague every time, but now they can also come to us. We can welcome them as they would welcome us.

Thijs: Yeah, with a lot of beer!

Krijn: The Hague will stay headquarters of Endymion and Arnhem will be the headquarters of Degos & Re-Done. The new studio will be awesome!

Why did you leave Limitless and signed to Make You Dance? Is it because you left Theracords?
For us it was very important to change everything, not only the label. It had to be a fresh start and we aren’t guys that do half work. We asked Nightbreed if they had any options for us and they introduced us to Make You Dance. They invited us for an interview and it was very positive. We never heard negative stories about Make You Dance and the first thing they said was: “On long terms..”. That’s what we wanted to hear and had no doubts about joining Make You Dance. Plans for the future, long term, professionalism, we were sold. They call immediately if there’s something wrong and that’s great. Plus, Make You Dance has a great work spirit.

You made a collab with Bass Chaserz called ‘Night Falls’. How did you meet each other and work together?
Thijs: It all started with sending some selfies with beer on Snapchat to Jos (member of Bass Chaserz). I got one back and that’s how it started. Jos and I are alike, because we’re both pretty crazy. Peter and I met them for the first time at Defqon.1 last year and we had a click. After that we met them again at HDE and there we made an agreement to work together.

Krijn: HDE was the first time that I met Bass Chaserz and it was pretty obvious that we, as Degos & Re-Done, were going to make a track with Bass Chaserz. That track became ‘Night Falls’.

Is the chance of a collab with, for instance E-Force or Digital Punk, bigger now you are with the same agency?
We already have a lot of contacts within the hardstyle scene because you see each other every weekend. For example we’ve known Edward (E-Force) for 8 years now, because he was also a part of Mythica back in the days and every time we see him he starts about it. We made an agreement about a collab back then, but we are busy and he is extremely busy so maybe in the future we do something together. Now that we’re part of Make You Dance it’s easier to get involved with bigger names and maybe work together.

D&R Make You Dance says this on their website: ‘We only represent artists who are highly respected names.’ You can interpret this in two ways. A little arrogant, but on the other side as a big compliment. How do you guys see this?
If you speak of ‘highly respected names’ then we have to be honest and say that we are just starting to make a name for ourselves. We have a long way to go and we stay down-to-earth. Degos & Re-Done is not a name like E-Force or Digital Punk, but we have the ambition to be a big name.

Thijs: I mean, I would rather die than do half work for Degos & Re-Done. We have to give 200% to be as big or even bigger as an E-Force or Digital Punk.

Can the track ‘Die Slowly’ help with that?
How we made the track is a great story. We had just signed with Nightbreed Records and we were super busy with DNR Live. After the signing we joined the Nightbreed WhatsApp group. Every single day we got the question for new tracks, but we were so busy that we couldn’t send anything because it was made for a live set. At one pojnt we had just finished ‘Die Slowly’, just before Emporium, so we sent them the track and they loved it!

The track literally exploded. It was played three times at QAPITAL by Endymion & Bass Chaserz, Crypsis and Warface. The track was also played at Defqon.1, Q-BASE, Rebirth and Dominator and that support was fantastic for us! Just after that we got requests to get ‘Die Slowly’ on Unleashed and on cd’s, but we weren’t part of Nightbreed yet so we couldn’t fulfil those requests. It’s now on the Q-BASE cd.

‘Die Slowly’ will now be the standard for all our tracks, just like ‘Feedback’ and ‘Sing for the Moment’. We have ten tracks ready and we are working with a funnel. We put tracks in the funnel and you have the chance only one will come out and this time it was ‘Die Slowly’. Currently we are working on a remix for High Voltage his album and that track will be a great one as well, but we can’t say anything about it right now of course.

Degos & Re-Done consists out of three guys, yet many don’t know this. How did you meet?
Thijs: A long time ago I got the track ‘Synthgeweld’ from a class mate and at that time is was busy making sets. In one of those sets I used ‘Synthgeweld’ and Krijn heard about it. That’s how i came in contact with Krijn.
In the beginning Krijn and Peter were Degos & Re-Done, but in 2008 we had a performance in Katwijk. It was a party organized by E-Force. Krijn asked me if I wanted to be behind the decks instead of him. So I did. At first it was a great party, but after 20 minutes we had to quit. The cops came by because they got some complaints from the neighborhood. Turned out that the noise was way to hard. That was our first Degos & Re-Done booking haha! After that I was part of Degos & Re-Done and I was very happy with it because it was a dream come true

Krijn: I had never touched a dj deck and hadn’t any ambition to be on stage. Besides that, Thijs has a more commercial head haha!

D&R You are each others opposites, is that the reason it works so well?
Peter: I think we are not that big of opposites.

Krijn: Yes, you are. You aren’t as outspoken as Thijs

Peter: Of course we have different opinions about things, but if you can take that to one track it will be unique and something that works.

Krijn: It’s not always pleasant. There are times that I’m working on a track and I think its really cool. Then I look at Peter and Thijs and I think: Shit it isn’t that good haha!

Thijs: I’m surprised that we never had a big fight. Sometimes I say everything that comes to mind and then I have to be careful. When I say these things, the door has to be open so that I can go to my car right away and drive home, haha.

Peter: On the other hand we have a nice party to celebrate a new track and it’s picked up by the community.

When you guys are not in the studio, do you still hang out?
Krijn: We’re in the studio every day, the only time we don’t see each other is when we are going to sleep.

Thijs: You know, Peter has his own friends, Krijn has his own friends and I have my own friends. I like to see them as well. I met Peter via a classmate. That was during a Christmas fair. Peter took care of the music and I was the host. So Peter had brought a trance cd from his brother and by accident I sold the cd for like 5 euros haha! That’s how I met Peter.

Peter: After that we played some music together and back then you had to put your music online. So we had quite some sets on Music in Control.

We didn’t heard that much about your new live-act DNR LIVE. Though you performed at Emporium and Dreamfields. What’s the plan with DNR LIVE and what do you hope to add in the world of live-acts?
DNR LIVE has to stay exclusive and we hope to play at big festivals as DNR LIVE. The next performance will be over six months and will be filled with al lot of new tracks, edits and much more. A live-act is about expressing your creativity and that’s what we want. If you take a live-edit for example, you can’t release a live edit because they are made to measure for a live-act. We play our live sets how we make them; much teasing and mash-ups. It’s 30 minutes of Degos & Re-Done tracks and we put on a coat.

D&R You had an interview with Alive at Night in February. The topic was if you guys would make an album, but you wanted to wait till the right time has come. I think that that moment hasn’t come yet, because a lot of dj’s have decided to make an album and will release it this fall. How do you see this?
If we are going to make an album, then it has to be very good. Every track has to get the “Wow, this is a great track and this one as well and so is this one!”. It’s not that it doesn’t happen now, but it seems some dj’s have to make an album and unfortunately you can hear that. Most of the time an album has three great tracks and the rest of them is fun but we won’t play them in our sets. It has to be about pure quality and not streaming or whatever, but tangible and original. It doesn’t matter if there are 5 or 10 albums made you will automatically be compared with others. You have to be distinctive and for us its nice to have a competitive aspect.

You have your own party called ‘Achterhoeks Beuken’ and organised it three times now. Will there be a new edition?
We hope so, but at the moment we don’t have any time for it. We’ve been very busy with the change to Nightbreed and Make You Dance. There will probably be a new edition but when or what is unclear at this moment. We are dj’s/producers not a party organisation.
The older editions have been epic, especially the first edition. During the first edition we had our own tap on stage. Well, the owners of the place will not forget this easily. Other dj’s were surprised as well, they had seen a lot but your own tap on stage was something they had never seen. At one moment Thijs and Niels (member of Frequencerz) were drinking straight out of the tap and at the end of the party we had emptied a 50 liter keg haha!

We go back in time for the last question. In 2013 it was the first time Q-base for you guys. At the end of the set the music made place for a hard beep, what happened?
This is a funny story. We had a nice spin and had still 2 or 3 tracks to play. Gunz for Hire was next in line and a stagemanager approached us and told us that we had to stop in time. So he walks away and at that time the mixer pops. We didn’t know what was going on, was it a call of the front of house or that the equipment was broken. Thijs looks down and sees that something is wrong. He puts the fade up and down but it doesn’t od anything. So, what should we do? Laugh a bit and some bullshitting with the audience. Thijs throws his hands in the air and yells: “Heuj!”. The whole hangar cheered with us, that was beautiful! After a couple of minutes the stagemanager comes back and we asked him if this was ordered from the organisation but it wasn’t. More people are coming to us, trying to help. There was the stagemanager and Ruffian came to do some bullshitting haha! At last Peter had the brilliant idea to put the mixer off and on. Remember that the music continued only no one could hear it. Finally we had fixed the mixer and it was the perfect moment. ‘Madley’ came in and the hangar exploded like hell! It was unbelievable! There was no better end or there had to be 10 naked chicks on stage haha! Everyone remembered it. A while ago Thijs run into a trainee who was there and even he referred to Q-BASE 2013.

‘Die Slowly’ has been released so get your copy of this banger! Thijs, Krijn and Peter thank you very much for your open-heartedness and good luck with the new challenge at Nightbreed Records!