Together with his school friend Ralph van Hilst, Marlon Flohr forms the successful deejay and producer duo Bassjackers. When the shows were canceled due to corona, they tapped into a new source of income: Music NFTs. “The first drop was – boom! – sold out immediately and raised around $300.000.”
“We were already friends at high school in Waalwijk. Then we went to university together. I've always been a clubber. I was fascinated by deejays, interested in house and dance, a fan of the music, of the world. For example, in the Now&Wow Club in Rotterdam I saw how 17-year-old deejay Benny Rodrigues controlled thousands of people on the dance floor by turning buttons. I thought that was so cool! At the Escape in Amsterdam I stood on the balcony instead of on the dance floor: this gave me a nice overview of the deejay and how the audience reacted. I dreamed of being at the controls myself, but at the time it was not financially feasible for me to buy equipment. Until I saved up some money through part-time jobs while studying International Business and was able to buy a DJ set. I played for hours and hours – just for fun. I made mix tapes that I showed my friends. To the point where everyone had to check how it was mixed and whether they could hear whether there was a transition or not. Ralph was also involved in music at the same time, but more on the production side. I was a deejay, playing and mixing other people's music; Ralph made music from scratch on his home computer. After a few months of practicing, I wanted to start playing for people instead of just in my bedroom. It was time for the world to hear it!”
“I started harassing club promoters – 'let me play!' – and threw my own parties. My first party was in early 2006 in the basement of the hotel in Tilburg where I was a night porter, one of my part-time jobs. Friends invited, a few other DJs. It was full swing from the first edition. And the great thing was that you couldn't see from the outside that there was a party. When all the clubs closed at four o'clock, the hardcore partygoers came to the hotel to party for a few more hours. That basement became the afterparty spot of Tilburg. I wanted to play music there that no one else was playing. But then I would have to start producing myself. I couldn't, but Ralph could. “Let's make music together,” I told him. Within a month we had a track that we liked. Before we would send it to other deejays, we had to have a name. At the time our sound was a bit inspired by a movement called 'jackin house', it had a lot of bass in it… Bassjackers!”
“We had sent it not only to deejays like Fedde Le Grand and Don Diablo, but also to Jorn Heringa, Head of A&R (Artist and Repertoire) of Spinnin' Records. He wanted to release it on that label. But we convinced Jorn that he would be better off releasing the track under Sneakerz MUZIK, a sub-label of Spinnin' Records. That was a strong brand and at the same time a party concept. If we were associated with that as a new artist, we would immediately have a platform and we would get shows. And that's exactly how it went. Suddenly we were Bassjackers from Sneakerz MUZIK, playing parties in clubs all over the country. It went very quickly. That was 2007, 2008. We became the residents of the Nope is Dope concept and from there the first festivals followed.”
“In 2011 we had a record that was picked up by Tiësto. It was an innovative sound, somewhere between house and trance, using major chords. This put us at the beginning of a new sound, Big Room, the big festival banger. There was Mush Mush really a precursor of. That record meant our international breakthrough. It was played on the main stage by six different deejays at one of the biggest festivals in America, EDC (Electric Daisy Carnival) in Las Vegas. Then it was loose.”
“Our sound became less and less friendly to the Dutch clubs, but it did go somewhere that we thought was really cool. And we also wanted more than just the Netherlands. That sound got us there.”
"Very hard. We thought it shouldn't be the same. In retrospect, we should have chosen that. We should have continued with that momentum and delivered another stunner – same traffic jam with a few minor changes. But we wanted to keep innovating. The next big album had to wait until 2013. That was Crackin, of which Martin Garrix released his own remix. Our socials exploded, we had ten thousand new followers a day. Bizarre numbers. Collaborations emerged with, among others, Afrojack, Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike and R3HAB. 2014 was characterized by a huge uprise of the Big Room sound, but after that its popularity slowly declined, especially in America. But then the party started in Asia. The sound became very big, especially in China. And so the focus naturally shifted more to the East, although we never ignored the US, we wanted to continue to serve our fan base there.”
“It doesn't matter how tired I am, if I... training I always get a huge boost of energy. You feel like you can take on the whole world. That's something I always want to feel! And of course I can relate very well to the audience, because I have been there myself. When someone shows me his or her cell phone with Mush Mush, then I run that. I know what that means. It's still strange to have your picture taken with someone, but if I put myself in the shoes of the fan, how I was, then I understand it very well.”
“On a small scale, not comparable to a Martin Garrix. Whether it's a bit of bad branding or something we missed, we don't often get recognized. People know the name, the music, but not the face. But honestly: I wouldn't want to be super famous either.”
“It can be very debilitating and is not for everyone. I can be alone very well – perhaps because I am an only child. Ralph, for example, would have difficulty with it. He knows that too and he has settled in: I do this, you do that. He's the producer behind the scenes, I'm the frontman. I like to travel, make new friends everywhere. And I don't use drugs, which of course happens in the scene. I'm not saying I was always sober. I've partied and drank and done plenty in the past, but I never needed it: for me the music was always enough. When I go on the dance floor, I am still sucked in by the music.”
“In the Netherlands I follow one steady rhythm: during the week I get up on time and go to work early, only on the weekends I have international performances. Sometimes I have an 8am flight the next day and I don't sleep. Then it's a matter of crossing out. But as soon as I get back to the Netherlands, I immediately force myself to get back into the rhythm. I don't let jet lag get to me. Exercise, eat healthy, try to control sleep rhythm.”
“We are not at the level of deejays who are flown in for a hundred thousand, but I think that if we continue to manage our money wisely, we would no longer have to work. When I see possibilities, I always present them to Ralph. Will you get in there with me? Basically we are married as business partners. When we started we agreed to split everything fifty-fifty. No bullshit. I have seen many partnerships go wrong because of money, and we wanted to prevent that from day one. We also advise each other. For example, before I invested in a house in Bali, Ralph asked: "Have you thought about that carefully?" He also has a view on that and I respect that – he obtained his Masters in Financial Management.”
“There were no shows during Covid. And shows account for roughly 90 percent of our income. We wanted ours agents and manager continued to pay, so we had to look for another source of income. I am always one internet child been. With the rise of the internet, I was on chat boxes, learning HTML, coding... I found it all super interesting and spent a lot of time on it. Until the music took over. When crypto emerged, my interest was immediately aroused. But because I was fully focused on deejaying, I only started doing it in 2016. I saw a lot of potential for the future, especially in the underlying technology. In 2020 I was surprised by the American artist 3LAU who linked his music to visuals and sold it in a small edition. A digital collectibles linked to a non-fungible token registered on the blockchain, so you can see that the collector's item is authentic and you proof of ownership have. I thought that was really cool. And I wasn't the only one: it sold extremely well, reportedly netting him $30.000. I started looking into it and it turned out that there are a lot of NFT collectors, people who collect digital art. I found even more artists who had created Music NFTs on the online auction platform Nifty Gateway. We were sitting at that moment zero income and I saw potential in this: we have great music, can have visuals made around it, and tell a story around it. Moreover, it was a new way to express ourselves. Normally you make music for a crowd, now we also made music for people who collect art. I reached out to Nifty Gateway and together we scheduled a date for the first one drop: March 14, 2021.”
“Les Pay Bass is a play on words that stands for 'Land of bass'. The bass sound is a key element in our music, so you not only hear it but also feel it. We wanted to visualize that. Think of tulip fields that vibrate to the beat. Dance music from the Netherlands, that's what it had to stand for. We have made several editions, we came up with a whole idea for them. On March 14th we did the drop and – boom! – sold out immediately.”
Curious about the rest of the interview? The winter issue of MASTERS was created in collaboration with Jordi van den Bussche. Many will know him as YouTuber Kwebbelkop, but he has been working hard as an entrepreneur for some time, as he explains in the Great Interview. What is new is that his company JVDB Studios offers to do social media marketing and short format content marketing for other companies. “They can also figure it out themselves, but we cracked the code.” Jordi gives a platform to like-minded entrepreneurs such as Jay-Jay Boske, Demy de Zeeuw, Chahid Charrak and Marcella de Bie, and discusses developments surrounding games, crypto and NFT: “Just as bitcoin turned the financial system upside down, will that also happen with gaming.” This extra thick winter issue also focuses on Lengers' first own ship, an interview with Corendon CEO Atilay Uslu, specials about the new BMW 7 Series and Samsung foldables, and - exclusively for MASTERS! – an interview with Max Verstappen.
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