Spekki Webu and his wormhole of acoustic energy: ‘Trance is just a word to me these days’

Not many people come across this straightforward, focused, and sincere as Spekki Webu, whose real name is Chris. For starters: he doesn’t mind if you don’t like his records or don’t share his philosophy on rave culture. He doesn’t compromise in his sets; he only plays what he likes himself and that’s mostly experimental, fast, and unknown. But still, the feeling of intergalactic collectiveness is the most important to him, whatever kind of music may take us there.

Exactly twenty years of seeing the sun come up while dancing has led him to the point where he can share this personal take on raving and underground music with others than his friends at their houses. And that they now come to see him work his magic in large numbers, well, that’s a nice bonus.

It wasn’t even a choice for him, DJing. Having been going to the dancefloor since he was fifteen, it was only natural to swap his spot in front of the decks for the one behind around eight years ago. ‘I’ve always looked at DJing in a certain artistic way, even when I wasn’t one myself. So now that I am on the other side of the booth and I do see myself as an artist, I have found a way to express that vision.’

Counterculture

The lessons Chris takes from his two decades of being part of ‘the scene’ are now part of his DNA. ‘I feel like that whole period before has been my training.’ Stemming from Delft, a town between larger cities Rotterdam and The Hague, he first got into gabber music when the aftermath of its origination in the 90s marked the landscape of clubbing in both cities still very much. ‘What the hip-hop scene in the 80s represented in New York, is what the gabber scene in the 90s represented in The Netherlands.’

Dutch newspaper Trouw reports that there were somewhat shy of 150.000 gabbers at the end of the previous century, making it the most popular subculture among young people in The Netherlands in the 90s. ‘It was much of its own culture, and I was part of it.’ Even though he was a bit too young to have experienced iconic raves at the legendary Rotterdam club Parkzicht, he had a large group of friends that were very much into this subculture and going to these raves, legal or not.

It’s in this scene where he got the notion that stuck with him in his DJ career ever since: thinking in boundaries should be illegal. And that’s what he tries to show with his label Mirror Zone and his sets. Still, his sets get labeled as trance a lot, or go by jungle, Goa, or even techno on a good day. But that’s not quite it.

‘Trance is nothing more than a word to me these days. You can get trance from a lot of things other than just a sound.’

Time to set the record straight

Besides his mysterious style, he feels like people often miss the link between him crossing over from hardcore to psychedelic music. And he gets that. ‘There are many facets of gabber that people do not know about beside what they know of mainstream hardcore, like that feeling of a psychedelic takeover of the mind or that total hypnosis that can occur through music.’ He has been on hardcore dance floors where maybe not so much was happening in terms of music, but those repetitive sounds made him go into a sound-induced trance either way.

‘The most common misconception that people have of gabber music or hardcore is that it’s just fist pumping to 180 BMPs the whole night’, the DJ denies the assumption with a fiery sentiment. ‘It never went away either. People say gabber has died, but that's not true at all. It may have been less in the picture as less commercial, but it has always been going on. The old-school crew of Gabber has drawn inspiration from the hip-hop scene in The Netherlands too, a lot of the DJs used to be play hip-hop and hip-house before dipping into the harder styles’, he explains. ‘That’s why I keep expanding my horizon as well, because that’s what they’ve thought me. That’s my legacy.’

He still goes to raves if he’s not digging records or DJing himself. ‘The vibe at these events was and is: if you want something, come and get it.’ Spekki Webu’s sound benefits from that, as he’s been collecting an immense catalogue of records over the last twenty years you’re never going to find or hear anywhere else. ‘What you hear from me in sets is always a recap of the past few years.’ So that’s what he’s trying to tell us; it’s all about what you take with you and interweave. It’s still unrecognizably clear that he comes from the world of hardcore and tekno, but his large physical and digital collection of high-energy and slow-motioned electronic music travels all through the registers of punchy breakbeats, tribal tracks, and transcendental tones. But make it minimal.

Now that Chris is in a place where people look up to him for how much music he knows, the gigs he plays, and the records he distributes of artists on the verge of break-through – who sometimes become close friends – he is ready to share his thoughts on rave culture and DJing with others. Starting at his ADE Lab: ‘Curating Culture with Spekki Webu’. And Chris wouldn’t be Spekki Webu and vice versa if he doesn’t mind whether you come see him or not. That’s up to you.

What is he going to tell those who do join him?

Build your own identity, don’t lose your vision out of sight, and stand up for it, like he does. Sure, think about where you come from, but still, push yourself forwards. ‘It’s all there, you just have to search in a lot of different places. It’s not that different for me than for others, you go to a record store or start digging online. I just know where to look.’ He recognizes the insecurity DJs can have when they start, but encourages everyone to explore genres where you feel like it is never going to work and try it anyway. ‘Challenge yourself to see where that wouldn't necessarily make sense. That can result in something beautiful.’

More Spekki Webu on rave culture and finding your own creativity?

Join his journey through everything non-everyday at ADE Lab: