San Proper is a well respected DJ from the Amsterdam underground club scene. Over the last fifteen years, he has been spinning in all the major clubs, bars and lounges, in and around Holland. You'll hear him play at most of the major Summer and Dance festivals (San has a residency at Europe's top Summer festival, Lowlands) as well as the more dodgy and underground locations. He's known and praised for his House & Disco sets, but also for blending a lot of different styles into an eclectic mix, which results in him playing at various spots.
In Amsterdam, San proudly presented "The Black Disco Bust" - a club-night that, throughout the years, has won a cult status with some international DJs being featured (p.e. Daniel Wang, Alton Miller, Kalabrese, Trus'me). The Disco Bust is all about preserving the true sound of old school underground Disco music. Speaking of Disco, today he's also one of the four heads behind "Italo Elite", a club-night which contributes to the Italo-cult of Amsterdam, together with Tom Trago, Lupe & Martin Duvall, while also representing Disco in it's broad form together with Antal for Paradsico3000.
When San was a small Proper he started listening to music at an early age; Blues Soul, Funk & Disco, but he started out as a DJ playing Dub-reggae-music and various electronic music he learned about through Frodo and his Serial Chill-dren since '93. Later on he started playing at the, as he calls it, the Bermuda-triangle of Amsterdam; the Seymour Likely Lounge, Abraxas Cafe & The Supperclub since '97.
In 1998, together with Alan Luna he founded "Choque" -a club night about the deeper and warmer sound of quality House music. He's been organising these programs at top Amsterdam clubs like Mazzo, Bitterzoet, Club 11, Sugar Factory and more., but San Proper started out as a guitar player. He played with several bands in the live circuit where he gained a lot of experience in music. In '95 he founded "The Mindmenders", a Funk/Hip hop band, which eventually won 'De Grote prijs van Nederland' in '99, an annual award-show for upcoming artists. He left the band straight after, to focus more on solo production work and his career as a DJ.
After 2000, San got to play at a lot of special club-nights & parties organized by Rush Hour. With these nights at locations like Zuid-as (Rush Hour Select) & Paradiso (Paradisco2000) Rush Hour really set the tone for quality underground in the city of Amsterdam. Through Rush Hour's events San got to play sets with heroes like Larry Heard, Boo Williams, Octave One & Carl Craig. Since 2007 he's been collaborating with Amsterdam's finest producers like Melon, Tom Trago, O-Boogie, Yuro & Cinnaman, Steven de Peven, the Bootleg Bitches, Meikbar, 'De Schepper' aka Overlast, Young Marco, M>O>S plus others and is releasing on Amsterdam's very own top label Rush Hour where he in January 2007, he presented his "Proper A'dam Family Series" with artists like these. 'Part 4' with O-Boogie got picked up by Laurent Garnier who did an edit of 'Magnificent Speech Funk' for Rush Hour. Later that year, San teamed up with a fresh organization entitled Dekmantel founded by Casper Tielrooij & Thomas Martojo, to celebrate, to preserve & to arouse innovating House music. This crew has been breaking records, in a figure of speech.
Proper remixed Ricardo Villalobos on Perlon with a track entitled 'Electonic Water- It ate my quarter' which was released in May 2008.
He's also been releasing on Soulrock records those days together with Steven de Peven presenting 'Hupsers & Kletsers for Life!', and doing Disco-edits for faceless labels in the spring of 2009. In that same period San did remixes for Zuco 103, Catwash, LeLe, Arjuna Shiks and Tom Trago.
In august his first 12" on Perlon was released which includes the tracks 'December 10th' & 'Keep it raw'. This 12" reached the number 1 position in the Groove-charts for November & December 2009. In this period San put together a solo-live-show playing & integrating several live instruments with his digital live-set-up which he presented during the Amsterdam Dance Event with impressive critics in the local papers and massive inspiration for a new show. The internet-label Redevice followed with San Proper's 'Heroes & Horse EP', which is available through a free download at www.redevice.com and includes another collab with Steven de Peven and a remix by Jason and the Argonauts.
At the end of February 2010 San did his first new live-show with Tom Trago as The Dirt Machine at the 'Source On Ice'-festival. Together with Tom he's been working on the album since 2008 and they have been playing a lot of memorable shows 'live' in this formation; throughout Holland, for instance, as a support-act for with 'De Jeugd Van Tegenwoordig' playing at all the major spots. This project 'The Dirt Machine' will present an EP soon to announce the upcoming album. A repertoire featuring the straight-up songs you'd expect from a Wave-Disco-Rock-band with guitars, bass, synths & drums; all instruments & vocals done by Proper & Trago.
In March 2009 Dekmantel records released San Proper's 'Sex Drive Rhythm EP' which got praised by various producers of great distinction through Delsin's promo-mailout and is still being treasured by many DJs and producers for the tracks 'Love baby Love' and 'The Strip'. It inspired San to work on an album for this label which today has been representing artists like Juju & Jordash, Rahaan, Vakula, Robert Hood, Terence Parker and others.
Rush Hour released the latest single by Awanto 3 & San Proper - "Conquer End Naw House", which only had the store it's coordinates on the label of the record and was sold only at the store with an ultra-limited circulation which made the track a rarity though extremely wanted and requested. The following year it got selected for a compilation-mix Craig Richards did for Fabric, the club in London where Proper recently did an exclusive live-show, opening for Richards & Ricardo Villalobos to celebrate the release of this CD.
In 2010 San did two remixes for Jon McMillion on Nu Earth Kitchen. He secluded himself to work on lots of new material, but also did a lot of touring, playing live at Montreal's renowned festival Mutek for instance, and also doing dj-sets at other legendary spots in Shanghai, San Diego, Detroit, London, Berlin, Copenhagen, Sofia and more cities throughout Europe.
February 2011 is when Proper did two live-shows in Japan; Tokyo and Osaka on the Chaos-nights Fumiya Tanaka organized at Unit and at Sensui, giving his live-act the right character which it needed and inspiring him to do the benefit-tracks "Hit Me With Some Shots", this came out in June, a track for Soul-Aid, which you could download while making donations & "Borderita" a track for a compilation on Descanso. In that same period, just before summer Tom Trago released his album 'Iris' on Rush Hour; San sings the last track of the album entitled "Corrupt".
In April, after his second release on Perlon entitled 'A Cat Called Mice', which included the loved and praised song 'The Lost Track of Time', Proper got more requests for remixes like Mossa, Dave Aju, Hold Youth, the Clover & Daz Hands while he started working on his second release on Soulrock entitled "Groundfloor Afterlife" and that summer Proper played at his most wanted spot; Robert Johnson in Offenbach, Germany, plus most of Holland's dance-festivals while touring from Paris to Berlin, Georgia, London, Copenhagen & Italy plus visiting New York City & Philadelphia in the U.S. to gain more inspiration for his upcoming album, early 2012, on Rush Hour, the label which stood by him for many years and released his classic "Caught On You" on the compilation "Amsterdam Allstars"in November 2011.
Proper's currently working on various projects like 'The Dirt Machine', 'Afro Bode' and 'Stepmother' with different genres, next to proceeding to represent true House music as 'San Proper'.
[Bio by Rocky Marsiano]
