Junkie XLIt's about time this node had a decent write-up about

Junkie XL.Junkie XL's music style is "dance music with a Rock feel. I found Saturday Teenage Kick to be much more hard, then their second album, what was probably designed to appeal to the mainstream audience.

Dre headphones, Big Sounds of the Drags is described by the band as "a deep cerebral fantasia of '70s Guitar Rock, physical breakbeats, classic orchestration, and of course, Tom's dense, complex studio production.

Beats by dre hd," One of the best known tracks for the album is Zerotonine, which I've heard played many places, though I don't think those people really know who Junkie XL is.

Beats by dre solo red,When asked about his life and upbringing, Holkenborg responded with a little story about himself:I started making music when I was about 10 years old. Back then I got a drumset from my parents and started playing drums.

Studio headphones, Later I took some piano lessons as well. At High-school friends of my got me really interested in electronics. So I started building a guitar-amp without having a guitar! Not much later I sold my drumset to buy a electric guitar. At my 16th birthday I moved to Leeuwarden, a town in the north of Holland. There I started working in a musicshop where instruments were being sold. The shop was called Music-Store. This was the moment I got in touch with electronic instruments. From that moment on I realized that for me, the ideal way of making music would be the integration of acoustic en electronic instruments together! At that time a Dutch band Weekend at Waikiki asked me to join forces. This band also combined the two different instruments together. The band recorded as one of the first a whole album with a 'Fairlight' computer. Back then, 1987 that was pretty happening! In 1992 I left the band for personal reasons and started NERVE. This band combined old electronic dance music like front 242, DAF, with heavy guitars. 


We released two albums 'Cancer of choice' 1992 and 'Blood and Gold '1994 . My Partner in crime in NERVE was Phil Mills, a multi instrumentalist and very good guitarist. When Nerve spit up I started JUNKIE XL and Phil started Entropy.1995 was the year when I first made Junkie Demo's. Later to try these tracks live I did some gigs under the name, MULU, Lords of MULU and A Forrest Called MULU. It's funny that some of those tracks back then lead there own life. With a 12 inch 'Lords of MULU' I won the 'Great price of Holland' which is a band contest. Some tracks were released under the name 'A Forrest Called MULU' - the search for the unexplored. This album got an EDISON, which is something like a dutch Grammy. the ROXY, the famous dance-club in Amsterdam which unfortunately burnt down. A big credit for the MULU-projects need to go to Andre Ettema and Chris Hinze. Chris is also a very good friend of me and released the forest called MULU album on his label: 'Keytone'. Andre is nowadays the lighting engineer of JUNKIE XL. 


The new MULU album will released somewhere in June. It will contain mellow club/progressive dancestuff.I started Junkie XL in 1996. It was meant to be a solo project, so I started making instrumental tracks. Some of those tracks where put on the first album like Fight, Dealing with the roster and No remorse. What was funny is that a lot of the tracks Rude Boy rapped on were meant to be instrumental, EG Billyclub, Metrolike. One of the problems was that those tracks contained back then samples who couldn't be cleared. Imagine that for some samples you have to pay over 10.000 US Dollars. A quick calculation makes out what happens if you use let's say 39 samples. OEF!After I had finished about 25 tracks I got into trouble with my health, due to way too hard working! I had to take a break of 5 months. The good thing about it was that I suddenly realized what the best way would be to put everything together. That was the moment I approached Rude Boy. Basically for one or two tracks. He was so enthusiastic, he wanted to do more tracks . And he already had the titles: Underachievers, Billyclub, Metrolike, Melange, XP Limits and of coarse Saturday Teenage Kick! We thought that title was strong enough to make it the album title, so we did!(As you can see, his english isn't that great. I spell-checked the story for your reading pleasure)Junkie XL's fame extends farther than those two albums though. 


Here's a list of tracks that Junkie XL has produced, engineered or remixed:- Dandruff - 4.15E- Ernst Langhout- Eye of the cyclone- Weekend at Waikiki - 1993 albumI think it's about time to update Junkie XL. It's been a while.In June of 2002, the first-ever authorized remix of Elvis Presley was released, as remixed by Junkie XL (now just Tom Holkenborg). The single, "A Little Less Conversation" credited as "Elvis vs JXL", reached #1 in 25 countries and held there for 11 weeks in Norway and Denmark. It was Junkie XL's biggest hit so far (at least in the US), though generally it is credited more to Elvis and not JXL.(Note: Everyone I know who knows that song has not actually heard of Junkie XL.)(Note: Go figure.)One year later, the now-solo Junkie XL released his third album, "Radio JXL - A Broadcast from the Computer Hell Cabin". As the title might suggest, the album is based on the concept of a pirate radio station. Many many vocalists are featured on the album, including Saffron from the band Republica, Solomon Burke, and Gary Numan.The sound of Junkie XL has changed from the days of the first two albums. The music used to be electronica/dance with big beat/rock mixed in, but now it has swayed much more toward the electronica/dance side of things since the 'band' disbanded and Tom Holkenborg runs the Junkie XL show himself. (Tom is also touring the world currently to promote Radio JXL.)


The first disc of the double-album is titled 3PM, and it follows the sound of a radio station playing on an afternoon. The seperate tracks are all between 3-5 minutes, and follow a pop-ish feel. There are included an intro and an outro, with a 'configuring audio systems' in there too, and Tom gives out the Station ID on most every song.The second disc has a very different feel. Titled 3AM, this one follows the idea of a DJ in a club mixing tracks for the people in the club. Nearly all of the tracks beatmatch and mix together, and it is generally consistant from start to finish.The (gasp!) third disc of album (does not come with the first two, nor does the fourth), titled 7AM - Ambient, is basically a chill-out journey.