Some stories begin with a guitar. Or with a first concert.
Bas’s began with bags of gravel.
At eight years old, he earned his first guilders sorting cucumbers and filling gravel bags. Seven guilders fifty for half a day’s work. Not because he wanted something a child would normally buy, but because he wanted to hear something.
After months of saving, he finally held it in his hands: a radio cassette player. A ghetto blaster with separate speakers.
At night he lay on his bedroom floor, flat on his back. The speakers to the left and right of his head. Ready to listen, to wait, for that one song.
Fingers poised over the record button, timing the perfect moment between the DJ’s voice and the intro. Recording songs, rewinding them, listening again.
“The magic of control over sound.”
Bas literally wore his tapes thin and made his first mixtapes, without knowing he was already doing something that would keep returning throughout his life.
The first single he ever bought was This Is Not America by David Bowie. Paid for with his own pocket money, earned one dime per bag of gravel. He heard the song on the radio and knew exactly what he was saving for.
At home there was a turntable, mostly playing André van Duin and Alle Dertien Goed. Not exactly a universe Bas recognized himself in. So when curiosity got the better of him and he wanted to know how a record actually worked, he grabbed a sewing needle. It went well for a moment—and then it didn’t. But it marked the beginning of a lifelong fascination with music and how it sounds.
Bas grew up as the youngest of three sons on a dairy farm. Hard work, few words, and Sundays that felt grey. Music brought color. After daily chores, he would head out across the fields to clear his head.
At fifteen, he bought his first bass guitar. Not to start a career, but to breathe.
From there, things moved fast. The Cure became his universe. Disintegration and 17 Seconds gave words to feelings he couldn’t express. Dark atmospheres, long tracks, rain, storms, emotion. Everything that was missing between the cows and the farmyard.
Megadeth, Gorefest, and other metal bands followed. Power, energy, and emotion fused into one wall of sound.
That same line still runs through his life today. These days, Bas listens to Interpol, Zola Blood, and anything that balances melancholy with melody. And he makes his own music. Because what once began with gravel bags, mixtapes, and Bowie is still in his head—and still needs to come out.
A rough exterior with a soft core. And music as a constant, cutting straight through everything.
