Pim and Proper can do it all. He can make you sweat with his high-energy closing sets and send you off in a spin. He can slow it down and seduce you with spacious grooves and subtle synths. Or he can take you on a rollercoaster of ups and downs that will leave you desperate for more. Underpinning everything the Rotterdam DJ does is seamless mixing. He joins impossible dots in super smooth ways and keeps dancers on their toes, lost in the newness in between.

Switching up genres and juggling beat patterns comes naturally to Pim and Proper. Drawing mostly on electro, he blends and blurs the lines and might call on anything from acid to techno, jungle to breaks for those extra energetic kicks. When going slower, it is darker EBM, shadowy downtempo and edgy new beat that gives his sets a sense of room and texture that makes them standout. And that will also be the case with his own new music, which is soon to debut on vinyl via BAR Records.

Pim and Proper’s musical introduction came playing the drums before he was even in double figures. As a nine-year-old, he played punk, rap, and rock music, learning how to master groove before falling under the electronic spell of masters like Autechre, Aphex Twin and Drexciya. So, in his teenage years, he began DJing in Delft as a part of a vibrant little scene in the west of the Netherlands and has never looked back. “I think my background in playing the drums and that feel for rhythm made it a pretty smooth transition,” he says, and he’s not wrong, because he soon started getting local bookings and has now played clubs like Grey Space In The Middle, POING, Perron, Weelde and Steur Garden, as well, as various illegal raves around Rotterdam.

He is also a firm favourite at Operator Radio, where he works as part of the team and regularly hosts his own shows and goes deeper than ever into all corners of his collection. It was the same story when he recently did a livestream from the iconic Clone record store in Rotterdam. It is a famous institution and a foundational part of the Dutch scene that has turned on so many new generations to the best electronic music in the world. Now, Pim and Proper does that himself as a DJ, but also as part of the Elektrostaat party and soon to be label collective. It is a Rotterdam-based project that firmly entrenches him as the latest wave of talent to emerge from this great city.