Dj Zen, Ronald Engels, was born on the 9 th of May in 1967 & raised in Amsterdam. As a youngster he grew up with all kinds of music played in his homebase by father and mother. From classic till rock, jazz till reggae. Learning listening to music and feel the joy it gives. His attention to music went futher than commercial top 40 music he paid attention to all kinds of new musical developments in his highschool period. Like punk, New wave and later mid 80’s hip hop, electro & techno hop the same period he started mixing at home.
At the end of the 80’s he became very attracted to a new style called “ACID” house. Visiting warehouse parties dancing his pants of & buying vinyls. He started mixing seriously to create a story of sounds. Because of his special underground taste of music soon he was asked to play on parties. That's when he had to think of a dj name… Doing graffitty in the 80's under the name of "Zenox" he decided to name himself finally dj "Zen". Soon he became one of the Dutch pioneers of psytrance in Holland.... He was one of the first to play psychedelic orientated house and techno music and organising psy parties in Holland. Excellent mixing skills and high quality of sound became his trademark, playing the right tunes at the right moment, but still keep on experimenting! Inspiring a lot of future dj's and producers.
It was in 1993 he started playing more progressive sounds and one of the first Goa trance tunes. Soon he formed his own crew of people together with dj Danyel, Mitch and Lucas. The psychedelic scene in Amsterdam was born!
in 1994 he started organising the legendary club nights at the Mazzo club called: “Ordeals in Sound” In 1996 he moved the club nights to the Trance Buddha and changed the name in “Doors of Perception”. Besides the club nights he organised Full Moon parties together with his brothers in trance dj Danyel and the legendary Acidophilus crew. He was involved in the labels “Adodisc” & 3rd Mind Records” In this period he brought many international dj’s and live acts to Amsterdam and made many new connections and friends.
 In 2000 the Trance Buddha unfortunately had to close his doors. In this period Zen took a step backward in djing and focused more on developing other creativities such as graphic design. But his dedication and fascination for trance music stayed so at leats once a month he entered a dj booth to perform one of his famous smooth dj sets, full of surprising sounds !
In 2003 he set up a website (Psykick Productions), and produced some music with dj Liftshift. These tracks you can listen to at the "myspace" hompage of dj Zen"!
In the meantime over the years many new musical developments within psytrance music appeared. Resulting in 2 kinds of styles "full on" and "progressive. Since most organisers and dj's in Amsterdam limited themselves on the full on side of psytrance music Zen formed together with dj Liftshift and dj Riches Aknatronix. Bringing weekly a interesting line up with national and international dj’s and live acts to create a nice musical flow during the party.
His style nowadays can be described as progressive groovy trance music with a magical touch!!
Parties Zen performed. |
