Stephen J. Kroos

When you look at today’s dance culture it sometimes seems nothing else existed.

Electronic “Dance” music. Yet everything finds its beginning in the, so called, conventional music era. The days before the “Summer-of-love”.

Depeche Mode, Jean Michel Jarre, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Yello, Kraftwerk, Art of Noise and many others. Without these names our present dance music in all its diversities would never have sounded the way it does now and their music fills many dancefloors every weekend. Spending night after night on the dancefloor, hours of waiting in the queues. It’s all worth it! To a DJ this is of unestimable worth to give his work more depth. Until the age of 17 Stephen had the time to work on this basis because at that age he first came in contact with Acid House. The year was 1988 and the Summer-of-love was on it’s way. That year was a year of many new developments in a high pace for Stephen. It happened in the Roxy, you could find him there every weekend. His best friend DJ Madskilzz was the first to teach him about the art of DJ-ing. And of course vinyl: he bought his first ones. A DJ was born!

That all his practising wasn’t for nothing showed of in 1992. Joost van Bellen gave him the opportunity in the nursery of House, Amsterdam’s Roxy. It went from good to better and within a year DJ Stephen was resident DJ on his secure night in the “Rox”.

Nobody expected it to stop there and it didn’t. The offer he got from IT (Amsterdam) to start his own evening was a big step forward in Stephen’s career. The year was 1994 and House started to more and more become an important part of the Dutch party scene. This gave Stephen more exposure, in our small country but also abroad.

Foreign agencies have booked Stephen a.o. in Spain: The “O” in Marbella and the “Ku” in Madrid. “Pacha” in Israel and Ministry Of Sound in the UK. During his time at the “iT” he also took care of mixing parts 10, 11 and 12 of the IT mix compilation CD’s. Stephen waited until 1997 before he started producing his own tracks. By now he felt he was ready to do so. This resulted in a collaboration with J. van Maanen with whom he produced his first ever 12" record. “The Feeling” was a hommage to his night at the iT. The record did well and ended up on some nice compilations as well. We can expect some new releases under the names of Raw Traderz and The Sole Survivor soon and these releases will suprise anyone of us because of the unexpected type of dancemusic.

Stephen has also performed at big dance events such as: Fusion, 4 Elements and Impulz.

And he’s not done with us yet, his new single can be expected this autumn.

Because Stephen knows as no other:

• * * HOUSE IS A FEELING * * *