BTTB-Biographie:

Like A Tim

X-Sessions von Like A Tim:

BTTB X-028 - Do, 26.11.98 (evosonic FM)

Like A Tim a.k.a. Tim van Leijden was born in 1973 in Rotterdam, Holland, and has lived there ever since.

He became interested in music at about ten years old and was caught by electronic pop that appeared around that time (Ni Ni Ni Ni Nighteen, Rock It etc.). Later on, in the eighties, HipHop had a big impact on him. He bought his first Casio sampler in 1987 and after a few years of playing around with the Casio and turntable, he started buying more professional equipment. His first record was released in 1991 on a label called See Saw. He is still waiting for a royalty statement.

This record attracted the attention of Djax Records owner Saskia Sledgers who asked Tim if he wanted to release his next record on her label. The label was well respected and putting out good records, so Tim moved over to Djax Up Beats in 1992.

He stayed with Djax until 1997 when he felt the label and his musical direction were growing apart. Tim had met Alec Empire late in 1996 when Alec told him his plan for the then embryonic Geist label. Once Geist was up running Alec contacted Tim again and they agreed to release the next Like A Tim record on Geist.

The ZZ Top cover Legs was originally intended to be an instrumental, but Tim thought it would sound better with vocals so he invited Gina D'Orio from Digital Hardcore's Ec8or to contribute.

The name Like A Tim comes from the nickname other kids called him at school. They thought he looked like a dead person do they called him 'Lijke Tim' which means 'corpse Tim' in Dutch (German: Leiche Tim) and is pronounced 'Like A Tim' in English.

From childhood he liked to draw and he still does the artwork for his own records. The images for the new album are hand drawn and not computer generated. The style is inspired by a cartoonist from the 60/70s called Vaughe Bodé. Another visual inspiration appeared on the sleeve of a 12" remix Tim did for Rephlex last year, on which a creature floats inside a museum of Mondrian paintings.

For all those journalists who suffer from the urge to stick a label on music, we've alredy got one for you. 'Like A Tim Music'.

Weitere Informationen bei Marcus Maack (web@vinylizer.net)