Peter Leijdsman

Peter Leijdsman born on the 2nd June 1964 in the city of Groningen, the Netherlands. First musical experience was when he was about 14 years when started playing piano. But as a young man, classical music was not a thing, so after a little bit more than two years he quit playing the piano. Then the drums came into his life. Again he took lessons for about two years, which were very boring. The only fun he had was when he played in school bands jam sessions with a friend who played guitar. But also drumming didn't last long and after a year he sold his Pearl Export drum kit and quit playing drums. Then there was an imported 'musical' moment in his life. He was about 17 when somebody at school brought a tape of Level 42 with him. From the first few tunes this music grabbed him. Mark King is his man and this is what he wanted - play the bass! And so he bought first bass, an Aria Pro II bass and started to listen to Level 42's first album thousands of times trying to play like Mark King. At that time he mainly listened to jazz-funk, jazz-rock and fusion. Besides Mark King he also listened a lot to, Stanley Clarke, the master himself. Especially the Schooldays album is bass-classic. An other favourite is Marcus Miller who was the upcoming bass player at that time. After practising for many hours he finally got the hang of it and things started to work out... He could 'almost' play like Mark King! In the years that followed he played in several session bands, did a lot of jam sessions and had several performances, one of them with a girl who is now his wife Helga, who was a singer at that time! Then, in 1989, he met Gert Emmens while joining the jazz-funk formation Villa Djawa in which Gert was playing keyboards. Later on that year they both left the band to form Confusion. They became very good friends. From the beginning onwards they started to compose their own songs and recorded them in Gert's studio in Arnhem, the Netherlands. During the first years they mainly composed and played jazz-funk music influenced by Level 42, but later on they started to use many styles: R&B, techno, EM, rock, ballad and others. In 1999 they compiled the best songs on a CD which was called Decade. The album was contracted by Peoplesound.com in England in 1999. After this they thought is was time for something else and quit the project. After a few months they started two new projects called: Event Horizon and Native Elements. Event Horizon is a combination of Gert's traditional EM and Peter's progressive trance influences. Native Elements is influences by lounge and ambient. After playing bass for almost 20 years he felt it was time for something new, something in which he could express more of musical thoughts and ideas. So after the Confusion project, end 1999, he quit actively playing the bass. It was about 1995 when he started to listen more and more to dance music (trance, techno and lounge). And in 1996 there was another important moment when he first heard a band called Underworld. A bit similar like hearing Mark King for the first time, this mix of pop and techno really got him. Peter got more and more interested in making this type of music and in 1999 bought his first synthesizer Korg X5d. Soon more synths followed: Yamaha AN1x, Roland Juno 106, Roland JX-1 (from Gert). Searching for sound and a convenient way to work a lot of synthesizers came and went. At the end of 1999 only a Roland JV-30 was left when he saw Propellerheads Reason for the first time. He bought the package and started composing songs for about a year. With his compositions, which were basic song ideas, he went to Gert where he finished them. The results were split up into two separate projects: Native Elements and Event Horizon. Seeing the limitations of Reason he bought (in 2002) a serious synth this time, the Novation Supernova II Pro X. In this period he got influenced by techno and a lot of minimalistic psy-trance artists like Atmos, Vibrasphere, Son Kite. The studio, in Zoetermeer, slowly grows, he bought more sound modules and some drum computers and upgraded his PC with top notch hardware so everything works and sounds perfect. During 2003 Gert was busy with his solo project, and he with the birth his daughter Joèl. But still there is time to write new stuff for the Event Horizon project. In march 2004 they completed the Event Horizon album with a total of 9 tracks. It was send over to several record labels, but without any result. In the mean time he used every single hour to work on new stuff for a solo project. The studio is also under heavy construction. It's moving back towards the PC again with virtual instruments and PC related equipment like the Virus|powercore, Nord G2. Working with soft-synths provides more flexibility and freedom, and thus a better creative process. In Febraury 2005 Gert and Peter decided to stop musical collaboration. After a period of 14 years the inspiration has run dry and they both wanted to focus on their solo projects. In April 2006 after one and a half year of hard work he finished his first solo album. The album, titled Six Degrees of Separation, contains 11 tracks. One of the tracks, Clouds, was chosen 'demo of the month' in august issue of Interface magazine. In June 2007 track Mindsphere was played in the Danish radio show Elektroland.