Richard Rietdijk

Richard Rietdijk is a Recording Engineer, sound designer and progressive recording artist from Breda, the Netherlands. He is best known for the time he spent as the synth player / sound designer in dutch metal sensation Textures (Nuclear Blast), filling the role for 3 albums spanning a full decade. “Richard Rietdijk’s synths are a stunning ingredient to this music. The lush, sweeping passages that he uses only makes the heavy stuff heavier and their presence adds an otherworldly texture to the rest of the music.” metal-rules.com Rietdijk was taught the art of recording and mixing in the early 2000′s by Grammy Award winning recording engineer Steve Horowitz at the SAE Institute (School of Audio Engineering) in the Netherlands. Always having had a huge affinity with all things sound, this gave him a solid foundation with which to start experimenting in different ethnic genres and styles. Shortly after graduating from SAE Institute, polyrhythmic metal band Textures was founded together with Jochem Jacobs, Stef Broks, Bart Hennephof and Dennis Aarts, which allowed Rietdijk to further learn about and express himself in Analog Synthesis, Sound Design and sample recording. Together with main producer and guitarist Jochem Jacobs he recorded the first album [m339221], which was awarded an Essent music award and the Devil (musicians to musicians) Award by the dutch Rock and Pop Institute. “This is the best metal album that’s ever come out of the Netherlands” [m339221] review, OOR Music Magazine The last album to feature Rietdijk, [m134995], received worldwide acclaim from the international press. Everybody from Europe to the U.S. to India could sing along to the song “Awake,” which received strong support from online metal communities and got prime time airplay on Radio 3 fm (NL), Radio 1 (UK) and Triple J (AU). The video clip got airplay on MTV in Europe and Russia, and VH1 in India. In the Netherlands Textures reached the Album Top 100. The band played at Graspop in Belgium, the Great Escape in the UK, Tuska in Finland, Hellfest in France and Lowlands in their home country the Netherlands and also toured with Arch Enemy and All That Remains, among others. In 2009 Rietdijk decided to leave the band to focus more on his solo projects and recording endeavors. For Rietdijk’s final show, the band flew to Bangalore to play India for the first time — where they’d just been featured on the cover of India’s most prestigious rock magazine The Rock Street Journal – and delivered an explosive headline performance for over 5,000 fans. “Rietdijk’s keys are effectively interjected and skillfully executed” blistering.com At the moment Rietdijk is hard at work on his solo project with the working title of ‘metaverse’, and is always looking for new adventures and opportunities of expressing himself in music, recording and sound. "Richard Rietdijk possesses an undeniable talent for composing ambient keyboard patterns that give the music an almost elegantly sophisticated and mature quality" Sputnik Music