Photo: courtesy of the artist

As the legend goes, in the late 80s, when techno and house made their way around Europe, DJ Moortje from Curaçao made a mistake that would inspire a brand new sound. While at Den Haag's Club Voltage, he accidentally dropped a dancehall track at 45 RPM rather than 33, and bubbling (or bubbling house) was born.

For the next couple of decades, bubbling was a crucial part of Holland's Afro-diasporic club landscape. And as a new generation of DJs and producers began to take the reins, it evolved accordingly. In the late 2000s, Den Haag-based teenage prodigy Guillermo Schuurman followed in the footsteps of his uncle DJ Chippie (one of the genre's co-founders) and cousins DJ Daycard, DJ Master-D, Stiko Jnr, and DJ Justme, and began performing and writing beats. Using Fruityloops, he fused familiar bubbling rhythms with rap and R&B samples, trance synths, and electro house wobbles, and his tracks quickly became a regular fixture on the Dutch circuit.

In 2021, Kampala’s Nyege Nyege Tapes released Bubbling Inside, a collection of Schuurman's most essential cuts from the era (2007-2009), with a couple of newer productions added for context. Crafted solely for the dance, most of these tracks were never properly released and have been painstakingly hunted down and collected by the NNT team together with Sascha Roth from Pantropical in Rotterdam and De Schuurman himself. Following performances at Unsound and Le Guess Who?, De Schuurman brings his ecstatic sound to Berlin.

  • Bubbling Inside, by De Schuurman

  • Bubbling Inside, by De Schuurman

CTM Magazine: Interview with De Schuurman

»It’s the rawness I like.« De Schuurman on bubbling, Young Thug, and club hookups

In 2021, Nyege Nyege Tapes released Bubbling Inside, an excellent compilation of Dutch producer De Schuurman’s beats, made over a decade. Infectious and effervescent, the record showcases a contemporary strain of the genre borne from an iconic mistake. Ahead of De Schuurman’s performance at CTM 2022 – Contact, Kit Mackintosh chatted with him about the genre’s evolution, the value of mistakes and failures, and the culture accompanying bubbling.