A household name in hardcore since the mid-90's, The Outside Agency is comprised of Frank Nitzinsky (aka Eye-D) & Nöel Wessels (aka DJ Hidden), and hail from Goes, Netherland. The Outside Agency quickly became leaders in the underground hardcore scene, bringing Crossbreed to the forefront, and pushing past limits with their catchy and unusual sound.
Since their 1st release in 1996, they have had more than 47 releases, 4 full length albums, & countless remixes. The Outside Agency is featured on 25 labels (including Mokum, Industrial Strength, & Black Monolith.) They started & ran label Genosha Recordings, & added Genosha One Seven Five to feature Crossbreed, a genre some credit with them inventing.
Charm Dreier, aka GabberGirl, had the opportunity to interview one half of the well-known duo, after his DJ performance at the Arizona Hardcore Junkies 30th Anniversary Event, for The Hardcore Overdogs. Listen to the full audio here, or read the transcript below.
Charm Dreier: Hi! Charm Dreier here for The Hardcore Overdogs, I’m here with one half with The Outside Agency—his name is Eye-D.
Eye-D: Also, Frank [Nitzinsky], my mom calls me, well my mom calls me Eye-D, even though she shouldn’t.
CD: Does she?
ED: No, she doesn’t.
CD: Otherwise known as Frank to his elementary school teacher. So, Frank, may I ask you about your musical journey? What brought you to hard music?
ED: I was always really interested in the creation of music. My dad was a musician and although he left my mom when I was quite young, he left behind a bunch of musical equipment. There was some drum things, a steel drum, there was a little mini keyboard, there was lots of cables, I didn’t really know what did what, but I liked banging on the drums. That was really cool.
And when I discovered I could manipulate things on cassettes by holding down the button so they would just slightly touch the tape, and it warbled the sound, and I was like this was really cool. Then on my Commodore 64, I could make a little bit of noise, I was very interested in that, but I didn’t have equipment, I didn’t know how anything worked, it was before the internet.
CD: Right. And approximately how old were you when you were manipulating the cassette tapes and stuff?
ED: This was like 12, 13, 14 years old. When I was 16, I recorded some like grindcore using my Commodore 64 together with a friend because I was really inspired by very serious bands like Napalm Death, and Nuclear Assault, and Lawnmower Death, who did really good music, but put humor in it.
CD: Nice.
ED: Napalm Death has the Guinness World Book of Record’s shortest song ever, called ‘You Suffer’, it’s just [makes a noise]. That’s it, that’s the song. Man, that’s so cool to do something like that. I always like that aspect of it.
And then when my dad resurfaced in my life, and I visited him, he had moved to America, and when I visited him I said, “what’s this thing here?” And he said, “oh that’s a sampler”.
And I said “How’s that work?” And he said, “Oh you wanna know how it works? Here’s a sampler, here’s its manual, here’s a computer that’s completely blank, here’s three floppies that will install an operating system and here’s a floppie for the sequencer software and here’s the manual. Have fun.” I was like “Aaaahhh”.
The Outside Agency - Hardcore Headz ´
So when I figured that out, it was really cool. I wanted to make like hip-hoppy type stuff, breakbeats and stuff, I wasn’t really into hardcore music yet, and this was right around the time, 1990, 1991 when hardcore started to really surface in the Netherlands.
And I had a little mixer, so I could play records, and I could do my little tape things. And my neighbor had just started his DJ career. So he would always on the weekends, he would take my mixer and another friend of his would visit him and together they would have two turntables and my mixer and they would play these old 1992, 1991 hardcore records that I hated. I [said] “this is not music, this is not music.”
And he knew I was trying to make music. I was always pissing on his music. I said its really simple music, I said, this hardcore stuff—"well if you think it’s so simple, why don’t you make me some?”
I said, “Okay, you make me a cassette of like 60 minutes, or 90 minutes, of your favorite records, and I’ll try to listen to them, and try to emulate them. I can use the sampler to steal anything”, I said, “I can steal drums and stuff”, and then when I started putting it together, that’s when I got more respect for it.
I was Oh, this is kind of cool, I can do this, I can do that, and I played it to him, and he was like, “Yeah, this is cool, it’s not there yet, but this is cool”, and then I visited my first rave.
Together with Noël [Wessels], already, we went to different high schools, but mutual friends of ours introduced us, like you guys both make the same weird music.
CD: and Noël is your current partner for The Outside Agency.
ED: Yeah, you guys should hang out.
CD: Okay.
ED: We were like really skeptical, because we were like Hey, I thought I was the only one doing this but there was someone else. We went to a rave and I heard, I think maybe it was ‘94 the first rave I went to, and I heard the music at the intended volume, and the intended setting, and I was like I get this.
CD: Right.
ED: Right, this is how it works.
CD: Okay.
ED: Ultimately, my middle friend, the one I made the grindcore, the computer grindcore stuff with, I took him to his first rave in 95, in 94 actually, “You should really experience this, it’s really cool”, and he was like, “Nah, I hate this stuff.”
This party in Utrecht, in the center of the Netherlands, and they would always have a mellow room and a hardcore room. In the mellow room, they played old techno and house-y music, and he was like “Wow, this is really cool”. You first enter through that room.
And then he entered the main hardcore room right as Fucking Hostile scream, the Fuckin Hostile on Lenny [Dee]’s remix of the Pantera song.
CD: Yep.
ED: That dropped as he walked in, and he was like “Okay, I get this”. Immediately he was like “Okay, this is the shit.”
Okay, and the setting is very irrelevant, and once you’ve experienced it, you kind of always want to make music that emulates that, or tries to, okay this will work at a party, this will be cool, this is more for home listening, but this will fuck off at a party.
Ah, see I always, for me, into the manipulation of sounds. I like that you are doing things to sounds that you weren’t supposed to do. Roland excelled at making machines that were terrible but when used for inappropriate purposes, became the backbone for multiple music scenes. Which is great. Yep, that’s my journey.
And then we started sending cassettes to labels from ’92 to 1996. We sent demos.
The Outside Agency - Der Remaken (VIP Version)
CD: Wow.
ED: It took four years to get picked up, and we were actually on our last round of sending demos. So I was like, “Nobody is picking us up. Nobody is returning calls, nobody is listening. I’m going to do something else with my life.”
And then, just as we send this last round of tapes out, suddenly everyone started calling. And they were really into stuff we had made in 1994.
CD: Right. Well, your music is very unique. You brought a new sound to the scene. People finally recognized that.
ED: Yeah, I mean our stuff that we were releasing then was really our take on what we liked. But we were emulating everyone. I don’t think we were trendsetting yet. Although we had more breakbeats. It was a little more quirky. But we were definitely trying to sound like Ruffneck. Or we were trying to sound like some Rotterdam Records, we didn’t really have a unique identity yet. That came by maybe the third or fourth record. Yeah, that’s the musical journey.
CD: Well, thank you for that. Another thing I wanted to ask you is what is your process with working with your partner, I mean like do you guys live in the same city, do you get together to make tracks? Do you trade them back and forth?
ED: Some people know this and other people don’t; we decided to combine forces and send demos out together. We always make individual tracks, but we would send them out together. We figured we would have a higher chance of them grabbing that tape.
Eye-D - Domino
CD: Okay.
ED: So we’ve actually only made maybe three tracks together. We counted, we have around 340 tracks that we made, and out of those, only about three or four we actually made together.
CD: That’s interesting. Then how did you develop your sound then?
ED: We drifted to further extremes but at the start you couldn’t tell us apart. I think, I can definitely tell us apart. But, yeah, most people still believe that we make everything together. It is supposed to complement one another. Like we usually try to balance releases out by if I have two tracks that sound a certain way, then Noel will try to either complement that sound, or go completely against it, so it’s a more diverse record. But that’s part of our process. We see what we have; and sometimes I say, “Okay, this is perfect. These two or four tracks that you have, they should be released as is because this is perfect, this is perfect little thing you have here. So let’s not fuck with it.”
Sometimes I will have three or so, and he has something that really fits it, so we add it. Its more of an A&R process than it is an actual creation process.
CD: And do you both make music outside of the moniker The Outside Agency? I mean, you have a name called Eye-D, is that your DJ name?
ED: Well that’s how we started. He was always DJ Hidden, I was always Eye-D, we made hardcore and drum and bass, and everything under those names, but we decided to combine our efforts as The Outside Agency to have a higher chance of success.
Eye-D, at the end of his set in Arizona.
CD: Okay. I just have to mention that I had the privilege of seeing you perform as Ghost in the Machine.
ED: Yep, awesome. With Nils [van Lingen], yeah.
CD: Is that the same partner?
ED: No, that’s a different partner.
CD: A different partner, okay. It seemed like you guys had practiced because you looked like an octopus up there, like, one brain and four arms.
ED: No, we actually had never practiced. We’re always just like in the moment.
CD: How do you vibe so well?
ED: You have to have that connection, but I can see just by small movements, a shoulder, a hand, okay, cool, you’re doing this, okay, if I see what he’s playing, then this would match with this. And we know that, I know that when he moves to the bass, he means to cut it, so that I know when the next 16 bar section is over, that I will open my bass channel.
CD: It’s just a well-orchestrated dance.
ED: Yeah, we work really well together. But you said that you saw us play for Kurt at his Kompound.
CD: Yes.
ED: It was completely unpracticed. I mean, we joked at him, like he asked us how long we wanted to play, and he said, “well, let’s do nine hours”.
“Okay, let’s do nine hours”, a maximum nine hours. He put nine hours in our booking request. And as a joke, we were, no fuck it, let’s play nine hours.
CD: Yeah, I don’t think that was a joke, ‘cuz most people play for a long time there.
ED: But none of that was prepared.
CD: Okay. Well, you are an incredible musician. I just heard you blow up the stage tonight, it was amazing.
ED: Yeah, DJing is also really fun. It’s a completely different discipline. It’s really weird that in some scenes to be able to play DJ sets, you have to be a successful record producer, even though they’re completely different. It’s like having to be a fantastic gardener to get a job as a security guard. Why?
CD: Cuz they both have the word guard in them?
ED: Yeah, you’re right. Exactly. You have to make your bones somehow.
CD: Right. Well, I know producers that can’t DJ.
ED: Sure, reading a room is a skill that not everybody has, but now at least everyone can beat match records now, it’s not that hard anymore. But I still really enjoy that, and I see DJing as the reward you get for the music that you contribute to the world.
That’s how it should be. Of course, I’m not trying to piss on people who only DJ.
Doomcore Records Pod Cast 041 - Mix Set - Glory Of The Outside Agency
CD: Right.
ED: But I do think, you can quote me on this:
CD: Okay
ED: That a person who contributes vastly to the library of music is doing slightly more important work than the person that just consumes other people’s music, and performs it to other people.
That’s why I think it’s a crime to not credit people’s music, when you play it and post it to social media.
CD: I believe the same. Tracklisting.
ED: Tracklists need to be there, because it is not your music to keep secret. You can have secret weapons, if you play Berghain, at eleven o’clock in the morning, on Monday, somebody grabs you by your shoulders and says, “Whoa, what was that seventh track you played, the one that went oof, oof, oof, oof?” “You can go fuck off, I want to go home, and have a kebab or something.”
But as soon as you take a one-minute clip of a two-hour set that you played using other people’s music, that is the highlight of your performance, and you post it to your social media as an advertisement for your services as a DJ, you are stealing from other people if you don’t credit them.
The Outside Agency & Supire - Liminal
CD: Right. I mean, I’m mostly a DJ, I only just started producing, and I’ve always thought of myself as the person that promotes the producers, that’s my job, is to put together the producers’ music and present it to the world so that they’re getting their music out there.
ED: I spoke to a lot of people. They don’t want to credit, because then other people might start playing their record, and then I say “Yeah but then don’t post it publicly.”
CD: Right, I think that was more of the 90’s attitude, like taping over your records so no one could trainspot it.
ED: Yeah, we went from Myspace to Instagram like that, in the blink of an eye, and people still believe that, [?] but there are millionaires out there with completely fully professional video production crews that show up with six or seven cameras, who actually they do credit for that, the video production, but where they don’t credit the young producers that work so hard to get them their music.
And when you think about it, when millionaires are doing it to little kids, they will never get a chance, so your music is good enough to be played at the festival but you yourself will never get a chance to get there cuz no one is saying your name. That’s why we must protect our little producers in this business.
CD: Right. Definitely. Speaking of producer, you started out with cassette tapes and a Commodore 64. What are you up to these days in your studio?
ED: Speaking of producer, to quote The DJ Producer, in an interview, I think, in 2004, they asked him do you guys use outboard gear or are you on the box, and Luke said, “We fucked all that dinosaur shit back to the stone age.” It’s really nice to have complete control, complete recall, I produce everything on the computer.
Ghost in the Machine - Come On
CD: Okay, well what which DAW do you use?
ED: I mainly use Cubase and Ableton Live. I can also speak FL Studio and Reason because I’ve collaborated with people who use that.
CD: Okay, nice. Well, thank you, for doing this interview.
ED: Yeah, no worries.
CD: For The Hardcore Overdogs.
ED: Let’s do this again when the Arizona Techno Snobs and the Arizona Hardcore Junkies turn 60.
CD: Yes. Let’s. I will see you there. Thank you.