Welcome back to the blog! This series is all about the people behind Noise Engineering. We’re a small but dedicated group of primarily awkward nerds, who all share a love for synthesizers, music, and all things Noise. 

This week, meet Hans, our "summer intern" (read: sound designer and tester extraordinaire who happened to have a few free months) who's been working on most of our products you've heard about recently (and a few you haven't). 

Name:

Hans Besselink, also known under the artist moniker Oddiction

Job title:

Finder of oddities

What’s your backstory? What did you do before NE?

There’s a long list of previous careers. As a person with ADD, it is hard not becoming restless after a certain amount of time. People always tend to talk about ducks, there are no ducks. There are squirrels and that legion of squirrels needs to be kept challenged, otherwise, they riot. And there always has been the matter of rapidly-shifting interests. After high school I started with culinary school, becoming a line cook. It was a second choice, because I didn’t play enough classical instruments to get into the Conservatorium of Music. I didn’t really fit in with the average culinary school crowd; I had really long hair at that time. So after I finished my education, I had the school mail me my diploma, as I had already signed up as an assembly worker in a local car plant. After 2.5 years of building cars, I returned to school to become a certified mechanic. I did that for about a decade (working on classic cars/light trucks and transmission services) and became restless again. A plethora of jobs in various industries followed, from construction worker to an operator in a papermill, finally landing in the domain of fast-paced aviation jobs.

Around 2008 I started freelancing as a sound designer and beta tester, slowly building a catalog of amazing brands that I worked with. Most memorable are Glitchmachines, Unfiltered Audio, Kilohearts, K-devices, and… Noise Engineering! The Freequel bundle and a few bigger life events are what started this new, amazing journey. Combining Agile project management with sound and music-related soft- & hardware is a lot of fun.

How long have you been at NE? 

Since May this year.

What do you do at NE?

Try to break stuff, find odd pixels, and do my best to not mess up Git or Jira. There are a bunch of other things, like testing new firmware or creating patch notes and samples.

What’s your day-to-day like?

Since I’m in the Netherlands, I’m 9 hours ahead of most on the NE team. So my evenings are their mornings. My day starts with a Git pull, and checking the portal and Jira for updates. Catch up on Slack and continue with assigned tasks. On some days that start is making things go brrrt or bleep-bloop, before our first meeting. Awesome, right?!

What do you do when you’re not working?

Is it considered work when you’re doing what you love, surrounded by incredible people? I’m really a sound nerd, so even while not working, there’s always an element of finding and recording sounds and building crazy contraptions to make new noises. But I also enjoy learning Touchdesigner, watching horror movies, or relaxing in our walled garden with books on music/sound, history, and folklore. And last but not least, (many) spreadsheets, photography, and cats. See, squirrels!

What’s your favorite NE module that you’ve worked on?

I came on board when there was a small pile of Legio firmware up for testing. That eventually became Roucha (make sure to read the design notes in its manual on how that happened). It was quite amusing. Can’t say anything about new projects, but amazing things are on the horizon!

What got you started in modular to begin with?

The expense and the inconvenience😅Kidding, I was late to the party. I didn’t start my modular until early 2021, after several years of contemplating and research. It always was intended to be a hybrid sound source and a signal processor, not so much a musical or composition device. The hybrid part means I can easily </sarcasm-mode> create round-trips with Live Suite and its CV tools. While it is mostly about processing and creating sonic potions for other projects, I also just like to patch very noisy stuff with feedback and distortion and make things go brrrt. 

What’s your favorite module in your system?

Can’t really just pick one, love them all because my rack is carefully curated. The Manis Iteritas, Schlappi 100Grit, and the Qu-Bit Scanned were among the first module buys. The WMD Synchrodyne and Bastl Dark Matter are two other modules that are often in my patches.

What’s your favorite patch technique? 

It needs to have feedback, distortion, and some type of folding! Always moar distortion. Distortion is like hot sauce, there is no such thing as too much or too many.

Desert island module?

Hah! Not keen on traveling, so hopefully won’t find myself in such a situation, ever. But if it had to be an island, make it something Nordic, with trees, mountains, and no summers. No modules either, going all-out Grizzly Adams and Stringfellow Hawk, so make it a cello and an MPC 2500. Oh, and maybe let the bear be cats, because have you seen Cocaine Bear?

What was your first synthesizer, modular or otherwise?

Oof, let me think. My early setup had an Access Virus B, a Roland R-8, JP-8080, something 19” and purple that I sadly don’t recall the name of, and 2 Sherman Filterbanks. The first synth I ever had contact with was the Yamaha DX7 while taking keyboard-playing lessons as a kid. Every few weeks the tutor would give me lessons in synthesis on it, because I didn’t practice enough (or at all) that week, and was more interested in making funny noises on that shiny box. I probably was 14 or 15 at the time.

What’s your favorite non-modular instrument?

This might sound a bit odd, but contact mics, EMF sniffers, and field recorders. Urban areas sound awesome through the SOMA Ether or the various LOM EMF sniffers. Such an amazing journey of soundscapes. Also love my Fender J-bass and I really would like to learn the cello and double bass.

Any sold gear regrets?

Oh yes, for sure. Really regret selling my MPC 2K and the JP-8080. The JP is a timeless classic, and the distortion and filter sound amazing. Will most likely buy back an MPC 2k XL or 2500 with JJOS someday. But currently, a lot of the second-hand gear prices are far beyond what I’m willing to pay for them. People need to play their instruments and not collect them to display in glass cabinets.

What’s your favorite piece of non-NE gear?

Tons of amazing modular builders out there, Schlappi Engineering, Make Noise, Klavis, Joranalogue, Sovage Engineering, and XAOC Devices. The list could go on forever, these are just a few that I really love. The XAOC Leibniz Subsystem is something I’d like to add to my rack in the future. 

How did you get interested in music? 

It was always there. The music at our house hardly ever stopped, from the radio, vinyl, or making a musical ruckus ourselves. There are a bunch of classically-trained artists in my family too, mostly vocalists. At a young age, I started attempts to make Hip-Hop and electronic music with the Amiga 500 and a copy of ProTracker. That was around the same age the organ and keyboard lessons began. The organ my brother and I would (or wouldn’t) practice on as kids is still in my studio. Amiga became the Atari ST, with a copy of Cubase and the interest in MIDI and other gear only grew. The rabbit hole was calling me.

What kind of music do you like to listen to? Favorite bands? Songs? 

I probably have the most eclectic music taste ever. My playlists will go from Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus to Britney, Zappa, SOPHIE, Nicki Minaj, and Arca in a few songs. A few hours later it might be anything from breakcore to Beyonce, from Wu-Tang Clan to Skinny Puppy, or from My Dying Bride to Mr. Bungle. Again, squirrels! Even going to sleep needs a soundtrack on most days. Putting a certain streaming service in mono playback and listening to Merzbow works is calming and helps me to control the chaos.

What’re your musical inspirations?

Anytime, anything and everything, there’s beauty to be found in every genre and every soundwave. The key to happiness is making the music louder than the chaos.

What’s a module you want that doesn’t exist yet?

I’m always down for more distortions and filters! That said, Eurorack lacks angry bees, it needs hives of angry yellow jackets on meth. So, please! Save the bees in real life and add angry ones to Eurorack. Also: make it to go 13.

Favorite horror movie? 

Hmm, very hard to pick just one, I’m a horror buff, I think my DVD collection has surpassed 1000 corpses, erm, titles. A lot of them are zombie related, I love zombies. Slow and fast. The Lucio Fulci ones, the Romero kind, and the freakily moving Korean hybrid ones. Another very notable movie was the 2022 Hellraiser remake, with the phenomenal Jamie Clayton as the Priest! I really hope there will be a sequel, they have such sights to show us. My taste in horror is as odd as my taste in music. Love low-budget and B-movies, and I know this won’t be a franchise many people enjoy, but… I’m a Sharknado connoisseur! How does that not have any Oscars?!

Favorite pizza toppings?

Vegan and spicy. Cucumbers, olives, artichokes, and jalapeños are good starters. Sprinkle some pineapple-habanero hot sauce on top for the finishing touch and extra flavor.

What album could you not stop listening to when you were in high school?

My high school was a mixture of New-Wave, Grunge, Hip-Hop, Reggae, Thrash Metal, and Madonna. Yes, all of it 😀 

What would your 18-year-old self think about what you do now?

Think 18-year-old self would be proud of the milestones and the network of amazing creatives that I’m fortunate enough to be surrounded by.

Favorite NE memory? 

Tbh, all of them. I’m making new memories every day! It is such an amazing and inspiring group of people to be around, even with a lot of water and thousands of miles in between us. The one I think about the most is an insider one. In our introduction video call Kris made a comment about Git. And I have to think about that comment on every push I make, it’s just there, lingering in the back of my mind.

My socials are below, I’m most active on Twitter and occasionally post on Insta.
https://odd-aud.io/
https://linktr.ee/oddiction
https://twitter.com/0ddIction