Dijf Sanders & Segers

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Dijf Sanders captures sounds from around the globe — grinding, reshaping, and fusing them with modern electronic studio sounds. With an unbounded approach and panoramic vision, he masterfully creates an entirely new universe of styles and cultures.

A restless creative, gear enthusiast, and producer, Sanders is constantly juggling multiple projects. He has collaborated with prominent figures such as drummer Simon Segers, saxophonist Mattias De Craene, choreographer Wim Vandekeybus, vocalist Sylvie Kreusch, and sitarist Nicolas Mortelmans, among many others.

His fascination with global sound began during a road trip through the Middle East for the Emmy-nominated Canvas documentary Soundtrack (2013). There, he began recording sounds from the region and the Far East — a practice that directly inspired Java (W.E.R.F. Records, 2017), featuring the track Jaipong, which has been streamed over a million times and is often hailed as a gem. Sanders continued in this vein with Puja (2020), Lichen (2021), and Supra (2023), all released on Unday Records.

Over time, three key evolutions emerged. Drummer Simon Segers became an increasingly central collaborator, eventually growing into a true musical companion. As a dedicated gear nut, Sanders kept pushing his technical boundaries. Meanwhile, shifts in the music industry intensified his urge to stray from conventions and explore uncharted sonic territory.

The result: Dijf Sanders & Segers.

Here, Dijf runs field recordings from Vietnam through his machinery and lets them live freely in the hands of Segers — who operates as a human drum-machine hybrid. Samples and synths aren’t pre-programmed or sequenced by a computer; they’re triggered live by the drummer and manipulated in real time by Sanders, who acts as a living effects processor. The outcome is a live composition that’s nearly impossible to reproduce in the studio — a raw, emotional, and transient form of electronic music, accompanied by a laser show from the hand of Felix Ysebaert a.k.a. Ysbear.

A first glimpse of this collaboration can be heard on the studio album Tangkoa II, featuring guest improvisations by Vitja Pauwels (guitar), Viktor Perdieu (sax), and Louise van den Heuvel (bass). The album leans toward jazz and attentive listening, but it’s not meant as a reference work. The essence of Dijf Sanders & Segers calls for a different route — one that defies the traditional cycle of composition, studio recording, album release, and live performance. The sound here is rawer, more trance-like and tribal, focusing entirely on live exploration.

To strengthen that sense of live discovery, snapshots from various (try-out) performances are distilled and gradually released as individual tracks across digital platforms — building a living narrative that reflects the musicians’ instinctive, in-the-moment creativity.