TRPTK’s New Music Movement

I have to tell you something. Something that’s been bothering me for two years now, and has been gnawing on me so much that I believe we need to do something about it.

Brendon Heinst

The quote above marks the very first steps towards me (Brendon Heinst, M.A.) and my colleague Luuk Meijssen, B.A., setting up what is now our label TRPTK. TRPTK (pronounced “triptych”) is a new Dutch high-end audio label, based in Baarn, that aims to build a New Music Movement: a movement where a new generation of artists can freely express their musical visions. Visions which are then recorded using state-of-the-art custom equipment and high-end cabling, at the DXD format of 352.8 kHz 24 bits. We believe that only in this way, listeners are truly able to hear what the artist is envisioning when performing a certain piece.

The quote at the beginning is part of a gigantic email I sent to my then study partner Luuk Meijssen, at the end of my last year studying for my Master’s Degree in Audio Engineering at the Utrecht School of Arts and Technology, under Eelco Grimm (Grimm Audio). During that time, I freelanced as an assistant engineer at Northstar Recording / Turtle Records. And even though I was already experimenting with more and more resolution in my own recordings, things took a huge lift during that specific time. It was great to be able to record music in a way that makes the listener feel enveloped in the recording room, as both a time machine and teleportation device in one. However, these recordings were for the happy few, and there were so many other great young artists around…

I wrote this huge email in the middle of the night to Luuk, because we had done a recording together just a few days before (a recording which is now The Invisible Link by Maya Fridman & Daniël Kool) and I noticed there was a clear connection between the things we do. Luuk’s specialism was working with bands in such a way that he could transform musical sketches into songs that were a form of art by themselves.
Furthermore, he was also greatly concerned with the state of the popular music industry. Nothing was done out of the love for music anymore, music was only produced to make money.

We believe it’s not only about what a performer is playing, but also how he is playing that. And even more important, why.

Brendon Heinst

Fast forward to now, and we’re a team of four enthusiastic younglings who’ve so far released four full titles, classical and jazz, with many more lining up for 2017 and 2018. Amongst which an album which might very well be the world’s first progressive rock recording in DXD resolution. To achieve these high resolutions and transparency, we work exclusively with Dutch & Dutch active loudspeakers, Sonodore active-powered microphones, and Furutech cabling, carefully tuned and optimized together with Acoustic Matters, a company specializing in ultra-high-resolution playback systems.

We feel honored we’re featured on NativeDSD, one of the finest sources of high-resolution music download-platforms in the world.

We hope you enjoy our releases as much as we did recording them.