The Outsiders are Dutch producers Jozef van der Veen and Roeland van Rijnberk, friends since school who began exchanging production ideas long before they had a release together. Their drum and bass grew from a fascination with sound design, but melody and songwriting have always mattered just as much.
They met at twelve and shared music over Skype. Hearing Noisia’s Could This Be later helped pull them towards drum and bass, where the technical challenge offered something they wanted to explore. The name began with an outer-space idea; over time, they came to like it because their music did not fit neatly into one corner of the scene.
The six-track 2222 EP appeared on VISION on 22 December 2022. Its title plays with the partnership’s symmetry, and the music runs for twenty-two minutes and twenty-two seconds. The duo described its different sides as clean and synthetic, rough and chaotic, dreamy and abrasive, brought together as a continuous listen.
Both have also made room for work beyond The Outsiders. Roeland records as Sorza, while Jozef discussed an interest in indie-pop writing. Roeland later explained that the duo had made two halftime tracks for 2222, but chose to leave more of the broader experiments to their solo projects. That keeps the partnership’s D&B catalogue connected with, but distinct from, their separate work.
