Most acts on this blog are one person and a name. ANOTR is two: Jesse van der Heijden and Oguzhan Guney, two Amsterdam producers who’ve spent over a decade making house, tech house and disco-flecked club music as a single creative unit rather than two solo careers that happen to overlap. Even the name is a fusion — “AN” from Oguzhan, “OTR” from Jesse’s middle name, Piotr, welded into one word neither of them owns alone.
From an Attic Studio to DFTD
The duo started making music together in the early 2010s, working out of an Amsterdam attic with little more than instant coffee and patience. Their breakthrough came via Defected‘s breakout imprint DFTD, which released their summer anthem “Strobe” in October 2015 — an early sign of the groovy, genre-loose house sound that would become their signature: house at its core, but pulling in disco, funk, soul and jazz without settling into any one of them.
No Art: More Than a Label
In 2017 they founded No Art, and it’s never just been a vehicle for their own records. From the start, the label doubled as a live platform — hosting nights at De Waalse Kerk (a former church), Amsterdam’s Loft, West Indisch Huis and Claire, treating each show as a mix of music, art and setting rather than a standard club night. It’s also released work by other artists, and their own catalogue has run through labels as varied as DFTD, Solid Grooves and Snatch! along the way — the same Solid Grooves roster we cover in our piece on why so many DJs launch their own label.
The Reset and “Relax My Eyes”
ANOTR’s clearest breakthrough moment arrived with their 2022 debut album, The Reset, and its lead single “Relax My Eyes” (featuring Abel Balder) — a track that crossed from club circulation into a genuine genre anthem, alongside “Vertigo” from the same record. It’s the release most casual fans would recognise, even if they don’t know the duo’s name.
2026: Still Climbing
The momentum hasn’t slowed. In March 2026 they released “Talk to You,” featuring New Jersey singer 54 Ultra, through their own No Art imprint — and by April it had reached number one on the World Airplay Radio Monitor’s Global Dance Radio chart, built on airplay from dance stations across more than 30 countries. It’s part of a new album, Withness, that pushes further into the disco-house end of their sound.
On stage, ANOTR now sits comfortably among house music’s biggest bookings — Tomorrowland, Awakenings, Ultra‘s Resistance stage, DC-10 and Pacha in Ibiza, and a 2026 slot at Ibiza’s new hyperclub UNVRS. For a project that started with two friends sweating over a laptop above an Amsterdam street, that’s a long way from home — even if the music has never really left the attic.
For more from the Amsterdam house scene and beyond, Doubleclap Radio streams sets selected by real DJs around the clock, free on iOS and Android.
VIDEO: ANOTR set at Burning Man 2025
Presented by Mayan Warrior and ANOTR Music. Video source: Mayan Warrior Youtube Channel.