Kendu Bari: "I wasn’t trying to fit an image anymore”

If there is one thing Kendu Bari learned during the past years, it’s that having tunnel vision doesn’t work. Ever since he learned this lesson, he started tapping into his own strength, pulling inspiration not from the outside world but from within himself.

In his previous project, Sam Young, he tried to hold onto the constraints of drum & bass, but felt like that didn’t fit him anymore. So, with this new project, he blurs boundaries and leans into the eclecticism and everything that bass music has to offer. He doesn’t only do this under the name of Kendu Bari. He also gives new and upcoming artists a chance to show themselves on the label Sann Odea, which he runs with YB3L.

He only started this new project in 2020, but so far has already played the closing party of De School in Amsterdam, and organised release parties in Garage Noord. Last week, he played ADE with his own live film score. Time to have a chat!

Hi, Kendu Bari! How are you?

Good, my release “Drink For Your Machine” came out recently, and we celebrated with a release party. It feels like my debut EP, even though it’s not. I released my first EP as Kendu Bari in 2022, but it was a self-release. I did everything myself, except for the artwork, self-mastering, self-promotion, everything. and that made it feel more like the electronic equivalent of a hip-hop mixtape. This is the first official release as Kendu Bari on a label, Who’s Susan, with a party and everything. That feels good. I think I’m at the point where I’ve found my sound. Everything I’ve done before and all the styles I’ve tried out it’s all come together in what I’m making now. In the last few years, I was trying to become this image I had in my head of what a perfect electronic music artist looked like. That was not authentic. This time around, I just worked with what I had inside me, without an endpoint to it. I wasn’t necessarily sticking to an image or a specific sound I wanted to create. Willem from Who’s Susan fully trusted me in this process, and that really helped.

How did you end up working with Who’s Susan?

The visual artist approached me, and we met up to have a drink and talk about music. Afterwards, they asked me for a radio show and said that they thought my music was cool. We instantly clicked, which was really nice.

You talk about how you found yourself and your own sound over the years. Can you tell us how that happened?

When I started producing, I only made drum & bass, my first love within electronic music. I was very much into the deep, more minimalist D&B of Alix Perez, but also Ivy Lab. I produced under the name Sam Young, but eventually, I noticed this formula you had to stick to when producing drum & bass, and I felt stuck. During this time, I was discovering artists like Skee Mask, who combines elements from drum & bass with his own style. Genres with different rules. That’s how I eventually decided, I’m just going to get rid of all of the rules, I’m going to produce from within myself, without any constraints or goals. That happened in 2020, and that’s also when I started Kendu Bari. At first, I wanted to use this alias for my techno tracks, but it felt right to use this name for all of the multigenre stuff I’ve got going on at the moment. It felt like a logical step now that I’m a bit older and more mature in my productions. Sam Young was one part of who I am, but now I’ve discovered other parts, and I want to express those as well. Kendu Bari feels like the complete story of where I want to grow further.

You also have a label called Sann Odea. What’s the story behind this?

I started that label to release my own productions as Sam Young, but after I changed my name to Kendu Bari, it went a bit quiet. In 2021, YB3L and I started it up again, because we had a lot of demos from friends and people we wanted to show, and we ended up releasing some of them. We also got demos from upcoming artists. It’s really cool to give people that first release and organise a release party for them. Giving upcoming artists their first, or one of their first, releases it’s still something we focus on the most. When you discover an artist who hasn’t done much yet, when you give them a stage, and you see them growing… It really is something. We really believe in the music we release, right from the start. It’s an investment. Another reason we started this label is that we wanted to add something to the scene in Amsterdam. We wanted to push the underground a bit more. We still haven’t reached the big crowds, but we’ve already noticed that it’s working, with parties that we organized, and people seem to really like the releases we put out. People are even starting to recognize me at parties, saying stuff like, “Are you that guy behind Sann Odea?” which really gives me that extra kick of confidence. With the label, we don’t tend to stick to one formula for each release or one standard style. We go from ambient to club music to more downtempo electronics. We notice that we reach different groups of people with this strategy. We want to express our eclecticism not only through what we do as artists, but also through our label.

You’re from Amsterdam. How does your label fit into the scene there?

We’re trying to throw events as much as we can. Unfortunately, De School closed down, but we have a lot of other amazing spots doing really cool things. Garage Noord, for example, does so much for the underground scene, and we’ve already worked with them a lot. What we try to focus on with our events is that we organize evenings where we can give our artists a stage, and where we can really showcase the multigenre eclecticism of Sann Odea. We want to be the crazy counterbalance to all the other events. Those other, more mainstream, parties will always be there, but I do notice that there are new places coming up, bars or places where they do listening sessions, for example. Smaller, more intimate clubs, like Noordspace, the place where we had our release party for “Drink For Your Machine”. It’s a small, intimate club where you get a lot of freedom. There’s always a lot happening in Amsterdam, and people tend to do a lot by themselves. The movement is growing, but the big established clubs keep on sticking to their formula with no changes. But… If you look in the right corners of the city, and know where you have to be, there is always something to find.

Time for a bit of a throwback. You started making music in 2014. What are some of your best memories since then?

One of the moments that will stick with me forever is De School closing in January 2024. That was one of my favorite places to go. At the closing party, I got the chance to play, and it was such a full-circle moment. I’m so glad I got to experience that, because it was a very special place. It was a location where you could still go, as they say, old school clubbing. It was dark, no one was on the phone. It was a club where you could go on your own. You went for the music, everyone was there to dance. Some people call it the Berghain of Amsterdam, so people have an idea of what it was like. It was very techno-oriented, but in its last year, a lot of bass was programmed. Sherelle played a set there, for example. I liked seeing that they were experimenting a bit more. It was the place to be for a good night out in Amsterdam.

Another moment I will never forget is my graduation project at Garage Noord. It’s one of the few more established clubs in Amsterdam that program a bit more experimental and “less safe”. For my graduation project, I had to organise an event, and I organised a live set. A lot of people came, and my set went well, so I had a good score, yay! It was really dope to finish my studies at a place like Garage Noord.

Finally, the release party of the Various Artists album on Sann Odea is another proud moment. It’s weird music. It’s very experimental, but the release party was so dope. We had people coming over from other countries to come and play at Garage Noord for us. That night, it felt like everything we wanted had come true. The album was very experimental, but people liked it, and that night I also had one of the best back-to-back shows ever with my girlfriend, YB3L.

Talking about big moments, you played ADE on October 25. How was it?

I played an audiovisual show, a live film score, in collaboration with FIBER Festival. You can see it as the experimental sibling of ADE. They often have a lot of different events around the city, like club evenings, but also a conference. This time, they collaborated with ADE with an event at Melkweg in Amsterdam. They gave me access to the LI-MA Archive, with thousands of films and art segments from the Netherlands, from 1980 to now. I had to choose one segment and make a live film score around it. It was such a cool project to work on.

How did you attack the challenge?

I have to say, it was a breath of fresh air. I was so deep into rough, heavy beats lately, and now I could put that aside and work with melody and deep textures. It’s something that I’m going to take away from this project and apply to my upcoming releases. It triggered me to dig deeper.

A completely different question to round up this conversation: where does the name Kendu Bari come from?

It’s a play on words by Jean Du Batterie, my nickname in the restaurant I used to work at. There was a French chef who called me Jean Du Batterie, as it was easier to say than my Dutch name to him, and Du Batterie because I played drums. When I was looking for a name for my second project, I thought back to this nickname and wrote it down. I started playing with the words. I ended up with Kendu Bari. I thought it sounded cool, a bit exotic and exciting. It matches the music I make.

What’s next for you?

My plan is now to combine what I used to make as Sam Young with what I do now. I’ve got an EP which is almost finished, and I think it will be released around Spring 2026. I’m really excited about that! Shout out to Garage Noord and to the label, Who’s Susan.

Interview conducted in October 2025 by Annelies Rom