ANOTR is a Dutch electronic duo from Amsterdam formed by DJs, producers and musicians Jesse van der Heijden and Oguzhan Guney (Oz). After beginning their career on the European house and tech house scene, the pair gradually developed a distinctive musical language in which electronic dance music meets funk, disco, soul, jazz, indie and live instrumentation.
The duo is also behind No Art — an independent record label, event series, festival project and creative community that brings together music, contemporary art and design.
During the first decade of their career, ANOTR evolved from minimalist club releases into an international project with their own festivals and full-length albums. Their biggest breakthrough came with Relax My Eyes, a track that crossed beyond the underground scene, accumulated hundreds of millions of streams and entered the UK singles chart.
Members and how they met
ANOTR consists of:
- Jesse van der Heijden — DJ, producer, musician and songwriter;
- Oguzhan Guney — DJ, producer, musician and songwriter.
Both grew up in the northern part of Amsterdam and first met as teenagers at the birthday party of a mutual friend. Jesse was already making music, while Oguzhan became interested in production and began learning alongside his future partner. Their sessions gradually developed into a permanent musical project.
Early musical influences
ANOTR took shape under the influence of the Dutch and wider European electronic scene of the early 2010s. Even before they were old enough to attend clubs regularly, the musicians listened to DJ mixes, searched for new music online and immersed themselves in house culture.
Among the artists who influenced the duo’s early style, Oguzhan has cited Amine Edge & DANCE, David August and Solomun. Jesse became involved not only in music production but also in DJing at an early stage, while also helping organize their own parties. During this period, the pair gravitated toward deeper and more minimalist forms of house.
Piotr & Zhan and the shipping-container studio
Before adopting the name ANOTR, the musicians performed and released music for a period as Piotr & Zhan. This early project became the direct predecessor of the duo in its present form.
They worked in a modest studio built inside a shipping container in Amsterdam. The space had no proper heating or running water, but it gave them the freedom to spend virtually unlimited amounts of time producing music.
Jesse and Oguzhan would later remember this period as an important learning experience: what they lacked in expensive equipment, they made up for with time, creative freedom and constant experimentation with sound.
Early releases and recognition on the scene
Under the name ANOTR, the duo began establishing themselves more actively in the mid-2010s.
One of their first major releases was the Strobe EP, issued on October 5, 2015 by the British label Defected Records. It featured the tracks Strobe, Stop The Music and Passin Me By.
Working with Defected gave the young producers an international platform. The Mighty Kingdom EP followed, while their performances gradually expanded beyond the Netherlands.
ANOTR’s early sound was club-focused and functional: elastic basslines, dense percussion, short vocal samples and extended grooves. Their releases appeared on Defected, Snatch!, PIV, Solid Grooves, ORIGINS RCRDS, Hottrax, Moan, Inermu and other independent labels.
At the same time, their touring schedule expanded internationally. The duo performed across Europe, Asia and Australia and later appeared on the lineups of Tomorrowland, Awakenings, DGTL and Extrema Outdoor.
Launching the No Art platform
As their catalog grew, the musicians increasingly encountered the limitations of the traditional label model. Outside labels often scheduled releases months in advance, while ANOTR wanted the freedom to put out music whenever they felt it was ready.
This led to the creation of No Art, which quickly developed from the duo’s own record label into an independent cultural platform.
No Art brought together a label, parties, festivals, visual art, design and fashion. One of the project’s defining ideas has been its willingness not to announce the full lineup of an event in advance: the emphasis is placed not on individual names but on trust in the organizers’ curation and the overall atmosphere of the event.
Over the years, artists associated with the project have included Toman, Dimmish, Sidney Charles, Rossi., James Dexter and other figures from the contemporary house scene.
Pandemic-era experiments: No Art Hotel and live instruments
The COVID-19 pandemic brought ANOTR’s touring activity to a halt, but it also pushed the team toward new formats.
One of their most unusual projects was No Art Hotel — a 24-hour event held at Amsterdam’s Sir Adam Hotel inside the A'DAM Toren. Guests stayed in separate hotel rooms equipped with sound systems and screens broadcasting performances by ANOTR, Chris Stussy, Toman and Prunk from different parts of the building.
The break from touring also gave the musicians an opportunity to reconsider their usual approach to making music. During this period Jesse returned to studying music more systematically; he had previously studied at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam.
At the same time, the duo began working much more extensively with live instrumentation. Their familiar club-production workflow gave way to jam sessions with guitarists, bassists, keyboard players and vocalists, as well as creative retreats in the Netherlands, Ibiza and Los Angeles.
No Art Festival and the album The Reset
In July 2022, the first sold-out No Art Festival took place at NDSM-Werf in Amsterdam, featuring Anthea, Chris Stussy, Dyed Soundorom, Rossko and ANOTR themselves.
On November 4, 2022, the duo released their debut album The Reset through No Art.
The record marked a move away from an almost exclusively club-oriented sound toward more organic music incorporating funk, disco, jazz and indie influences. Contributors to the album included Abel Balder, Willem Mulder, Sebastian Kamae and King Wonder Bread.
Among its key tracks are Your Mind, Vertigo, Time To Smoke, Make Art Not € and The Great Reset.
Relax My Eyes and international success
Featuring Spanish vocalist Abel Balder, Relax My Eyes was released in 2022 and developed into an international hit throughout 2023.
The track spent 26 weeks on the UK Official Singles Chart, peaking at number 33, and accumulated hundreds of millions of streams, making ANOTR recognizable far beyond the club-music world.
Despite the track’s success, ANOTR did not build the next stage of their career around trying to reproduce its formula.
Second album: On A Trip
Following the successful singles How You Feel with Leven Kali and 24 (Turn It Up) with Kurtis Wells, ANOTR released their second studio album, On A Trip, on January 31, 2025.
The album contains 14 tracks:
- Unlock
- Care For You
- How You Feel
- Currency (Count On Me) — with Cimafunk and PAMÉ
- Falling Feels Like Flying
- Don't Understand Ya
- Bad Trip
- 24 (Turn It Up)
- Can't Let It Go
- Simple Rules
- Here For You
- Livin In A Dream
- SET IT ON FIRE
- 6am
The material was recorded during creative retreats with guest musicians. On this album, Jesse and Oguzhan made far greater use of their own vocals and instrumental performances.
On Livin In A Dream, for example, Jesse performs both vocals and keyboards. Elsewhere on the album, guitars, live bass, strings and layered vocal arrangements play prominent roles.
On A Trip became ANOTR’s most stylistically wide-ranging album up to that point, placing house alongside disco, funk, soul, indie and psychedelic elements.
Returning to the groove: Withness
ANOTR released their third studio album, Withness, on June 12, 2026.
Where On A Trip had moved noticeably away from the duo’s familiar club framework, Withness brought them closer to the dance floor again while retaining the experience they had gained in full song structures and live instrumentation.
The album makes extensive use of classic drum machines, house rhythms, warm timbres inspired by 1980s aesthetics and layered vocals.
The tracklist includes:
- Withness
- Like It — with 3DDY
- Do It With Ya — with 3DDY
- Interlude
- Faster — with 3DDY
- Crazy — with 3DDY and PAMÉ
- Talk To You — with 54 Ultra
- It's So Nice — with 3DDY
- Paradise
- Silver Lines — with Emily Warren
- Hold On, Let Go — with Wayne Snow and 3DDY
- Sound of You — with TEED
- Dance Till It's Over — with 3DDY and Benny Sings
Withness effectively completes the first major cycle in ANOTR’s development: the duo return to the club-oriented foundation from which they began, but now approach it as songwriters and instrumentalists as well as electronic producers.
ANOTR’s musical style
The term tech house accurately describes ANOTR’s early period, but it no longer fully captures their contemporary sound.
Over the course of their career, the duo’s music has passed through several distinct stages: from house and tech house to minimal and groove-oriented house, and later toward funk, disco, soul, jazz, indie, live instrumentation and fully developed songwriting.
At the same time, ANOTR have never completely abandoned their dance-floor foundation. Even tracks built around full song structures often retain the duo’s characteristic groove and are arranged to work naturally within a DJ set.
ANOTR’s contemporary style can be described as a combination of house, funk, disco, soul and electronic songwriting, where club functionality coexists with live instrumentation and traditional songwriting.
Live approach and «living room energy»
Despite the growing importance of songwriting in their work, ANOTR remain artists rooted in club culture. Their DJ sets are built around sustained grooves and gradual shifts in energy rather than a sequence of their own biggest tracks.
At No Art’s signature events, the team often uses low stages, minimizes barriers and, where the venue allows, places the audience around the DJ booth.
Jesse has described the desired atmosphere as living room energy — a sense of intimacy and informal connection that the team aims to preserve even at large-scale events.
ANOTR discography
2022 — The Reset
The duo’s debut studio album, marking the transition from predominantly club-focused production toward a more organic sound.
2025 — On A Trip
An album on which ANOTR expanded their stylistic boundaries more than ever before, combining house, funk, disco, soul, indie, live instruments and their own vocals.
2026 — Withness
A return to a more pronounced dance-floor foundation while retaining the songwriting experience and live-musician approach developed on previous releases.
In addition to their full-length albums, ANOTR have released a large number of EPs, singles and extended versions since 2015, many of them aimed primarily at club audiences.
How to pronounce ANOTR
The name ANOTR is stylized with several letters omitted and is pronounced like the English word another, rather than as a sequence of individual letters.
The current name is associated with the transition from the early Piotr & Zhan project to the duo’s new identity, although the musicians themselves do not reduce the meaning of ANOTR to a literal expansion of the name.
