Success did not change Sjoerd. He refused to play major festivals like Awakenings, calling them “the McDonald’s of kicks.” Instead, he curated his own events in forgotten places: a decommissioned water pumping station, the cargo hold of a rusted freighter in the port of Dordrecht, a Cold War-era nuclear bunker near Maastricht. He designed the flyers himself—bleak, typographic compositions using only the industrial font DIN 1451, often just a location, a date, and the word “SJOERD” scratched out in blood-red.
The turning point came in 2022 with the release of his debut album, (Resin and Dust) on the Rotterdam-based label Molekül . The album’s centerpiece, an 11-minute opus titled “De Verdronken Toren” (The Drowned Tower), told the story of a mythical church spire sinking into a peat bog. The track started with a field recording of water dripping. For four minutes, nothing else happened. Then, a sub-bass pulse so low it was felt in the intestines. Then, a distant, wailing melody played on a music box that had been dipped in acid. It was brutal, beautiful, and utterly hopeless. Resident Advisor gave it a 4.5, calling it “a masterpiece of controlled demolition.” Pitchfork’s electronic section called it “the sound of a beautiful world ending, and you’re the last one alive to hear it.”
Sjoerd Valkering (deceased) was a Dutch entrepreneur and the founder of Valkering Media B.V. , a prominent digital media house based in the Netherlands. He is best known for professionalizing the sports journalism landscape through several niche news platforms. sjoerd valkering
Following Sjoerd Valkering’s passing, Valkering Media continues to operate as his "life's work," maintaining the professional standards and growth-oriented culture he established. The company currently operates as a digital media house with a hybrid remote structure based in Diemen, managing its various sports-centric news platforms.
Sjoerd, meanwhile, was working a day job designing labels for cheese. He’d come home, feed his cat, and spend six hours meticulously crafting the sound of a chain-link fence being rattled in a hurricane. Success did not change Sjoerd
In the sprawling, flat landscape of the southern Netherlands, where the chemical plants of Rotterdam and the petrochemical refineries of Zeeland spit artificial sunsets into the grey sky, a sound was born. It was not the cheerful, melodic house of Amsterdam nor the commercial hardstyle of the big stadiums. It was the sound of rusted metal groaning, of a factory grinding to a halt, of a thousand terrified synths decaying into noise. That sound had a name: .
: He was an active contributor to the technical development of his platforms, frequently requesting new features (such as WhatsApp push notifications) and CMS improvements from partners like Newsifier . The turning point came in 2022 with the
During his career, Valkering rode for several teams, including the TI-Raleigh and Hitachi-Semi Automatic teams. His most notable achievement was winning the 1982 edition of the Tour de Suisse.