Headhunterz

Willem Rebergen (born 12 September 1985), better known by his stage name Headhunterz, is a Dutch DJ and music producer.

Rebergen is also a voice actor.

He has done dubbing for several movies and TV series.

Willem Rebergen was born on 12 September 1985 in Veenendaal, Netherlands.

From an early age Rebergen had an interest in music.

Having struggled with bullying at school, Rebergen looked for a distraction to make himself happy and so joined a local kid's choir.

Here he had his first exposure to a professional studio, recording Christmas albums with the choir.

This experience left Rebergen interested and inspired by the process of creating music from the other side of the studio.

In 2003, while working at a clothing store he was offered tickets to Qlimax from friends who could not attend.

This was his first exposure to hardstyle music.

This experience gave him the impetus to forge a music career and in his own words from then on he was "devoted to hardstyle and from that point interested in how to make the music. I wanted to make that kind of music."

He purchased some turntables and connected them to his mixer practicing his DJing, while simultaneously making music in FL Studio, a digital audio workstation.

Rebergen began sending demos out to labels under the alias Nasty D-Tuners, a duo project he formed with close friend Bobby Van Putten.

In 2004 Nasty D-Tuners entered and won the Defqon.1 DJ contest, winning a spot on that year's lineup.

Rebergen and van Putten heard of a new hard dance music label "Hardcontrol", that was opening in Veenendaal.

He started his career in 2005 working on Hardstyle music.

Headhunterz has performed at Qlimax, Defqon.1, Q-Base, In Qontrol, Decibel, Hard Bass, Electric Daisy Carnival and Tomorrowland.

In 2005, a year and a half after their performance at Defqon 2004, Nasty D-Tuners were signed to Hardcontrol Records having two successful releases, with their work being played by then major Hardstyle producers/DJ's. Also in 2005, Rebergen and van Putten began attending a DJ class at the Rock Academy in the Netherlands.

Rebergen found his time at the academy frustrating, due to a lack of encouragement towards producing Hardstyle and negative responses to the genre as a whole.

Alienated by his experience at the Academy, Rebergen continued to send out Nasty D-Tuners demos to respective labels, one eventually reaching Scantraxx founder, Dov Elkabas (The Prophet).

Seeing promise in the young duo, having heard of their performance at Defqon.1, 'Nasty D-Tuners' were signed to Scantraxx in late 2005.

Unable to keep the alias 'Nasty D-Tuners' due to disagreements with the former label, the name Headhunterz was chosen.

By the end of 2005, Rebergen and van Putten had performed at major hardstyle events including Defqon.1, Q-Base and The Prophet's X-Qlusive, all of which increased their profile within the Hardstyle scene.

The year 2006 saw the first Headhunterz release "Aiming for Your Brain/ Left Some Answers", on Scantraxx Special.

Their debut release was followed by "The Sacrifice/D-Tuned", again on Scantraxx Special.

"The Sacrifice" was the duo's most successful hit to date, Rebergen since stating his fond memories of the positive reception that The Prophet gave him the first time he heard it.

Problems soon began to emerge when Rebergen came to the conclusion that he would be unable to perform and record for Scantraxx while simultaneously completing his course at the Rock Academy.

Rebergen told van Putten of his decision to leave the Academy and hoped he would join and commit himself to Headhunterz and Scantraxx.

van Putten then made the difficult decision to leave Rebergen, Scantraxx and Headhunterz and continue with his musical studies at the Rock Academy.

Rebergen's first solo performance as Headhunterz was the 2006 edition of the Q-Dance event, Defqon.1.

Following the final release of van Putten credited Headhunterz work, Scantraxx gave Rebergen his own sub label Scantraxx Reloaded which he would administer.

Headhunterz first release on Scantraxx Reloaded was the three track Vinyl EP "Victim of My Rage" released in late 2006.

The Prophet continued to nurture the young talent, inviting Headhunterz to perform alongside him at the popular annual Q-Dance event, Qlimax.

The year 2007 proved to be a successful year for Headhunterz.

He had his first collaborations with fellow Scantraxx artists The Prophet and Abject (DJ Frontliner).

Along with the collaborations Headhunterz also released several successful solo tracks such as "Forever Az One" and "Rock Civilization" which is his most popular track on the streaming service Spotify.

Headhunterz released his work on Scantraxx through his own sub-label, Scantraxx Reloaded, but in 2013 he started his own record label, "HARD with STYLE".

He signed with the North American electronic dance record label Ultra Music in 2013 and left his own label in 2015.

Since June 2017, he officially returned to the Hardstyle community at the closing ceremony of Defqon.1 Weekend Festival 2017.

In 2018, Headhunterz and fellow DJ Wildstylez started a new Hardstyle label called: "Art of Creation".