Wouter Bessels

Dutch journalist, author, archivist of musical heritage and sound engineer. Born on 9 October 1977 in Hoorn, the Netherlands. In his day job he works for Dutch newspaper Dagblad Van Het Noorden (DVHN) but he also writes for music magazine iO Pages and other international publications. He regularly does (re)mastering jobs on archival releases, e.g. for label 31603 and Red Bullet.

Since 2001 he is the biographer and archivist for guitarist artist 256972. In early 2018, he compiled and mastered the 26xCD box set [r=12312755], released on 20th July 2018.

In 2019, Bessels wrote the accompanying book, researched material and provided additional editing, pre-mastering and compilation assistance for [r13758468], followed in 2020 by [r16136892]. As the official archivist of Tangerine Dream, he has curated several archival releases with live recordings for various labels, such as Culture Factory, Esoteric and KScope.

In 2020 he curated and produced the 9xCD + 2xDVD box set [r16227594], regarded as the definitive Focus box set of the band's classic years, featuring previously unreleased audio and video recordings.

Bessels has also curated several remastered & expanded albums of Golden Earring, Solution, Shocking Blue, Nova and Stars On 45 and has written several books on Pink Floyd and Steven Wilson / Porcupine Tree. As such he has also collaborated on Sony's recent Pink Floyd releases.