Born IJmuiden, Holland; radio,tv, live electronics and percussion.
Prins' career as an improvising musician began in 1984 when he started an industrial-free-jazz group called Gorgonzola Legs; for him this was a period of intense experiments which formed the basis of his current approach of percussion and electronics.
Prins focusses on percussive and environmental noise creating a music that can be characterised by pure rawness in volume and sound, but also utilising subtlety in color through specific use of scraping, rasping and other noise sounds; these are all forged into very personal polyrhythms. Noise also plays an important role in the development of his electronic installations, and in recent years Prins has worked a lot on his analog radio-electronics "etherloops", and the processing through his radiosystems of music produced by, for example, percussion, piano, double bass and saxophone. He works regularly at STEIM (Studio for Electro- Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam.
He plays in clubs and on festivals in and outside Holland and in addition to his solo projects regularly works with the experimental rockband Analecta, and in improvised music combinations with a quartet including Fred Van Hove, Luc Houtkamp and Johannes Bauer; a trio with Misha Mengelberg and Mats Gustafsson; MIMEO: Music in Movement Electronic Orchestra; e-rax, an electronics trio with Thomas Lehn and Peter Van Bergen; United Noise Toys, a duo with Anne La Berge (flutes, electronics); L'OOPS, a duo with Werner Puntigam (trombone); and The Nose Works, a duo with Manel Esparbé i Gasca: live cooking and visual arts.
In 1992 Gert-Jan Prins and Luc Houtkamp started X-OR though in 2001 Prins left the label.