R&b
Music thrives on a sense of community. Look at the jazz networks in London, or Bristol’s sound system heritage; look at the Loft scene in 70s New York, or the permutations offered by warehouse living in Montreal. Give people space, and time, and let art commence.
Right now, Amsterdam is a hot-bed for indie rock. A host of our favourite bands hail from the Dutch city, each with their own spin on some impeccable influences. Some you might have heard of – The Homesick, say, or Lewsberg, maybe. But the vein runs much deeper than you’d anticipate.
Personal Trainer are a seven-piece whose sprawling line up touches on just about every buzz band Amsterdam has to offer. On tour in the UK right now – they play infamous London sweat-den Brixton Windmill tonight (November 3rd) and Brighton’s Mutations Festival on November 4th – the band’s debut album ‘Big Love Blanket’ is incoming.
Frontman Willem Smit has been involved in music since he could walk, so who better to be our guide for this deep-dive into Amsterdam’s indie rock gold rush…?
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Thank you Clash for giving me space and time to write about bands from Amsterdam.
A small disclaimer: I am not sure what a scene is and I wouldn’t know where the one in Amsterdam starts and ends; I don’t have the overview and I’m sure there’s a lot going on I don’t know about. I don’t mean to throw bands onto a pile that they don’t feel they’re part of and I don’t mean to exclude bands that feel like they’re part of a scene. I’ve been playing in bands for twelve years now and I’ve met most of my friends through music, so I’m just going to write about some bands that are close to me.
I wanted to include a playlist with all bands I mentioned, and a couple of non-Amsterdam bands slipped in while I was name-dropping.
Scram C Baby
My dad’s in a band called Scram C Baby. They started releasing records in the 90s. They were one of the first bands on a label called Excelsior Recordings, who put out guitar music when guitars were super hot. My dad hardly ever played records at home, he would leave a room or get upset if someone would play his band’s music.
Still, Scram C Baby’s music was around when I was little. But I got really into it when I was 16 or something. I was listening to Parquet Courts, Pavement, Ought, Beck and Scram C Baby. Their bass player Geert de Groot taught me and our bassist Ruben to play guitar. Their guitar player Frank van Praag lent me his guitar and their drummer Marit de Loos filled my first iPod with music. They still make records and play, which maybe is uncommon for older Dutch bands I like, except Hallo Venray and Bingo Trappers. I like all their records except for the first one, haha!
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This band has probably had the most impact on me. Listen to ‘Love Is Not Enough’ for a cool live rock record, listen to ‘The Thing That Wears My Ring’ for a bit more choppy electronic rock music. All the songs are hits in my book. Two of the member’s new band I Believe In My Mess is great too, they did their first show opening for us in Utrecht earlier this year.
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Pip Blom
Pip from Pip Blom was a big inspiration when I started with Personal Trainer. Her band and my band had been playing together for a while with my other band Canshaker Pi. With my older bands I focussed on music only. We had a team that worked with us that I didn’t really speak to regularly apart from a manager. I was basically just writing songs, recording records and playing shows. That was really awesome, but it was interesting to me how Pip did everything DIY when she was starting out. She seemed very grown up and in control, which I admired. I tried to mimic her process and got a lot of advice from her starting out with Personal Trainer.
I think she writes very catchy and cool songs. I’ve heard new stuff that’s not out yet and it’s only getting better…
Keep your eyes peeled for more Pip Blom.
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Lmnop
When Personal Trainer started, I solely wanted it to be a live act. Casper van der Lans convinced me to make it into a “studio project” too and we’ve been building the songs from my demos up since.
I’m amateurish, quite sloppy and not very organised when it comes to recording, but I think Casper really elevates the recordings to proper productions. He really throws himself into the work while maintaining his precise method of working, all with a great ear for the bigger picture!
He prefers the term “sound engineer” over “producer”, so I guess he sound-engineered some of my favourite recent Dutch albums, such as The Homesick’s ‘The Big Exercise’, Petersburg’s ‘Show’ and last double single, and the last Steve French record ‘Dogs’. He used to play bass in Personal Trainer, Pip Blom and Torii. He puts out records himself too. First under the name Lance Hoot, but he recently changed the name of the project to lmnop. He’s going to start playing his music live in the future accompanied by members from another great Dutch band, a fungus.
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Petersburg
Camiel Muiser was the drummer in one of my first bands Palooby Shakira Donkers. Around the time that band broke up he was working on the first Petersburg Orderer record Proved News. A very intense lo-fi record. He changed the name to Petersburg for the awesome record show after that.
They are one of my favourite live bands from Amsterdam. On stage, Camiel is joined by Jilles van Kleef, who is also in a great Amsterdam band called Global Charming (who call their own music deconstructed rock, which I think might apply to Petersburg show even more!), Boris de Klerk, with whom I was in a band called Canshaker Pi, and Erik van der Paardt, who owns the rehearsal space/studio Erik’s House, where I worked on our record ‘Big Love Blanket’ most of the time.
They don’t play that often, but when they do it’s great! It feels really visceral and dynamic and the band breaths as a whole. The melodies are catchy and the rhythms are wild! Again, amazing drummer!
They put out a two song record – check out Petersburg.
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The Klittens
The Klittens actually live all over the place, but I think most of them live in Amsterdam. They are a great band with a lot of songs that I really like. Their biggest release yet is a short record or a long EP called ‘Citrus’.
All members of the band write songs. My favourite ones are ‘Canned Air’ and ‘Benson’. I’m a big fan of guitar player Winnie Conradi’s riffs – they’re mean, catchy, simple and bad-ass. They were also the first band on the first night I ever put on shows. It was at Helicopter, which is a rehearsal space in Amsterdam. Our percussion player Kilian and I would film or set up camera’s every time I organised band nights there and the lovely people of IJland Studio would record the shows, so that we could make live videos.
We had some of the bands mentioned above, as well as UK bands like Bull, Sports Team and Swine Tax. You can watch some of these sessions and more stuff we made over at www.theindustry.nl
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Personal Trainer’s debut album ‘Big Love Blanket’ is out on November 4th.
PHOTO CREDIT: MARIEKE HULZINGA
