Personal Trainer Guide You Through The Dutch Indie Rock Goldmine
Whisper it, but the Netherlands’ music scene is in rude health right now. Each city seems to have its own character and flavour, with a network of DIY communities acting as inter-supportive creative networks. Personal Trainer have emerged from this – the band self-released their debut LP ‘Big Love Blanket’ towards the end of 2022, and promptly became 6Music favourites.
A support slot with BC Camplight brought more UK-centric attention, with pivotal label Bella Union stepping in to support.
Second album ‘Still Willing’ is out now, and it’s a delight – stubborn in its eccentricities, it moves from post-punk abstraction to dulcet melody, refusing to be hemmed in across 10 glorious tracks.
But this is only the surface. Personal Trainer are your guide to some of the bold talents making Dutch guitar music so pivotal right now.
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I Believe In My Mess
This is a project of two members of my dad’s band Scram C Baby (the best band). They mix fun, jammy repetitive instrumentals with found recordings of people talking. Like poems or speeches, self-help type of things, stuff like that. A bit like The Books did, but funkier. It really sounds like two dudes having a blast making music in a basement with good sound. Their record ‘Do Unto Others’ was one of my favorite records of 2022 (2021?), and their second one called ‘Not The First’ (really) is coming out soon I think. I think Gideon Coe, who does a radio show with Marc Riley, who played us a lot, digs them.
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Keenan Mundane
Keenan Mundane is a rapper-producer from the Netherlands. I think he’s from Leiden, or around there somewhere, but I’m not sure to be honest. Very little is known about Keenan Mundane. Some say he can play three guitars at the same time, and he can make glass disappear just by looking at it. I’m pretty sure he produces and writes everything himself, but I’m just guessing really. All I can say with confidence is that all he’s put out to date is made of red hot goo. He supported GZA, Personal Trainer and Danny Brown, and he’s playing with us in Leeds when we throw a party at the Brudenell with Bull on the 26th of August.
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Beatrix
Beatrix are from The Netherlands or from Belgium, depending on how you look at it. No, I think they are from the Netherlands.
…European band with an ear for the good kind of repetition. One of them started the great Dutch punk band Real Farmer. One of them is in The Klittens. Three cool singers with cool melodies. I think they’re good with layering parts and with keeping stuff bare-bones.e I saw them play live with a drum machine and I think they still do that, but I’m not sure. They seem like they’re into real art. I like their EP and I like the design on the cover. The songs ‘Princess’ and ‘Not For Sale’ are my favs.
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Abel Natürlich
Composition wise it’s like Abel Natürlich writes for sport. Like a drunken nerd hammering away behind an e-piano on a stand that he’s balanced on a three inch riser with the left leg, and the stage with the right leg, he’s giving the musicians in the room syncopated winks. All the while he’s singing about the ups and downs of love and life by pointing at the world around him with very simple, fun and honest gestures.
“The Beatles didn’t want your hand, it was the holding itself.”
In one song.
“Jerking off to anything that works; if I can’t be seen I can’t get hurt.”
In another.
“You can act like a king, but you’re not
Gotta work with the powers you’ve got
And if that means you’re a loser, so what
The world needs losers too!”
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Ploegendienst
Another Dutch festival. Backstage. As I sit on my ass and tell my band mates about another Dutch band I hate (no one cares) and throw an empty beer can in the general direction of a trash can with one hand, and crack open a new one with the other, Ray Fuego is doing push-ups three dressing rooms away. He’s getting pumped for his show with Ploegendienst, two or three slots later and better than ours. He needs to completely knock himself out before he gets on stage, so that he really needs a to push himself to give it his all for 50 minutes. He somehow manages to do so without dipping in energy a single second. Ray Fuego is coming for you and me.
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Photo Credit: Tom van Huisstede
