On the occasion of the release of the vinyl album of dA dA dA

A Little Bedtime Story about a Blue Butterfly and his Friends

It’s sort of strange that no-one else mentioned it – we got to see a few cute photos of the vinyl release of dA dA dA – but the texture and feel of the remarkably sweet and much-treasured cover of this album are pretty exceptional too. Such a well-cared-for release! The cover almost has the real look and feel of a wooden toy, you don’t believe me, but really it has. I couldn’t stop touching it, when I unpacked it from the dull bol.com-box. And it has a pretty, nice-to-the-touch paper insert with the lyrics and credits and some lovely photos. And when you open it, you get that tender picture where Nits on one side – all dressed in black and barefoot – are pulling a rope, with a little, blond kid in white underwear on the other side. So as a mere object, the album is already well worth owning. Our sense of touch can also take us back… What do you listen out for when everything is quiet?

I have always loved this album and it hasn’t stopped working its charm on me. Right from the opening notes of the title song dA dA dA, which always make me feel so very nostalgic. The instrumentation of this song really moves me, I don’t know why exactly, but it does. I think it’s the very warm keyboard sound of Robert Jan and the cushioned bass undertones on which the melody cascades to the depth of childhood souvenirs; it sounds like the nostalgia of wood, of first steps of tiny feet on wooden floor boards, on the swinging, wobbling movements of a rocking horse. It must be the sound of memories. As a child I was very fond of my toys, I created little worlds with my Fisher-Prize toys, which had everything you need in small sizes, I liked playing with the wooden figures of mamas, papas, children and animals in their colourful plastic houses. I liked putting these little creatures all in long lines one after the other and then they would make their way through the landscape of seats and houses, chairs and buildings which I had neatly set out for them, all of them patiently taking one step at a time… The butterfly, the bird, the ladybug and the duck make me relive these imaginative walks of my wooden toys through a makeshift world of plastic furnishings that I had carefully laid out for them: 1, 2, 3, 4,… I never got bored doing this (but my sister, well, she found it rather dull after a while…). The whole album seems to defend this sort of innocence of making your way through your own world, with imagination, hope, optimism, despite all the bad things you might encounter on your path. Sometimes it’s hard to live in the real world and we long to return to the simple, coloured wooden blocks and figures of childhood days.

The sound of the album is pretty cheerful, hopeful, like the beginning of beautiful days, of falling in love, of starting a family, of happy, adventurous travels. Even the darkest of songs “Mourir avant quinze ans” – where there is no sound or vibration of childhood left – starts off with a pleasant enough walk through a peaceful town on a soft rhythmic pace of footsteps. I especially like the playfulness of sounds on this album, with all sorts of unusual little instruments making an entrance through the generously helping hands of Peter Meuris and Martin Bakker. They made for a very welcome addition to the three-man core of Nits, which resulted in a dense, rich and detailed, mainly percussive sound as the equivalent of the passing, the galloping away of time. In “Whales of Tadoussac” – one of my favourites on this album – even the string instruments do their utmost best at sounding percussive… It’s the spring-in-your-step, enthused rhythm of youthfulness that permeates the whole album. It’s the clicking sound of wooden figures fitting in their carved-out frames or the domino-rhythm of different shapes and forms. Despite the darkness, we remain at play in our world, fabricating pleasant universes out of coloured matter of sound. Using our hands and feet, fingers that make the most evident movements of tapping, caressing, touching, like they taught us when we were the smallest of creatures. Music is still all that, finding your way through rhythm, and every note in its rightful place, where it belongs. And even when we get it right, even when we play with the brightest and sharpest of colours, the sweetest of forms, melancholy will pop up, way before its due time. It’s the fate, but also the beauty of every melody, you want it to repeat itself endlessly, but, eventually, it ends in the silence of empty forms and last notes that find no companion, not a butterfly, bird, ladybug or little duck left… That’s exactly what this album feels like: being melancholic far too soon. Already as a young girl I could sense the melancholy in music, it was what drew me towards it. Music to me was indeed like the day and the night all in one. It makes for a girl whose smiles and tears will always be entwined in the deep sorrow of life itself, who can dance on dreams and mourns for Romeo and Juliet. As life goes on…At night, sometimes, I still like to cuddle up in bed with my old teddybear… the softly rocking echo of dA dA dA in my head… the sound of never wanting to say goodbye to a dearly remembered childhood time.

Joke Roelandt, November 2019