So, You Don’t Want To Be Cute Anymore

51 Shapes of Nits: The 36th shape are the Aloha Drums

When you look at their catalogue in hindsight Nits had in fact already started reshaping the sound of pop music on their album NEW FLAT. With oddities like “His First Object” (a favourite of mine!) and “Zebra” which were almost like sound-objects in the literal sense where the sounds almost shape the dimensions of a thing or of the position the musician finds himself in, with directional lines and points and closed off spaces, the creation of a three-dimensional world in the fourth dimension of time. I suppose it wasn’t a “Nits-cute” album like the many that would follow in the decades to come. But it was a remarkable album to say the least. And I probably would have never given the song “Aloha Drums” the attention that it deserved had it not been for the live version of the NEW FLAT song during one of the concerts I attended. It literally blew me off my feet and I haven’t stopped talking and writing about it since. Of course the fact that Nits coupled it to the Beatles song “Tomorrow never knows” contributed to my devotion to this twin performance and it only confirmed my conviction that there was never another band that matched the pop genius of The Beatles and their constant creation of perfect-sounding, meaningful and shapely songs of both beauty and characterfulness, like Nits. Without, of course, remaining only a “traditional pop or rock band”, like so many other bands did. With the REVOLVER song “Tomorrow never knows” The Beatles expanded the realm of pop and rock into “shapes and sounds and colours looming over and above one and zooming in and out of a monotonous drone”. These are the words of Tony Hall in 1966, a music critic who was startled about the novelty of the REVOLVER song and all that it would change for the next generations of popular music makers.

Already the title of the song “Aloha Drums” had always puzzled me. There didn’t seem to be any particular focus on the drums in the song musically – not more than usual anyway, except for the beginning maybe – which I often thought odd given the title. We get to hear some strange electronic “sissing” sounds, mean, hissing noises as if coming from a snake. (These sounds will return much later on “Neon” and on their latest album). As a listener you have no idea really where the sound is coming from, where it originates or what it could mean – Robert Jan even turns his back on the audience saying “mind your own business, this is just between the sound carrier and me”. As if your awareness of the music was being reduced to hearing alone, without the instruments that are responsible for the sounds being present or being seen, as if they were announcing something secretive, foreboding the arrival of something out of the ordinary. Almost like an acousmatic sound experience which could not be any closer to the phenomenological approach to sound. I mean like when you hear the noise of a car outside e.g. you will immediately define that sound as coming from a car, it is almost impossible to make abstraction from the idea that the sounds you hear are coming from a car. Here on “Aloha Drums” the sounds just move in some kind of a void – that feels like it could suck in and make the music disappear at any moment – which accidentally was also the title that was given at first to the song “Tomorrow never knows” but then was dropped. A state of emptiness where music doesn’t seem to refer to anything else but pure consciousness. That is what “Aloha Drums” sounds like to me, and of course that is also the meaning behind the Beatles song inspired by the transition from life and death via the intermediate state of “bardo” into rebirth. Ancient Indian philosophy coupled to the novelty of electronics, where the studio becomes a crucial element in the shaping of new sounds, forms, shapes, movements and colours in music.

It also happens to be a wonderful song to dance to and practice your Indian moves and poses in a meditative state of arousal.

Henk Hofstede is shouting out the words “Aloha Drums” into the distance as if wanting to wake up some dormant spirits. And then the instruments of Nits introduce their brother-song ever so reverently, humbly, making way for an explosion of never-heard-before, musical spirits.

This state of being – where you surrender to the void, in a detached form of consciousness – is really quite the opposite of the philosophical attitude of the music and lyrical universe of Nits which are all precisely about being-in-this-world. This tandem of Nits and Beatles however is just sublime and the combination of these two great songs always makes me smile. Yes, the irony of it all, the contradictions, the differences … and yet these two songs blend perfectly into one. This “snake-sound” is not cute, it is exactly what Bob Dylan remarked when The Beatles let him listen to “Tomorrow never knows”: “Oh I get it, you don’t want to be cute anymore”.

And still, when you listen more closely and take into account the meaning of the word “Aloha”, you get these other meanings of some kind of energy – maybe the energy of the drums – that holds the whole of the experience of existence together, a positive energy that promotes connection between all who live in this world, with nature, adding even a spiritual dimension to the experience of living, the mystery of what cannot be seen. It entails the notions of surrendering, harmony, kindness and patience. Heard this way the Aloha drums experience of Nits comes very close to this multiple-sounds experimentation on ancient religious philosophies mixed with western studio effects of “Tomorrow never knows”. The unity of music and consciousness beautifully metaphorised in these twin songs of pop masters. It was a good idea of Nits to take us out of this world for a moment, away from the tables and the chairs. And when tomorrow is gone, the snake sneakily retreats to where it came from. No idea where that is, where music comes from …

Maybe the drums could give us a clue … Those ancient and wise instruments, connecting heaven and earth. But in the end the music is indeed sucked in by The Void.

This is one of the most revelatory albeit unacknowledged moments in pop music history! If you haven’t seen it live, you missed out on something extraordinary!

Joke Roelandt, June 2025