51 Shapes of Nits: The forty-third shape is the bird

“I Have Tried In My Way To Be Free”

After Nits created the Tree, they created the Bird. The tree and the bird were the things that sparked the light of hope after the fire. Indeed, “Hope is the thing with feathers”, Emily said.

They weren’t new of course to the world of Nits; their lyricist is also known as the boy in the tree and as “Vogelman”, which translates as Birdman. And birds are hiding everywhere in the italic forest created by the words of Nits. Nature’s elements, the water and air, wind and rain, sky and trees have always been an essential part of the Nits world. I suppose the bird is one of the freest creatures alive in this world and its movements the lightest of all. So it’s not surprising that the birdman is the alter ego of Henk Hofstede.The lyricist of Nits moves swiftly as a citybird along the streets and pavements of towns, looking up at the trees and the clouds, swinging his arms in the air like a bird spreading its wings to fly out into the skies. In short, one could argue that the music of Nits wants to be like the experience of living in the world, their music wants to be as near to the living and breathing world as possible. We hear this, no?, constantly, through the years of the many albums, a time of music as light as a feather, the moments of a fresh now always in the making, a being-in-time always spontaneously celebrated and faithfully recorded. Like the impromptu of a bird. The lightness of a musical being in time. Wandering through its world. With optimism, a sense of duty and hope … and a lovely song at every dawn and dusk. That is what Nits sound like.

Their drummer and percussionist is of course one of the pivotal components of this lightness of time playing. The set-up and arrangement of the drums and percussion tools of Rob could be described indeed as that same tree of Nits that steadies, roots and guides the music of Nits through the many moments of a life time in sound. The bass drum as a trunk deeply rooted into the earth and then this array of branches spreading out from it, with moving, shivering leaves, each with its own colour and timbre of sound. When you observe Rob Kloet at his drum set it is like following the movements of a bird on the different branches of a tree, lightly hopping from one onto another, with fantasy and sprightliness, sometimes even a little mischief. Rob too is a boy or a bird in the tree. Overlooking, sensing and shaping the landscape of the music. “Looking at the world through the eyes of a bird”, Henk sings in “The Eiffel Tower”. Each beat like a moment in time of awareness. Martin Heidegger gave a name to this particular way of conscious being of mankind; he called it Dasein and it is exactly what these light touches of the drum evoke at every stroke: the Da of Sein, the being there in the here and now, our consciousness awakened at every beat. I heard Pim Kops (in the latest episode of DIAL NITS) describe this as a sort of fresh invention at every moment and that is indeed what this subtle way of drumming brings forth. It is not only an “invention” of the moment, but also an “intention” of the moment, creating this exceptional intentionality in the drumsound of Rob Kloet where the beat behaves as an associative moment in time, very fresh and imaginative. I wrote about this many years ago in a text that I called “A little Philosophy of the Drum” which was inspired of course by the drum work of the Nits percussionist. This intentionality of the moment that is so characteristic of the patient way of music making of Nits is perhaps the most peculiar characteristic of their music. It is one of these things that turns their music into a true specimen of phenomenology. An easy example to make this a little clearer is the song “Ting”: while waiting, the lyricist and musicians observe what happens in every moment with a keen sense of anticipation and intention … the raindrop falling …ting ting …. here comes the child … the miracle of the birth of a child while the couple is waiting at the bus stop which is described like a nativity scene with a donkey and a bull … the miracle of the birth of each song … in a moment of patience, observation, trust and intentionality. A wonderful, unique way that Nits have adopted to shape their music in an act of intentional freedom – did you ever notice the way in which Henk Hofstede touches the triangle in “Ting”, with a smile of wonder and conviction expressing the intention of his movement and the importance that he thus lends this tiny instrument. The moment in which each sound is created almost feels like a sacred instance of a perpetual joy of living. It is just pure fun, this ongoing discovery of sound and melody in the here and now. Their genius does the rest; it structures their awareness into a perfect musical intuition. Their musical forms and shapes just seem to come naturally. There is always something so alive present in the music of Nits, in tune with the rhythm and sensibilities of our senses; it is perceptive, attentive and focussed which is a rare quality in pop music. Musical time is something precious for Nits that they handle with care. They move through it, a past, a present and a future, carefully entangling their music with their being-in-the-world and all that this involves. Music instruments become phenomenological tools.

Another obvious example is the song “Jardin d’Hiver”. The music is so attentive to the tiniest movement that it detects, to everything that happens and lies still around it, in a constant dialogue with what surrounds it and almost completely coinciding with it. Remarkable! It is a spontaneously occurring attentiveness of the musicians to all that surrounds their Dasein which is naturally directed to everything outside itself, to the “outside world”, the space where the music originates and takes its shapes and forms from. Their musical consciousness is directed to World. In the subtlest way possible.

“It’s a rainy day in a rainy town – In this heart of mine in this heart of mine – Cloud in my head and my head in a cloud – In this heart of mine”. There is that rain and cloud and air again … right at the centre of the lyricist’s being, in his heart. Rain, train, cloud and car, wind and air all move straight through the music, in a direct connection between music and world. This world that moves so indifferently through time, if it weren’t for the music.

The snowy owl, the black woodpecker, the spotted flycatcher and the lesser whitethroat, you probably don’t know where they all are hiding. They live in a world of water and rain, trees, rivers and lakes, a little universe where just one toe in the water can lead you to. This is the bright world of Nits where the night owl in a dark procession of sounds creates a song so vivid with sensations, so alive with the melancholy that resides in our Dasein, so utterly beautiful that it almost converges with all the joy and sorrow that living in this world entails.

“All the birds in the waving tree – Look down and they sing for me”… These are the birds that Nits aspire to be…

Joke Roelandt, November 2025