I wrote the following text after listening to – and watching – the latest episode of the podcast DIAL NITS, “Little Red Roses”, a podcast by Eric Facon and Darren Hayne – celebrating fifty years of Nits – which comes highly recommended.

The “Flat” World of Nits

The sixteenth shape is a flatland

Thank you, Eric, for this wonderful movie featuring the visual world of Nits! What a fantastic story!

When will anyone in this great historical city of Amsterdam – with its many museums and galleries – finally take on the long overdue project of organising an exhibition of the work of this artist (couple: Henk Hofstede and Riemke Kuipers) and band who are rooted and have been living in this city for most of their life and worked tirelessly and in all modesty creating a complex, multifaceted artistic oeuvre (which is still growing), mostly in the shadow of “mainstream culture”?! Especially since these artists have built over the years an impressive soundtrack and visual tribute to this city and its nature, streets, people and buildings, to the wider geographical and historical scene surrounding Amsterdam, to this flat country itself of water and clouds that is called The Netherlands, and to its embeddedness in a European world.

In my very first text about Nits I wrote about their “musical wanderlust reflecting an inquisitive mind and an insatiable appetite for the kinetics of an always receding horizon”. Indeed it’s the little rowing boat in the video of In the Dutch Mountains that keeps on going always in the same direction. Yes their country is flat and we can hear that in more than one way in their musical creations. I translated it as an “unclutteredness”, a limpidity which might be one of the most striking characteristics of the music of Nits. A tidiness almost. The list of songs that manifest this uncluttered appearance is endless: from their latest album I’d cite The Tree and Month of May, Mantelpiece from the previous album – amongst many other songs … Blue Things, One eye Open, In a Play, Two Skaters, The Bauhaus Chair, Boy In a Tree … 

This element is everywhere really! The view in the songs is a wide openness that stretches out endlessly. Nits always played with silence and open spaces in their music, they always leave room for the air, the wind, the light to play freely in their songs. I didn’t agree though with the person who analysed the In the Dutch Mountains video, stating that what Nits first of all show us are some well- known clichés of the Dutch landscape. Nits don’t start from clichés in my opinion. What they show us is a thoroughly lived-in world, their world, the streets, landscapes, water and houses where they grew up; a world they are most intimately connected with and which they cherish. Of course these elements might be seen as clichés by outsiders, but it is not the way Nits build their universe. It’s more about familiarity and closeness, about a home-environment that is very dear to them and which they refuse to treat as a simple cliché. But yes, it’s “Once Upon A Time in The Netherlands”. When you listen to their music, you’ll hear its stunning freshness, its candour, humour and fun and its relatedness to everything that’s out there in the big wide world. 

Nits play with their world in their music, they play with the lines of the landscape, they play with the shapes, colours and forms of everything in their world. In the video of In the Dutch Mountains they play with water, they play water games – as I wrote in a previous text called “Jeux d’Eau” -, like the Tinguely fountain in Basel. Movement – on the bike, in the rowing boat … – becomes a form of play, music becomes a fantasy play. Their visual creations are also manifestations of an intelligent play with the elements that make up a world. Water brings with it clarity and reflection, two major elements of their musical and lyrical world. Image and sound are part of the same game. A game of the imagination. The world and the way it is represented in art, often take centre stage in the work of Nits.

Another aspect that might correspond to the flatness of the landscape lines might be the “groundedness” of their music. There is often a tremendous equanimity and balance emanating from their songs. They don’t sink into the deep depths of despair or depression, neither do they boast a screaming peak of elation or exuberance. Their music is full of joy, yes, of an enjoyment of life that is lived to the fullest in a harmonious way, no excesses and with a remarkable even-temperedness even in times of worry. In the aftermath of the disaster of the destruction of their musical home, the album that sings their loss and grief is calm, poised and tries to focus on the beauty of its expression. What ensues is a most subtle and profound, complex rendering of an emotional state in its many aspects. Nits are masters in the simplicity of evoking complex emotions; an understated elegance they never leave behind… 

I hear this same understated beauty in the piano soundtrack performed by Stefan Horlitz, a light, undisturbed fluidity of water and other natural elements taking over in Under a Canoe.

Schopenhauer was right when he named mountains as one of nature’s expressions of “The Sublime”. He defines the sublime as something grand, as something of immense beauty, that transcends us as human beings, but this sublime entity always has an element of danger in it for us humans. The sublime might scare us in its grandness, make us aware of our infinite smallness. In my case, in regard to those mountains, the statement that we always seem to long for what we don’t have, doesn’t apply. I was born in “het vlakke land” of Flanders, be it in a slightly more hilly part not far from Brussels, but I’m very happy in these Lowlands and I don’t feel comfortable at all surrounded by mountain sides. I feel that the music of Nits displays a sort of safe haven amidst this endless flat scenery, where the only mountains around are imaginary ones. I feel safe in their music; I know it won’t make me fall down from a cliff or into an abyss. It makes me feel good and calm. Everything is nicely and evenly balanced out so to speak, it’s a meaning of the word “flat” we usually don’t associate with it. Flat is considered boring or monotonous, but I don’t agree. It offers an openness which I cherish. A state of equilibrium. In a way this flatness might have been exactly what they needed: a white canvas … from which most of their albums originated. In these flatlands Nits seem to possess a stable, firm and unwavering foundation which somehow manifests itself in their music. Nothing seems to get them out of balance, grounded as they are in an instance of Bodenständigkeit that the landscape set up for them. Nits adopt the patience of the landscape. The Sublime is left untouched as it should be, approached with awe. It is recreated in the imagination, from a distance… In return Nits create us an enchanted everydayness … with a peaceful outlook that stretches endlessly …

The artwork on the cover of their latest album “Tree House Fire” summarises everything beautifully. The whiteness and then the little forms in different colours in a horizontal line – the straight line of the rowing boat – extending and reaching out into an endless white space of memory.

Joke Roelandt, November 2024