Massaging the Drum: The Sensuality of Nits.

Nits aren’t considered as being sexy. As you might have noticed most members of this group (Nitsfans) are male; female adoration was never their fate. Henk, Rob and Robert Jan aren’t exactly known for their sex appeal (correct me, ladies (and gentlemen), if I’m wrong…). It’s one of those things that confines them to their very lonely position in the world of pop music. Their music is more often sensual and has, almost never, a sexual undertone. It goes together with the more subtle, veiled nature of their music, with more of a cerebral, introvert character to it, rather than being of a physical, outgoing and direct nature. But make no mistake, their music is most often of a very sensuously pleasurable kind; Nits are masters of touch, of patient, loving caresses. In the way they view the world, their chosen objects, places and people are always approached with a tender sensuousness. They look around, listen, taste, smell and touch in a loving way. Their attitude towards their surroundings is one of respect, admiration and wonder. It’s full of a sort of love that embraces all things, everything and everyone, and does not know of heartbreak and evil. It’s not the type of love though which is the number one obsession of pop music, with its strong sexual connection. No, the Nits universe often resembles a “childlike”, ingenuous, innocent pre-love world without all the well-known complications of the sexual kind of love. It’s the sweetness of a love for a world in its entirety, a love that is not individualised yet, not restricted, not exclusive, but not a “free” love either. Wandering around in the Nits world, I get this sensation of a happy embracing of our surroundings. When you listen to their music, it almost feels like walking around in a tender, love-filled universe, seeing and experiencing things that make you happy and that make you fall in love with a whole world. With Nits, love is in the symbiotic relationship they form with nature, with their surrounding world full of objects, people, art, and with music of course. The only downside of this love being melancholy… I think it is precisely this remarkable and exceptional vision of love (certainly in the pop universe) that could explain the absence of an erotic sexuality in the music and lyrics that constitute the Nits world.

In their music Nits seem to be more preoccupied by their relationship with their Lebenswelt as a whole; they adhere to or create a romantic, imaginative picture of the world which is suffused with all the sensibilities of an artist who wants to portray his idiosyncratic impressions in his work of art. As such Nits are not exclusively or strictly musicians: in their music they assemble all sorts of sense impressions, which is rather unique in the melting pot of the always more and more standardised and uniform canon of pop. It makes their music fresh, vibrant, young and lifelike; it’s as if you are transported into a world of colours and forms, with honey smells of flowers and sweet tastes of strawberries on your tongue, a world that breathes and moves slowly with you, music that opens your eyes with its crystalline sounds and wise and playful rhythms. A beautiful naivety reigns. The girls and women portraits signed by Henk are always shrouded in a mysterious distance and often moulded more from the perspective perhaps of a family man, a father figure even, rather than a lover, or shaped by the observant, contemplating eye of a painter who studies his model in her way of moving around in her world. You could even detect a sense of worship and the shyness of a young inexperienced man in his way of writing about women. Most of all maybe, you can feel that he is moved by them. Very refreshing in the pop scene… It reminds me of the way old masters painted women, perhaps like Johannes Vermeer did long ago, with a polite distance and a subtly expressed fascination.

And you’ll never come across a more attentive, passionate, tender and imaginative drum lover than Rob…

I think Nits were at their sexiest on the Wool album, with many girls around on stage for a change, female voices that sounded like smiles and giggles or sultry, caring, tender whispers and the music having this very sensuous, almost seductively feminine vibe to it. Henk’s performance of songs like “Angel of Happy Hour” and “The Strawberry Girl” on the DVD recording of Wool shows this more sensual side of him he certainly possesses. The seriousness in his concentration sometimes broken by a cracking or tender smile (the koala-faces smile on “The Strawberry Girl” – check it out!) can melt our hearts for sure, but in a more delicately sensitive way, the fire-in-my-head sort of way. A music where the heart and mind will always be closely connected… Nits’ world is more one of Ice Princesses than of Roxannes.

The beauty we encounter through our senses is probably one of the main instigators of the overwhelming mood of melancholy we can experience at times. “How can I see you there – with your pretty face and your pretty eyes” … without feeling blue…?

Joke Roelandt, February 2020