Nits as Curators of a World: a Music Museum of Life (Part 1)

The fifteenth shape is a mirror

Now wouldn’t it be splendid to have an exhibition in a gallery or a museum of a selection of the artwork, paintings, drawings, videos and photographs made by Henk Hofstede during the past fifty years or so?! While a playlist with some of the music of Nits and solo work of their frontman would resound through the rooms. What an experience that would be … But just like those collections of famous objects in movies or of stage props of theatre plays, there could also be a room dedicated to all the different objects – everyday ones and artistic objects by well-known artisans from the art world – that Nits collected in hundreds of songs and which they carefully staged in their music as curators of a museum would. Or works of artists that Nits cherish and whom they gave a place in a song. This is not just a one-time thing, no it happens a lot. Nits are on a constant journey through world and they register everything, they take notes and incorporate what they see into their music. The songs become a stage or a display cabinet full of treasures not just brought back from trips away from home, but little, familiar things too get lots of attention in the little plays that are enacted in their music. Of course their presence in the work of Nits is not one of mere objects that look pretty or intriguing. With Nits these “things” are a way of life and they become a way of music too. The material world of colours, forms and shapes, of textures and materials becomes the building block of the music of Nits.
“So come and take a walk with me  – I’ll show you my reality and all the things I like to see” Henk Hofstede sings on one of the songs of their debut album. “Fantasies and Factories”  gives away from early on in their career that Henk Hofstede will take us on a guided tour of his world all throughout the songs that Nits will write. So let’s look around in this world of music…
Their first object would be the Philips Transistor Radio of course that dangles from the hand of someone wearing a shirt with flowers on it. I like the cover of this very first album: it shows portable music, music that you can take with you everywhere you go, music that you can touch as it were, music close at hand. Music that travels through the world with you. Music that will explore a world from close by. The transistor radio as a metaphor for music as a portable object, that goes with you anyplace anytime you want and where everything fits in and comes together nicely as one. So much so that music will become a home to house all sorts of recollections of memories, of people and places and objects alike. Music as a gateway to the world.

On what is generally considered as the definitive start of Nits – the album Tent – Henk Hofstede has also definitely begun collecting “objects”. A tent first of all and an umbrella – Michiel Peters will soon realise that in the world of Nits a whole army of umbrellas might come in handy … – and a bungalow, all things that he certainly will be needing in the rainy Nits world he is creating. Music is mimetic with Nits, just like the act of painting can be in an artist’s world. The song “Sunday Painter” about the artist from the rainy north of `England L. S. Lowry, makes a beautiful connection between the two worlds of music and painting, where the image of the umbrella resurfaces. Just like the radio, the umbrella is one of these Nits objects that tie different worlds together in an evident simplicity that is both enchanting and almost like an unsuspected statement of intent. In the painted world of L.S. Lowry umbrellas abound. In another Hofstede song of Tent a communist war scene is being staged at a ping pong table. A mountain, a river and a typhoon are exactly the kind of actors that will set the Nits scene for years to come. I’ve always loved the ping pong song and not only because I love playing the game too. Its portrayal of this world in war in a concrete setting of a yellow river and golden bamboos and fighters wearing red-star caps, in combination with the ping pong image, is just wonderful and so typical of the way Nits are writing about conflict situations in a very cinematic and almost literary way, like they’ll do a little later on in another war song “`Sketches Of Spain”. This descriptive nature of the words is also imitated I think in the way the music goes about its business: the music of Nits is an observer and a narrator concerned about the details and the inclusive pace of its sounds. The camping site where Tent was set up is full of little stories set in a somewhat dreary suburban world with characters struggling with doubts, uncertainty, unhappiness, boredom, love trouble … but the music is not sharing this struggle, oh no, it is very determined I’d say! It knows what it wants. “Johny Said: Silver”, “Umbrella”, “Hook of Holland” and “Tent” are pieces of wonderful, young music writing where Henk Hofstede is composing pop songs  as if his life depended on it, as is suggested by “The Young Reporter”, the story of a writer of songs. As a whole, the album is a fun endeavour with lots of upbeat, danceable music, the suspense and thrill of creating music is clearly there. Nits have set themselves a challenge and this is just the beginning. The start is euphoric, perhaps not so in the lyrics, but the music surely is feeling confident and sure of where it is going. Right from the start, with the opening rhythm of the title song, you get swooped up by its tight fitting, a music schedule of precision that takes you on a dance lesson to get acquainted with this new young band whose music is ready to conquer your heart. There are raincoats, blazers and razors, Italian shoes and pieces of furniture, a young, new world with a kitchen where a machine is doing the dishes for you (Nits will get back to us about this), swimming pools, a barbecue and frozen food. A music with eight ankles just doing their thing: taking their first steps, resolute and steadfast… with a world literally lying at their feet. 

The intriguing title and sound of the New Flat song “His First Object” devise a teaser where Henk Hofstede seems to play with his fondness of meticulous, carefully shaped songs, sounding like a work-in-progress of a sculptor; an early precursor of their song “A Touch Of Henry Moore”. Nits are clearly fascinated by the act itself of designing and making music. New Flat also remains a builder’s world, where solid foundations are laid down. Their early music here on the album New Flat sounds like a very physical form of labour, of exertion, vigorous and quick. The intro of “Different Kitchen” also a sort of foreplay for the Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth get-together. The overall impression is one of a hammering, tapping, incisive sonority of a band that just has started experimenting with and collecting sounds. Anything is possible. A world is opening itself up and Nits select and integrate elements of a daily life in a slightly distorted, ironic and assertive view on music and its own, created reality. What you hear are four very willing, daring and enterprising musicians who take in anything they experience or imagine and mix it up into a musical reality that will soon stand firmly on its own, mirroring a world in its own very special way. There’s the flat – obviously – a villa, an office building, a statue, a kitchen, a terrace, a hotel and cinema and a zoo … Stars and planet Mars oversee a world of oceans, water, seas, gulf streams, volcanoes, mountains and even an early sign of the iceberg. Cities, streets, buildings, cars, bikes and almost anything you could be needing in the home including a baby phone. And of course shirts (yellow ones too to match the yellow socks knitted by grandma), suits, shoes, dresses, gloves… 

A world is mirrored in music. Not in a perfect reflection, but in a similar way as artists have used the depiction of a mirror in their paintings, to bring about a more truthful image of a reality or to show things that are otherwise hidden. Or to add a different perspective. It includes a personal reflection on world and the way we perceive it. Music can contribute to shaping a view of the world. This is what we encounter here on these early albums of Nits in an embryonic stage, but it is there very clearly and it will remain and develop itself ultimately into a reflection on life and world. In order to achieve this, Nits will perfect and refine the expressiveness of music into a tool for aligning beauty and meaning …  a tool that will stay close to the skin and close to the ground beneath our feet.  I don’t understand why some consider these first albums as standing apart from the core work of Nits that would develop itself from the mid eighties or so onwards. You can really trace the first signs of the melodic brilliance of Henk Hofstede and of the inventiveness of their sound as a whole. 

The mirror appears in several Nits songs throughout their rich history of looking at themselves through a detour along what’s out there in the world, close by and far away. In “Espresso Girl” Henk Hofstede expresses this idea beautifully in this verse: “My face in the mirror of hotel Krafft – Behind me the boats on the Rhine in Bâle”; he is looking at himself in a reflection that shows both his face and the world around him. A symbolic Nits image as ever there was one. And at the same time a very touching and emblematic moment of melancholy. Mirror is always also a confrontation with what was and what will be. In “Broken Wing”, we meet the traveling “man with the mirror eyes”; our journey through the world is reflected in our eyes. This is a constant theme in the work of Nits. And the mirror is there to hide and to reveal. “Shine us – For mirror we must”, the shoes whisper with their strings in the song “The Infinite Shoeblack”. And just like shoes, music too must mirror … to help us see more clearly… through the rain and snow.

Joke Roelandt, July 2024