The Sky And The River And The Sea – These Are A Few Of Nits’s Favourite Things

50 Shapes of Nits: The 23rd shape is the Blue Thing

The first text that I wrote about the album Malpensa was titled “Nits Descending”. I chose the title for many reasons. Perhaps in the first place because of the song “Minus Second Floor”, where Nits were literally descending into some kind of “underworld” with this little parable of a love in danger, referring to Virgil’s or Ovid’s epos telling the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. A subdued love tale. In fact the word love appears quite a lot on the album Malpensa; the album is far more romantic than you might think. If you listen closely … Perhaps somewhat unexpectedly – after almost forty years of making music – the desire to write about love grew a little stronger. And of course there was Italy and Castel Burio …

Secondly there is Henk’s voice sometimes descending to a lower register as on “Love Locks” and “Five Fingers”. Nits often seem to use the image of descending from somewhere: someone once told me that the words “falling down or fall down” appear very often in the lyrics of Henk Hofstede; the rain or snow … or even something falling down … or someone falling (down) … In one of their most iconic songs “Two Skaters” one of the skaters famously fell on the ground … And remember the lost button of the shirt fell on the ground too and rolled away like a trail leading to the Dutch Mountains. And lest we forget, the vertigo brought on by the Eiffel Tower resulted in their most beautiful song making its way down to the streets of Paris … a city we enter again on Malpensa: the city of light and love.

Maybe it’s just the fear of the boy in a tree … afraid of falling down …

“Man on a Wire” is of course full of this idea, this fear of falling down. “I’m not a bird”, Henk Hofstede writes, “I will fall like a stone”. The shirt once waving in the wind is falling down. The man on a wire looking like an orange beetle seen from down below in the street, just a small orange thing. And whoever is up there – on a wire or in a tree – wants to be left alone for a while with his hopes and dreams. The Schwebebahn is balancing over river and valley, for the time of a short trip, lifting us up from the ground. And the title of the album of course referring to an airport in the city of Milan, planes taking off and descending … making their way into the sky and then down again to the ground. “And I don’t wanna fall …”

It’s all just like the simple movement of music: ascending or descending, the words of the songs just wanting to follow the imaginary flying movements of the musical lines. Very simple and straightforward, that’s the way Nits like things, be they orange things or blue things or music.

At times – here on Malpensa – we get the impression that things are somewhat precarious in the Nits world and the world that is surrounding them. There’s the rumble of the big black boats on restless waters, the grey wilderness of The Poor, the Egyptian girl on Tahrir Square, a love and a country that seem lost for good. Nevertheless the lyre of Nits still enchants us with its lovely tunes. And when Orpheus – of whom was said that no one or nothing could resist his wonderful melodies – took up his lyre once more and composed “Blue Things”, all seemed to be well again for a moment in the land of rivers and meadows, between the skies and the seas. This beautiful love song if ever there was one, perfectly unites the love for world and the love for one person in the typical Hofstede way. Our Orpheus has a river in his spine.

He will do it all over again in another love song called “The Tree” where love of nature and love for his wife mingle seamlessly into one beautiful, total composition in music, not unlike the Spinozist feeling of love, where all aspects of nature are embraced by an all-encompassing love. The changing seasons, the changing colours, the water flowing, sometimes freezing, sometimes falling down from the sky like rain or snow …. and yet this one love for ever there.

“Schwebebahn” starts off the simple way too, with some borrowed ping-pong electronics of a Trio who wanted to simplify their sound (“Da Da Da” could have been an inspiration too). But Nits added the gorgeous melodies of Orpheus … and the love stories that stood the test of time. “Deine Stimme – Mein Himmel”. Whichever elements you give Orpheus to work with, he will turn them into the most wonderful, magical musical fantasies: electronics, synthesisers, loops, whatever bearer or producer of sound, Nits will make it work. A warm and sunny Italian setting, a cooler German atmosphere, or an old Dutch recording studio, the ways of Nits are unpredictable.

On Malpensa Nits even created their own “Bolero” – the one written by Maurice Ravel – …, sort of… “Bad Government and Its Effects on Town and Country” has a very similar drive and energy, especially after the trumpet sets in and makes the song’s energy rise and soar into ever more dense and intense constructions. It has a kindred insisting, interrogative progression. In the end it almost sounds like some sort of machinery, the song unfolds into a near-mechanical production process that unwinds itself into a climactic extrication of relief. Quite impressive really! It holds some sort of madness or danger or threat in it which is in a complete contrast with the innocent purity of “Blue Things”. The same menace occurs in “Big Black Boats” with its purple skies and orange clouds. This lively, vivacious song of both hope and despair is invested with almost violent emotions by the drums. Threatening skies full of black birds, the colours of danger – orange, red and purple – seem to be induced by the feverish sound of the drums. A maddening rhythm. The heavy unrest of the drums in stark contrast with the softly whispering rhythm of snow flakes falling down in the blue song, where rhythm bestows rest and a carefree predictability which reassures us, like the sun breaking through the clouds after the rain stops. In “Blue Things” we can find a perfect beacon of quietude and ease, where Nits like to rest and ponder about life and world. Sometimes on Malpensa Nits are a wild orchestra of world, sometimes a calm and peaceful orchestra of nature, sometimes a reflective orchestra of love.

Nits are most certainly romantics of the understated feeling, here on Malpensa once more …

Malpensa alternately thrives and reposes on the dynamics of the beating heart (from empathy to anger)and the uncertainties of love.

But in the end Nits will always return to the basics: to the pure forms and colours and to love … all in the light of music. “I went out this morning to paint a tree”… Nits are like paper, white paper, with every album starting anew. Whether love never dies, I don’t know, but we need to keep it alive in one form or another in order to live. That is the one constant in the work of Nits: a love for the world in whatever way this expresses itself.

Joke Roelandt, February 2025