The North Of Existence: Two Skaters

For those who feel like thinking about one of the most essential Nits songs …

A perfect antidote to the excesses and extravagance of the festivities of this time of the year is Nits’ Two Skaters. A wonderful song of inwardness and sobriety. I wonder if there’s a more brilliant winter song than this one? Such a young band creating such an immensely mature song. Existentialism in a musical form: a musical observance of individual expressions of one’s own existence.

Nits is a uniquely individual band. And “individuality outruns classification” William James wrote. Yes, where would one classify this exceptional band?! Two Skaters is perhaps Nits’ most existential song, filled with a strange sense of angst. One skater falling to the ground, the presence of “the gun”, the quiet suspense in the music, all these elements are experienced as threatening the white peaceful landscape of snow in winter. How we experience the world …Nits are masters of this sort of analysis of the place of the self in the world, the self’s relation to its world, moving on a slippery icecream floor. Meaning of the world lies in the subjectivity of experiencing the world. In this sense Nits are following in the footsteps of the Danish philosopher and existentialist thinker Soren Kierkegaard. This winter landscape of Two Skaters carrying the heavy weight of existence … Nits understand perfectly that to be human means to be concrete, to be this person here and now. They pursued this thread of the individual throughout the whole of their work. Fragile, existentialist music. Two people advancing through what seems like a monotone eternity that for ever repeats itself until the drama unfolds… The expressiveness of this song is unreal.

But the gun is not real.

Joke Roelandt, December 2023