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Today's Artists, would be one of the most widely respected bands in the world today -- at least on par with whip-smart types like XTC. Certainly, few can match their sheer creative stamina: how many other bands can claim to be still reinventing themselves after 40 years and more than 20 albums? But today's artists come from Holland. Furthermore, the occasional tour of the U.S. and Canada aside, they quickly made it clear that their only concession to the big outside world, would be to sing in English. That aside, anyone wanting them to tailor their unique brand of art pop to the demands of a broader audience could go hang. In particular, they specialize in making their latest album sound as little like the last as possible. This has simultaneously guaranteed them a modest degree of success across continental Europe, where fans appreciate their fierce integrity and commitment to playing intimate venues, and denied a lot of people in Britain and America some wonderfully inventive -- and very accessible -- music. Here's your chance ..............N'Joy

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The Nits originally consisted of Henk Hofstede (vocals, guitar), Alex Roelofs (bass), Michiel Peters (guitar) and Rob Kloet (drums). Influenced by British pop music, especially the Beatles, they also incorporated influences from new wave music into their sound. They made their live debut in 1974,[1] and released their self-financed, limited-run debut LP, The Nits, in 1978.[2] This brought them to the attention of Columbia Records, for whom The Nits would continue to record for the next 22 years. Their major-label debut, Tent (1979), carried on the new wave style of The Nits, but was considerably more polished, partly due to the influence of producer Robert Jan Stips. On New Flat (1980) and Work (1981), which made increasing use of synthesisers, "Hofstede reveals a growing aptitude for creating little emotional postcards."

    "The obvious derivativeness on the Nits' early albums could have been written off as cut-rate local flirtation/reassembly of the real thing from Britain and America (Beatles, Talking Heads, etc.). In retrospect, however, those records could be seen as learning experiences of a world-class band now deserving international attention."

In the meantime, the group had been developing their sound on their numerous European tours. Many songs were radically reworked for live performance, a practice the group would continue throughout their career. Between the group's experiments with different arrangements, and the addition of Stips to the line-up, The Nits gradually moved toward a more distinctive musical style, with Kloet playing a wide range of percussion, and Stips' keyboards used to produce a lusher sound. Omsk showcased the new Nits sound with songs like "A Touch of Henry Moore", almost entirely based around Kloet's percussion, and the dramatic hit single "Nescio". The follow-up "Adieu, Sweet Bahnhof" was another hit, but tensions between the group and producer Jaap Eggermont led to the departure of Peters, and a change in the group's working methods. In future, they would produce their own material and bring in guest musicians as required.

The album Henk - which included such classic songs as Bike In Head, Home Before Dark and Port Of Amsterdam - was recorded as a three-piece, after which new bassist Joke Geraets became the first female member of The Nits, completing the line-up that would go on to enjoy commercial success with single and album In the Dutch Mountains (1987). Its title track became a European hit and one of the band's biggest. It was accompanied by a video with just the image of man in a rowing boat. Follow-up J.O.S. Days was a successful single as well. The group's extensive tours during this period led to the accomplished live triple-LP Urk (1989) which became their best-selling album. The live version of Adieu Sweet Bahnhof was released as a single, again accompanied by a video. It became a Top 30 hit for the band in Holland. Urk also featured live versions of songs from Hat, the band's 1988 6-song EP, including popular songs like The Dream, Bauhaus Chair and The Train.
Giant Normal Dwarf, Ting & Hjuvi

When Geraets fell ill with a muscular disease, meaning that she was unable to play bass, the group (now using the shortened name "Nits", often rendered in capitals to emphasise the absence of the definite article) continued as a trio. Giant Normal Dwarf (1990) was a kaleidoscopic affair which at first glance seemed like a return to the psychedelia of "I Am the Walrus" and "Glass Onion" but was actually inspired by Hofstede's desire to write musical fairy tales for his newborn child. The subsequent album Ting (1992) was a return to a much more minimalist approach, both with respect to the emphasis on the piano and the inspiration of Philip Glass on several songs. At the same time as working on Ting, the group were also preparing material for a TV special with the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra. Mainly composed by Stips, this was later issued as the album Hjuvi - A Rhapsody In Time.

The 1994 album dA dA dA was something of a return to basics, with "traditional" songwriting largely replacing the quirkiness of recent Nits releases, and the group's early influences once again to the fore. The album was the first Nits material to gain a release in the United States. Ironically for a group that had always performed in English, regarding it as a necessary evil for international success, recognition in the major English-speaking markets always eluded them. dA dA dA, despite critical acclaim in both the UK and USA, still failed to break the group in either market.

In 1995, the group released Nest, a 20-track retrospective album, and the accompanying tour ended on a high note with a concert broadcast live on television from the Uitmarkt festival. Stips then left to pursue a solo career.
The group continued, releasing the introspective albums Alankomaat (1998) - which featured the singles Sister Rosa and Robinson, and fan favourite Three Sisters - and Wool (2000), followed by another retrospective, Hits.
The group continues to perform to this day following the return of keyboard player Robert Jan Stips in 2003 for the release of the album 1974, commemorating the year of their formation.

A new album titled Les Nuits was released in October 2005. Three of the songs on the album - The Laundrette, The Key Shop and The Pizzeria - were about the murder of film director Theo Van Gogh, which happened in the street where Henk Hofstede lived. The title track of the album would pop up on the band's setlists for many years to come. After an extensive tour and some solo activity, the band returned to the studio in mid-2007 to record the album Doing the Dishes, released in January 2008. The album went top 10 in the Netherlands (for the first time since URK in 1989), had an airplay hit in The Flowers and was once again followed by a tour. Many of the album's songs were performed live. In 2009, the next album and tour, Strawberry Wood, a top 15 hit on the Dutch album chart, followed. It was preceded by the single Hawelka.
Malpensa, NITS? & Hotel Europa

In early 2012, the Nits released the album Malpensa, to positive reviews and fan reactions. It contains a collaboration with Colin Benders of Kyteman on the track "Bad Government". The songs "Love-Locks" and "Man on a Wire" were released as singles, as well as "Bad Government", which was re-done with Perquisite and Dazzled Kid for the single remix. The song "Schwebebahn" finds the band singing in German for the first time. In 2013, the Nits composed and produced the music of the documentary The King of Mount Ventoux by director Fons Feyaerts. The 7-track soundtrack was released on iTunes and Spotify. 2014 and 2015 focused on the '40 years of NITS' anniversary. A 3CD compilation album spanning the band's whole career was released in 2014, which contained three unreleased tracks. In March 2015, the band released Hotel Europa, a double live album with songs ranging from Giant Normal Dwarf (1990) to Malpensa (2012), with exception of a live version of "In the Dutch Mountains". The album received rave reviews and entered the Dutch album charts at #5, making it their highest charting album since Urk (#3, 1989) and their first Top 10 album since Doing the Dishes (#8, 2008).

In November 2015, all Nits albums were released on digital platforms such as Spotify, Deezer and Apple Music.
TING! with Scapino Ballet & new album 'angst'.In 2016 the band played 20 shows with Scapino Ballet Rotterdam. The show, entitled TING!, featured 20 NITS songs including "Nescio", "Five Fingers", "The Long Song", "The Swimmers" and "In the Dutch Mountains". More than 20,000 people saw the show in Rotterdam. A set up that currently re-run in Amsterdam..

In August 2017 new album and tour angst were announced for September. Preceded by the songs "Flowershop Forget-Me-Not", "Yellow Socks & Angst" and "Pockets Of Rain". On Friday September 15 "Yellow Socks & Angst" was added to Spotify's popular New Music Friday playlist. angst was released by the band's own WERF Records and largely sold through the band's own website. Despite this, on the back of very good reviews in OOR, Algemeen Dagblad and Lust For Life a.o., and promo shows on Dutch Radio, it entered the Dutch Album Top 100 at #40. The European 2017-2018 tour started in September 2017.

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The parallels between the careers of XTC and the Nits are remarkable and too numerous to ignore. Both began their recording careers in the late '70s as part of the arty post-punk new wave movement characterized by scratchy guitars, jerky rhythms, cheesy organs, and nerdy frontmen. And both evolved into something infinitely more complex and enduring, despite being gradually whittled down to a core of just two members. That said, whereas XTC underwent a gradual transition from the fractious pop of 1977's White Music to the pastoral psychedelia of 1986's Skylarking, the Nits shed their new wave skin in a relative trice with the 1983 album Omsk. The startling opener, "A Touch of Henry Moore," begins with a mesmerizing, Steve Reich-like barrage of marimbas and (synthesized) hammered metal over which Henk Hofstede ponders the physical hard labor that goes into creating a thing of beauty. One of the most stunningly original pieces in the Nits' repertoire, it's still a stage favorite. At the time, the Nits also boasted a second singer/songwriter in the form of Michiel Peters, who contributes three songs to Omsk. He was no Colin Moulding, however, and his first song on the album provides a rare and unwelcome reminder of the kind of music the public was gorging on in 1983. "Unpleasant Surprise" is just that, a horrible exercise in Spandau Duran, all brash synths and big drums, while "The Cold Eye" is a contrived exercise in atmospherics let down by Peters' thin, reedy voice. Only the surprisingly rootsy "Spirits Awake," with its spooky Wicker Man vibe, is a worthy addition to the album, and it was probably a blessing all round when Peters left the band within two years. Keyboard player Robert Jan Stips -- who must take a lot of the credit for the album's lush textures -- also contributes a couple of tracks to Omsk, most notably the irresistibly breezy instrumental "Walter and Conny," which pushes some of the same buttons as Zappa's "Peaches en Regalia." But the Nits were already essentially Hofstede's band, and Omsk contains one of his most enduring songs in the form of "Nescio." With its serried ranks of frenziedly strummed mandolins, pizzicato strings, and cascading piano, "Nescio" finds Hofstede milking the song's larger than life Latin emotions to stirring effect -- though disconcertingly the title refers to the nom de plume of an obscure Dutch writer. At the other extreme is the delicate "Jardin d'Hiver." This attempt to capture the sparkling stillness of a winter's day is another of Hofstede's most bewitching songs. Traceries of vibraphones, piano, and strings intertwine with a series of short vocal lines to suggest the chiming of bells. Though it's not without its moments of clumsiness, Omsk contains enough examples of what would prove to be the Nits' mature style to make it worthy of investigation.

 The Nits - Omsk   (flac  281mb)

01 A Touch Of Henry Moore 4:07
02 Unpleasant Surprise 2:57
03 The Vermillion Pencil 3:47
04 Springtime Coming Soon 3:12
05 Tons Of Ink 3:56
06 Jardin D'Hiver 3:35
07 Nescio 5:00
08 Walls Have Ears 2:24
09 Spirits Awake 3:44
10 Walter And Conny 3:48
11 The Cold Eye 4:02
12 Shadow Of A Doubt 1:49
13 Indoor Painting (Outdoor Sketching) 2:28
14 Clean Shirt In Paris 4:53
15 Man Of Straw 3:41

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Three tracks into Adieu, Sweet Bahnhof and it's starting to sound as though the headway made by the Nits on the previous year's Omsk and Kilo was all for naught. "Woman Cactus," "Silly Fool," and "Think It Over" are catchy synth pop at best, yet for the most part charmless, dated, and disposable. Then, frustratingly, comes a triple whammy of three of their most memorable songs. Legend has it that Stars on 45 producer Jaap Eggermont pushed the band into adopting a more commercial approach on Adieu, Sweet Bahnhof, although he is only credited as engineer. Yet that at least would explain the blitzkrieg of brittle pop pastiche that opens the album and the solid gold nuggets you have to rummage around for. "Mask," the first such nugget, is another of those slow-burning ballads like "Dapper Street," on which Henk Hofstede summons his best Elvis Costello croon, bolstered by a satisfyingly abrasive brass section. The bandmembers were never happy with the recording, however, and reworked the song in a spellbinding new arrangement with the Amsterdam Saxophone Quartet for the 1989 live album Urk. In fact, reservations about the production extend to much of the album, which sounds muddy, drowned in reverb, and heavy on the analog synths. No amount of technical shortcomings could sabotage the title track, though. It's a delightfully wistful Parisian waltz with a refrain that still gets audiences joining in over 20 years later. Hofstede's "The Tender Trap" is the album's last classic, a widescreen vignette of romance gone wrong with a stately brass arrangement and an overarching melody. Though the album eventually fizzles out, there are still three more fine songs to come in the form of Robert Jan Stips' "Poor Man's Pound," Michiel Peters' "The Infant King," and Hofstede's "Vah Hollanda Seni Seni." This latter is a rare venture into the world of social comment for the Nits, with its depiction of racism as seen through the eyes of a Turkish immigrant girl.

The Nits - Adieu, Sweet Bahnhof  (flac  284mb)
 
01 Woman Cactus 4:25
02 Silly Fool 3:33
03 Think It Over 3:52
04 Mask 3:41
05 Adieu, Sweet Bahnhof 4:48
06 The Tender Trap 4:03
07 The Infant King 4:07
08 Vah Hollanda Seni Seni 4:30
09 Mountains in Minutes 3:24
10 Fanfare 2:36
11 Poor Man's Pound 3:06
12 Villa Homesick 3:50
13 The Ballroom Of Romance 3:40

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Henk was the first album to be recorded by the Nits as a three-piece following the traumatic departure of Michiel Peters, yet it found them in an unexpectedly playful mood. From the eccentric openers "Bike in Head" and "Port of Amsterdam," it was clear that the bandmembers were once more in control of their own destiny and would have no truck with pleas to emphasize their more commercially viable songs. "Bike in Head," for instance, deploys samples of bicycle bells and includes the lyric "I just bought an elephant today," while "Port of Amsterdam" is a rambunctious drinking song in which Hofstede's voice is subjected to all manner of wacky electronic distortion. But for all its often wilful eccentricity, Henk does contain a core of enduring songs that marry the band's pop sensibility with its more experimental tendencies. On the first, "Typist of Candy," Hofstede's touching, double-tracked voice recalls the Everly Brothers, though any retro intent is canceled by a beguiling climax featuring Robert Jan Stips' fairground keyboards and what sounds like someone tap dancing on a typewriter. "Home Before Dark" is an altogether more somber affair, the album's single foray into understatement and one whose directness and simplicity foreshadow Henk's successor, In the Dutch Mountains. "Sleep (What Happens to Your Eyes)" survives a tricky synth arrangement to become one of the Nits' most persuasive blends of melody and electronica, while the irresistible "Cabins" sets Philip Glass to a four-square beat. Too much of the rest, however, is quirky in a bad way. More than once, you suspect Stips and his fancy new sampling equipment were allowed to run riot, dressing up already slender songs with eldritch noises that began to date as soon as the record hit the shops.

After the mighty leap forward that was Omsk, the Nits wasted little time in recording the mini-album Kilo, released just six months later. Again, songwriting was divided between Hofstede, Peters, and newcomer Stips, and again Hofstede established himself as an inspired melodist with the dramatically orchestrated "Sketches of Spain" and the wryly nostalgic "Dapper Street" -- a remarkably beautiful song that would now surely be acknowledged as a classic if only it had had the name Elvis Costello attached to it. Unlike Omsk, however, this time the contributions of Peters and Stips measure up to their leader's. Peters' "Bild Am Sonntag (As Usual)," with its tick-tock rhythm underpinning one of the band's rare forays into vocal harmony, is a dreamily ominous song about small-town boredom turning sour. Stips' "Memories Are New (III)" has a languid South American feel buoyed by nylon guitars, vibraphones, and rippling piano, and is only let down by Stips' rather colorless vocals. Oddly, though, it's Hofstede who supplies Kilo's weakest track, the closing "Your Next Tyres," which sounds like a leftover from the band's self-consciously quirky period. The band's production throughout is lush and spacious, with Stips' distinctive multi-layered keyboards providing the illusion of a much bigger band without ever lapsing into the kind of synthesized overkill that makes so many recordings from the early '80s so easy to date and hard to listen to. Kilo was reissued on CD as a two-fer with the 1986 album Henk.

 The Nits - Henk + Kilo   (flac  355mb)

Henk (1986)
01 Bike In Head 3:33
02 Port Of Amsterdam 3:36
03 Typist Of Candy 3:36
04 Home Before Dark 3:03
05 The Singing Telegram 2:00
06 Erom Om 3:30
07 Sleep (What Happens To Your Eyes) 4:34
08 Pillow Talk 3:45
09 Cabins 2:51
10 Under A Canoe 3:43
11 Crane-Driver 4:08
12 5 Hammering Men 2:15
Kilo (1983)
13 Sketches Of Spain 4:23
14 Bild Am Sonntag (As Usual) 3:33
15 Acres Of Tintoretto 2:39
16 Dapper Street 4:43
17 Memories Are New III 3:41
18 Your Next Tyres 3:33

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After the synthesized hijinks and tomfoolery that blighted much of Henk, the Nits -- once again a four-piece with the addition of bassist Joke Geraets -- opted for a return to simplicity with In the Dutch Mountains. The result was an album that probably did more to seduce listeners far beyond their homeland than any other, not least because it was the first to secure a release in the U.S. and the U.K. Yet although it was recorded live in the studio direct to two-track tape, this is no mere exercise in bash-it-out, one-take boogie. It's a warmly atmospheric set that contains some of the Nits' most fully realized work to date. Many of the songs are inspired by childhood memories, including the title track with its reference to the young Henk Hofstede's assumption that there must be mountains beyond the borders of his home town of Amsterdam. A massive hit across continental Europe, "In the Dutch Mountains" still generates a storm of applause at Nits concerts. Another live mainstay is "J.O.S. Days," an atypically rustic song about Hofstede's failure to make his local football team, featuring sampled acoustic guitar and (real) harmonica. This contrasts sharply with the dreamy "Two Skaters," at around seven minutes one of the longest songs in the Nits' repertoire and as close as they've ever gotten to an exercise in pure atmospherics. Other highlights include "The Swimmer" (yet another in a long line of film references), with frenzied accelerating piano assaults framing a delicate melody; the faintly berserk "An Eating House"; and the gorgeous lullaby "Good Night," with Hofstede's tender vocals cushioned by a remarkably convincing brass band sample. On the vinyl edition, this made for a wonderful coda to the album, but for the CD release three bonus tracks -- none of them quite in keeping with the rest -- were tacked onto the end. Nevertheless, In the Dutch Mountains marked the beginning of a richly creative five-year period that the Nits have yet to top.

The Nits - In The Dutch Mountains (flac  300mb)

01 In The Dutch Mountains 3:27
02 J.O.S. Days 3:13
03 Two Skaters 6:51
04 Pelican & Penguin 3:57
05 In A Play (Das Mädchen Im Pelz) 3:46
06 Oom-pah-pah Men 1:20
07 The Panorama Man 3:29
08 Mountain Jan 4:42
09 One Eye Open 3:15
10 An Eating House 5:53
11 The Swimmer 3:49
12 Goodnight 2:42
13 Strangers Of The Night 4:27
14 The Magic Of Lassie 1:37
15 Moon And Stars 4:31

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