NEW: 51 Shapes of Nits: The Forty-fourth Shape is a Piece of White Paper
The universe of Nits is an entire world in itself. It is as if it created everything anew. In all their albums and video work they conceive a musical and pictorial language that recreates (their) life in this world. It almost feels like a meta-project if it all weren’t so fabulously natural in its development. Like these worlds that are artificially created …
NEW: 51 Shapes of Nits: The Forty-third Shape is the Bird
“I Have Tried In My Way To Be Free”
After Nits created the Tree, they created the Bird. The tree and the bird were the things that sparked the light of hope after the fire. Indeed, “Hope is the thing with feathers”, Emily said…
NEW: Emily and Harke Jan – Dwelling in Possibility
I like good prose; I love the meandering sentences one can get lost in. Its detailed precision and complexity of thinking expressed in long compositions of words. You will tell me that poetry does exactly these same things but with fewer words and a nicer rhythm and sound to them, a freer and boundless imagery. But somehow …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Forty-second Shape is the Statuette of the Edison Lifetime Achievement Award for Pop 2025
Alone In The World Of Nits – A Secret Letter To The Music Gods
I wasn’t there last Friday at Carré. I guess you could say my absence was due to personal reasons as the standard line goes; that might indeed be the right word since I think that no one could even begin to understand why I had no other choice but to stay home that night. But then out of nowhere something dropped into my lap. It was the cutest sound bar of a recording made just minutes before of the song “Jardin d’Hiver” …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Forty-first Shape is the Darling Stone of Hietaniemi Hautausmaa
“The Darling Stone” is one of these Nits songs that is too beautiful for this world. Not for the world as it could be, but for the world that is, created by man. I recently saw a documentary where a religious woman who was in her nineties and lived somewhere in Congo, helping out those in need, was being interviewed about life, and this woman …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Fortieth Shape are the videotapes
DIAL NITS: “EEN JONGEN UIT DE MEER” Well for one thing there’s a new episode of the podcast DIAL NITS. And it’s a lovely one – or should I say a “gezellig” one – with Henk, Eric, Rudy the barber and the cat of the Hofstede household whose name I didn’t catch. They are all talking – and miaowing – while walking through the Amsterdam neighbourhood where Henk …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Thirty-ninth Shape is the tree
The Tree of Life of Nits – “Our Father who art in the tree”
When the fire raged in all its strength of indifference, one green shape resisted destruction. It was a tree. Robert Jan Stips had noticed this astonishing fact of the almost unharmed survival of this tree that had grown and lived in close proximity to the music and work studio of Nits. It must have been – without any doubt – the tree of the …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Thirty-eight Shape is the poppy of peace
Nits: The quietly revolutionary gentry of pop
Today, at long last, I unexpectedly found a husband for my Jane Austen Funko Pop figurine! It is John Lennon in a military jacket, with guitar and his typical glasses. A perfect match if you ask me. Until now I had Miss Austen coupled to Leonard Hofstadter, the somewhat shy scientist from the TV hit series “The Big Bang Theory”. But just like Emma’s …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Thirty-seventh Shape is the iceberg
Summertime – A peculiar, summery reflection on the seasonal character of the work of Nits
It is summer.
But Nits don’t really do summer, nor summer songs.
Summer never lasts long in their musical world. It is most of the time a sweet memory – “a summer a long time ago”, “summer was green”, the time of a bike ride through the neighbourhood, a summer once upon a time as it were – or a tender promise buried under the leaves of a …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Thirty-sixth Shape are the Aloha drums
So, You Don’t Want To Be Cute Anymore
When you look at their catalogue in hindsight Nits had in fact already started reshaping the sound of pop music on their album NEW FLAT. With oddities like “His First Object” (a favourite of mine!) and “Zebra” which were almost like sound-objects in the literal sense where the sounds almost shape the dimensions of a thing or of the position the musician finds himself in, with directional …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Thirty-fifth Shape is the figure of a Dutchman in Paris
When the bell tolls twelve times … Remember “Flavia” – I gave her this Nits name that appears on the Alankomaat album – who bought a brown hat somewhere in a downtown shop? I always imagined that the shop was somehow located somewhere on a pretty lane or street in Paris. I thought Nits …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Thirty-fourth Shape are the portraits of girls
The Cactus Tree and the Pink Flower
On a Sunday morning, a bus is stopping, at the espresso bar. Christine is stepping out and enters the bar where she meets some of her friends of the Nits world: the espresso girl of course, the strawberry girl, the chameleon girl and a girl who just happened to buy a hat downtown …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Thirty-third Shape is the train
One of my first Nits loves was “The Train” – although I got my driver’s license a few days after my 18th birthday and chauffeured many of my friends and my sister around in those days… But after discovering the album “In The Dutch Mountains”, this song from the HAT album sealed my deal of a lifelong kinship with Nits for good. “Once on a cold grey morning” this is one of those first verses …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Thirty-second Shape is the moon
If You Want To Write A Song About The Moon
I have a few favourite songs about the moon. My heart melts when I hear Margo Timmins of The Cowboy Junkies sing “Blue Moon Revisited (song for Elvis)” and I love Paul Simon’s “Song about the Moon” with its out-of-this-world lyrics. When I’m in a wild mood I’ll listen to “The Whole of the Moon” by The Waterboys and each time I hear the song I say to myself…
50 Shapes of Nits: The Thirty-first Shape are the shadows created by The Light
There Was Something In The Sky
Now isn’t the album ALANKOMAAT a music genre all by itself? I love it to bits. Henk Hofstede and Rob Kloet had to reshape the Nits world – together, of course, with their sound expert and advisor Paul Telman – into a new configuration. It ultimately resulted in a very intimate alignment of two boys and two girls who were perfectly in tune with one another…
50 Shapes of Nits: The Thirtieth Shape are the bottle and the blanket for when it’s colder
Nits’s Sea Shanty: “Port of Amsterdam”
There’s one line in the lyrics of Henk Hofstede that never fails to make me laugh. It’s the cheeky carefreeness in the « Port of Amsterdam » couplet “For now I’ve got a bottle and a blanket – And I use it when it’s colder”. It’s not just the words. It’s the persuasiveness and the sheer lack of …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Twenty-ninth Shape is the egg painted blue
Easter Sunday the 20th of April 2025, 8 am. As the hunt for chocolate Easter eggs is opened in gardens, on terraces and in homes, I found my own special Easter egg hidden away carefully by Nits in their TING song “Soap Bubble Box”. It’s an egg painted blue, neatly put into one of the soap bubble sets created by the New York artist Joseph Cornell…
50 Shapes of Nits: The Twenty-Eight Shape are the Glasses of Henk Hofstede:
The Glasses of Henk Hofstede: Why Beauty and Elegance Matter – A Course by Professor Henk Hofstede
Going through my small archive of Nits videos which my husband and I recorded during various concerts in Belgium and The Netherlands, I stumbled upon this recording of the angst song “Pockets of Rain”. In fact it must have been one of the very first live performances in a concert hall of this song – if not the very first one. I recorded it in …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Twenty-Seventh Shape are the Lits-Jumeaux
The songs did not bring me to the war” Robert Jan Stips points out in a discussion about the album “angst” on the episode “Radio Oranje” of the podcast “Dial Nits”. Yes maybe you would expect an album that centres around memories of wartime to sound very different … In hindsight it would seem …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Twenty-Sixth Shape is the Circle of Friends
Fifty (+1) Ways to Leave the Original
Listening to the latest episode of DIAL NITS, “Isnt Nits”, I got this very peculiar feeling – despite some personal issues and disappointments – that I was in the midst of a warm family of music, and amidst a very intimate circle of friends of the musical world that Nits created over those past 50 years. As I realised …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Twenty-Fifth Shape is a Pair of Shoes
Since we are halfway now (the 25th shape) on this imaginary road of Nits forms, it is time to take stock of the state of our shoes. After all they are what makes it a little more comfortable for us to go out in this world and explore it. Nits have certainly never underestimated the power and mystery of this quite ordinary thing that we use almost daily and which we cover our feet with practically mechanically, without giving it much thought…
50 Shapes of Nits: The Twenty-Fourth Shape is the Shape of Mrs Robinson
Nits Stayed On To Find Europe – Dedicated to my dad
As a young girl I watched The Concert of Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park on tv with my dad. My dad loved their music and was always saying to me how well both their voices matched and how wonderful the harmonies were. I agreed. I think I still know the concert by heart including all the lines they spoke and the reactions of the crowd. “This was America”, my dad said …
50 Shapes of Nits: The Twenty-Third Shape is the Blue Thing
The Sky And The River And The Sea – These Are A Few Of Nits’s Favourite Things
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 …
NEW: 50 years Nits: The Twenty-Second Shape is an Orange
Time for a Palate Cleanser: De Appelsien 
Long before Nits were granted the honour of a knighthood in the Order of Orange-Nassau (2014), they wrote this funny, zesty song about an orange (a hidden track at the end of the album dA dA dA). It is one of these typical little intermezzos that Nits like to incorporate in their work from time to time, more recently there was la charmante “petite allumette”…
NEW: 50 years Nits: The Twenty-First Shape is the Tornado of Shirts and Towels
The Musical Renown of a Swimmer
The opening notes and the opening verse of The Swimmer are nothing short of a class act. If there were a canon of most beautiful first lines of pop songs, this verse would certainly feature in it: ”Here comes the replay of an old dream – I was dreaming when I was a small boy – Turn around – Turn around” …
NEW: 50 years Nits: The Twentieth Shape is the Mask
Soon it will be the time of year again to celebrate the tradition of Carnival! I was born in a Flemish working-class city that is best known for its famous carnival parade. It made its inhabitants of the rebellious kind, weary of any form of authority and with a tendency to mockery and free spiritedness. It’s the time of masquerade balls…
NEW: 50 years Nits: The Nineteenth Shape are the Plastic Rococo Chairs
The Garden Center or Spirits in a Material World
Of course there is “Walking with Maria”, a beautiful tribute to Mum. But then there is also “The Garden Center”, the Mother-Song from the album KNOT. This second album of the angst/Knot/Neon trilogy is not the most popular one amongst fans, but to me it still sounds like pure genius. Nevertheless to truly appreciate this genie or magical spirit that roams through the album KNOT, you need to see it performed live…
NEW: 50 years Nits: The Eighteenth Shape is the Kitchen Sink
Wild-West Nits. (On the albums Doing The Dishes and Strawberry Wood)
The album Doing The Dishes features two songs that are on my list of Nits favourites: “Grrr … To You” and “Cowboys and Indians”. The latter one sounds like saying goodbye to childhood dreams or to a childhood friend. It reminds me of a time when I was watching movies with my …
NEW: Over the past couple of months I made a few voice recordings of my work about Nits and will share some of them over the coming weeks.
Let’s start with a short introduction to my essay “Being Nits”:
In this second recording I try to explain why I started to write about Nits (with a short introduction to myself):
This is a recording from the 1974 song Espresso Girl: The girl who never made it.
The rising sun: the many virtues of Nits.
This is a recording I made about my favourite Nits song The Eiffel Tower. A little philosophy of music.
Larissa on the Windowsill 