Antillectual

2019 was another eventful year for us. Let’s look back at some of the highlights:

January: The first thing we did in 2019 was tour with one of our favorite bands, Satanic Surfers, and play with one of the most relevant and controversial acts around: Pussy Riot. Both very impressive in their own ways.
In February we played a sold out benefit show for Solidarity at Sea in Köln.
March brought us to Tim van Doorn’s Big Dog Recordings in Antwerp where we recorded If You’re Not Outraged and Fever among other songs. In March we also released the first single of 2019, a cover of The Police’ Truth Hits Everybody.
In April we got to return to Italy since long for No Reason Fest with Astpai and many Italian friends we didn’t see in a long time! Selling out Amplifest in Freiburg is surely something that will stay with us as well!
In May we got to do a small tour that included playing SBÄM Fest in Austria and Obenuse Fest in Switzerland, good good times! The police escort at Hafen Rock in Hamburg is something else that we won’t forget for a while!
June gave us Eselrock, quite close to home, but far from what we expected, in a good way!
July was very busy for us, and packed with great stuff: We got to play our co-hometown Utrecht and pay tribute to our friend Dick at Revival Fest. We returned to KNRD Fest for another adventure in the woods and we released our second single: If You’re Not Outraged! We played Haltpop and got to support Propagandhi at a sold out Markthalle in Hamburg!
We got to play Brakrock in August, and had an incredible time there. Twice, as we also did a fun acoustic set at the merch! We played an extremely last minute and extremely exciting show with Pennywise at a sold out Live Music Hall in Köln. We did two shows on one day in August as well: Lautfeuer Festival and support for Descendents at the Melkweg! Bucketlist material: our first time in the big hall, where we saw many of our favorite bands play over the years. Thanks to Destiny Bookings for all “support” in summer 2019!
In September we played our 3rd show in Köln in 1 year, wow! And we played Heart Attack Fest in Berlin, always good!
We went to Graz for Ernte Punk Fest in October and to Finland for our first 3 shows there, which were very awesome, and for which we are really grateful.
In November we got to go where we never thought we would play music: Turkey! Fascinating country (not only in a good way), and it was extremely rewarding to play shows there, as not many bands go there (yet!). We also released our 3rd and last single of 2019 in November: FEVER and got to play Prince Bishop Fest in Liège.
December had 2 very pleasant surprises to offer: We played Protestival, a climate protest festival at Schiphol Airport organized by Greenpeace and Friends First Fest, the end of the year party we’re still recovering from!

Thanks to all that made 2019 a great year! Special thanks go out to Uncle M Music, The Living Proof Agency, Loud Noise, Merit Based Bookings, Pekka Hidden Frame, Parazit Kolektif, Tim van Doorn, Ruben Smulders, Tes at Segolia and Thomas at Dark Roast.

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Happy Holidays everybody!
As promised we’ll post the results of the advent quiz today. Thanks for sending in your answers, we hope you enjoyed doing this quiz as much as we did creating it!
Congratulations to the winner; Casper van Beijnum, you had the most correct answers! Come pick up your prizes at Friends First Fest using your 2 free tickets.

Speaking of which; those were the last 2 tickets available, because we’re very excited to say that FFF is SOLD OUT!

Q: How many kilometers were on our previous van when we had to let it go?
A: 677.805 km

Q: Who’s Spotify Wrapped 2019 is this?
A: Riekus

Q: Name as many bands as you can that Riekus was in? Bonus points if you name the first one!
A: Censored, Screwballs, Action heroes, Brandnewday, Stars overnight, Straight A’s, Omission, Dead Giveaway, Antillectual

Q: What is the nearest country, from The Netherlands, that Antillectual never played?
A: Denmark

Q: In which country did our number of spotify listeners grow the hardest in 2019?
A: Brazil

Q: What band did Toon do guest vocals for in the studio in 2019?
A: Crooked Kingdom

Q: The idea for this quiz was stolen from Tim Vantol. On how many shows did he handle bass duties for us?
A: 66

Q: What band was Yvo a part of after Antillectual?
A: Lawine

Q: What question would like to have answered tomorrow?
A: Apparently this was a bit too metaphysical for y’all, no answers were sent in.

Q: What show number will Friends First Fest 2019 be for us?
A: #1051

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We’re doing an advent contest, because FREE GIFTS are what all Christian holidays are about, right?! This idea is 100% stolen from Tim Vantol, credits to our former brother on bass!

Every day from Sunday December 15 – Tuesday December 24 we will post a question on one of our social media channels for you to answer. Make sure to follow us via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and answer the questions (DM!) when they pop up over there! The person with the most correct answers wins two albums of choice (LP/CD) + a shirt of choice + two Friends First Fest tickets. The winner will be announced on December 25.

Merry Christmas!

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Written by Willem – Last week we did our first tour through Turkey. We were over for 5 days, did 4 shows, in 3 cities: Izmir, Ankara and Istanbul twice. We had never been to Turkey before and were really excited to visit the most Arab/Middle Eastern influenced country we visited to date. It’s a cliche to say that in Turkey east and west meet, but we were really curious how this mix would translate to the punk scene, with its usually western focus. Despite the fact that not many punk bands from Turkey make it over to Europe, just like Turkish city life, the punk scene is relying on European/North American influences like bands, music, merchandise, etc. Nonetheless a lot of local bands sing in Turkish and they seem to include non-western influences like ska and reggae as well.

Of course, touring Turkey is not like touring Europe or North America. Especially compared to Europe there’s less touring infrastructure in Turkey. Venues are usually local bars with a small PA and just like when we toured South America, Russia and Japan, the venues provided the backlines. Meaning guitarists and bass players mostly get to play transistor combo amps and drummers get to play cymbals and drums slightly or brutally abused by drummers before them. When arriving at the venue, you never know what you’re gonna get. But I’m quite happy with the skills I grew to create a decent sound from a 30 watt transistor Crate amp. Fine tuning has become a new form of art for me.

Photo by Stormlit

The Turkish scene is surprisingly young, which is awesome to see! The audiences we played for, the bands we played with and the people in the organizations that booked our shows ranged from ages 17-30, on average definitely younger than what we’re used to. Resulting in dancing, movement and sing-alongs at every show, during the whole set. Despite being a partly Islamic country the amount of girls at the shows was higher than expected. It’s too bad we didn’t play with any bands with female members and some of the mosh pits and the dancing were rougher than you’d like to see at an inclusive show. But that happens all over the world unfortunately. The other bands we played with varied in styles a lot, from raging metal/hardcore to the expected skate punk rock sound to more grunge and stoner sounding bands. It’s nice to play mixed line-ups when they work out well, and they did!

Photo by Stormlit

What struck me most about the country in general was the huge variation and inequality between people living in rural areas and the city populations. Where the cities felt pretty European when it comes to modernity and wealth, the outbacks featured a lot of poverty and seemingly ruined houses. As you do on tour, we saw a lot of highways, which in Turkey means you will see a lot of people hitchhiking (and not only young alternative people), people riding their bikes on the highway, and traffic lights popping up out of nowhere. Many sheep and shepherds are making their way through the beautiful landscapes next to the road. It occurred to me that the roads follow the slopes of the landscape, where in North-Western Europe bridges and tunnels even out the highest peaks and deepest valleys. Funny trivia: renting a van without a driver is more expensive than with one included.

Photo by Stormlit

Unfortunately we also experienced an aspect of Turkish society/politics that we feared: repression and police brutality enforced by an authoritarian leader. After our show in Ankara a big group of the “moral police” started harassing a street vendor outside the venue. After interfering with the harassment, members of the Parazit Kolektif (our tour booker) and staff of the venue were beaten with batons, pepper-sprayed, handcuffed and arrested. The police even started to attack and spray random guests at the terrace of the venue and chased people down to the venue’s basement. An awful and completely uncalled for show of force to display their power. Padme, the band featuring members of the Parazit Kolektif wrote down what happened that night. At another instance we witnessed a peaceful feminist protest by a group of about 50 women minding their own business (pun intended), getting encircled by riot police without any obvious reason.

Check some more photos below, click here for a song from our set in Ankara (before the riots started). We are incredibly thankful we could do this amazing tour through Turkey, meet a lot of great people and see a lot of beautiful aspects of a country that has many issues. If you haven’t visited, go there, and attend a show! Many thanks to Parazit Kolektif for having us and making this awesome! Çok teşekkür ederim!

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Releasing singles gives us the opportunity to address “hot” topics immediately. We couldn’t bring you FEVER at a better (or worse?) moment: climate change protest is gaining attention worldwide. Check the beautiful FEVER video, new merch and lyrics & liner notes below. We hope to catch you at one of the shows!

Artwork and Video

Tes at Segolia Design created the beautiful FEVER artwork and she also made an animation video representing the song’s content in an incredible way. If you look closely you will even find us in it!

Merch

With a new single comes new merch! The FEVER artwork comes on organic, vegan and fair trade shirts; in both tight and regular fit. Find them in our webstore, together with our other shirts and albums. Thanks for supporting our band!

1st Friends First Fest #5 Announcement

The presale for Friends First Fest has started! Beware: only a limited amount of tickets is available and previous years sold out. The price is flexible to keep it affordable for all. People under 18 can attend for free, and we have a small batch of “Long Time Friend tickets” for just 5 euro. All proceeds are donated to Brigada De Alter though, so we do encourage you to pay a little extra if you can. The line-up will be international, so foreign friends: remember that Nijmegen is close to the Münster / Ruhr / Köln area!

Line-up:

• Talk by founding member Yvo: “Live your dreams, survive your setbacks”
• Food by Guerilla Kitchen Nijmegen
• Antillectual (surprise!)

More bands to be announced soon, keep an eye on the FB event!

Spreading the Fever tour

Come hear our new single live at the following shows:

• Nov 09 BE Liège, Prince Bishop Festival
• Nov 14 TR Izmir, Up Stage
• Nov 15 TR Ankara, Telwe Performance Hall
• Nov 16 TR Istanbul, Karga Bar
• Nov 17 TR Istanbul, Yuri Gagarin *Acoustic*
• Nov 23 DE Alfeld, Alfeld Rockt
• Nov 30 DE Mönchengladbach, Don’t Wate (Y)our Time Festival
• Dec 06 DE Hildesheim, Kulturfabrik Löseke
• Dec 07 DE Jena, Rosenkeller
• Dec 28 NL Nijmegen, Friends First Fest

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