Antillectual

We’re extremely excited about the next chapter of our TOGETHER tour, which is taking us to France, Spain and Portugal. On top of that we are doing pre-orders for merch with the amazing tour poster artwork!

From Reims to Lisboa and everything in between

For years we’ve been getting requests to return to France, Spain and Portugal. After releasing TOGETHER via awesome labels and getting wonderful feedback, it is about time to make a comeback. We’re extremely excited to jump in the van and hit the road, it’s been way too long since we hit these cities and met our friends there! All info, tickets and FB events via our site.

This poster begs for new merch

Daggers Design created the beautiful tour poster artwork. When we saw it we had to make shirts and zipped hoodies with it! Pre-ordering starts today and is possible until January 31. Packages will be sent out before the tour starts. As usual: the pre-order offers extra sizes, which might not be available in our web store or at shows afterwards.

But that’s not all

Besides the tour we’ve got even more shows coming up:

Jan 19 NL Eindhoven, The Jack
Feb 10 DE Minden, Bunker
Mar 29 UK Manchester, Manchester Punk Fest
Mar 31 DE Vechta, Osterrock
Apr 20 IT Modena, Teste Ribelli Fest
May 22 DE Krefeld, Kulturrampe
May 23 DE Hannover, Stumpf
May 24 DE Berlin, Badehaus
Dec 14 NL Nijmegen, Friends First Fest

All info, tickets and FB events via our site. Respond to this email to let us know where you’d wanna see us, or if you wanna help us out with a show!

That’s it for now, thanks for reading our newsletter! Don’t be shy, hit reply; we love hearing from you… In the next episode you will find a bunch of fun summer plans!

Take care, Ben, Riekus & Willem

Missed our previous newsletter? Find it here!

So, how was your Blue Monday? We probably had the weirdest day in our band’s history!

BUMA, the Dutch performing rights association, released their music export report of 2023 and put us as the only band in the top 10 on the 5th position. The others in the top 10 were mostly millionaire DJs, so we were sticking out like a sore thumb, which made national media triggered to write about this band they never heard of. We got featured on TV and radio shows, items on the national news, all the big newspapers wrote about it and posted our picture; shit really hit the fan!

Ironically this made us postpone the announcement of our tour for some days, apologies for that, it’s coming soon!
And we still hope to see you at our show at Cafe the Jack in Eindhoven…

Happy new year everybody! May it be a step up from ’23 in every way thinkable!

Friends First Fest pic by Harrie van Montfort

Twentytwentyfour promises to be a busy year for us. We can’t reveal all of our plans yet, but we will be doing the longest tour in a while, to a region we haven’t been to for too long, in March; announcement coming soon! We’re also very excited to go back to the UK for Manchester Punk Fest and to Italy for Teste Ribelli Fest!

After releasing an album last year it is time to pick up our instruments to write some new music; first tunes and demos are in the works already! We’ve also got some new merch, including zippers, coming. Artwork by Daggers Design, looking amazing, pre-orders starting in a couple of weeks.

As every year we made a playlist with the new music from the past year that we’ve enjoyed the most, including friends and bands from close to home and far away, some extremely obscure and others more established; enjoy!

Lastly, we hope to meet you in ’24, maybe at one of these below? Or on a to be announced show, where should we come play?

Jan 11 DE Schweinfurt, Stattbahnhof w/ ZSK
Jan 19 NL Eindhoven, The Jack
Feb 10 DE Minden, Bunker
Mar 6-20 Big tour coming up!
Mar 29 UK Manchester, MPF
Apr 20 IT Modena, Teste Ribelli Fest
May 22 DE Krefeld, Kulturrampe
May 23 DE Hannover, Stumpf

Friends First Fest will be the very last thing we’ll do in 2023. So even though our year isn’t 100% over yet, we already made a little recap of the things we did in 2023. Despite the world burning, with the continuing war in Ukraine, a new war igniting in Gaza and extreme right winning the Dutch elections, we as a band had an incredible year: Releasing TOGETHER definitely was the highlight of our year! Our first new album in 7 years, a mix of previously released singles and brand new songs, with beautiful artwork on LP/CD/tape, together with help from a lot of friends! It generated such heartwarming feedback!

We played many lovely shows this year; from supports and festivals to tours. Punk Rock Holiday definitely stands out with an overwhelming welcome at the European scene gathering in Slovenia. We had a blast supporting No Fun At All and Strike Anywhere at their Dutch shows; playing independent/DIY places, our homes away from home like ACU, Plupub, De Opstand, Immerhin, Bahndamm; doing fun festivals like Heng Loose, Skate & Destroy Open Air, Stemweder Open Air, Bearded Punk Fest, Limewood Fest; getting to do an Italian tour meeting up with longtime friends, and having a blast at the our Jahresabschluss at the Sonic Ballroom in Köln!

Pic by Roos de Huu

To all the other amazing cities, venues and festivals we were lucky enough to play this year, thank you! Despite our van breaking down twice and costing a fortune to fix, we didn’t have to cancel a single show. Humongous thanks go out to the people without whom we wouldn’t be able to do all this: our road crew Roos, Aaron & Chris; Hage at Spider Promotion, and of course our families and friends supporting this silly project that’s been going on for over 20 years now… See you on the other side!

Pic by Peter van Esch

Leftist and centrist segments of Dutch society in general and we as a band are still in shock over the election results. Despite its liberal image the Netherlands have always been a right-wing leaning country. But an extreme right party winning the national elections is something that is still hard to imagine, let alone come to terms with (which we won’t!).

A lot of protests have already been organized and many more will follow. People are calling to bring together the majority of Dutch people that did not vote for Wilders/PVV. To those with perspectives that go against everything Wilders/PVV stand for, or to people feeling unwelcome because of Wilders/PVV winning the election: you are not alone in this, we got you, let’s do this together!

Geert Wilders and the PVV have been a subject since our anti-anti-Muslim song The New Jew for 2010’s Start From Scratch. Heads You Win, Tails We Lose was written after Trump and Brexit happened, but feels relevant during this post election hangover. Support Bands is an audio version of an emotional support animal; music to reinforce those with political/moral viewpoints that aren’t necessarily understood by people around them. Last week’s disaster will probably result in new songs and charity shows for those that now need additional help.

These stickers have been on my guitar since 2010. I thought about removing them every time I cleaned my guitar. I never did, realizing they were still relevant. The current one will remain on my guitar and we will make more, until they become irrelevant…