Antillectual

Dear people who are still interested in our stories! Last Friday we started our tour to Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal. We will be on the road for 17 days and try to inform you every once in a while. The touring party consists of Marnix, Petit and of course, Tom, Riekus and Willem. Right now we’re on our way to Zaragoza. Here’s a little update on the first dates on tour. Hope you enjoy!

ANTILLECTUAL TOURREPORT JANUARY, FEBRUARY 2010

Belgium – France – Spain – Portugal

Friday January 29^th 2010 – Herselt, Belgium

Tour kickoff today at the Antillectual house in Nijmegen. I missed my train in Utrecht and when I arrived, the backline was already in the van. Marnix, who is joining us this tour was already there after getting lost in the town where he lives. Luckily we have a GPS this tour. We left for Herselt and arrived pretty early. Other bands this night were Timmy Hillfire, The Ignored and Second Base. In Herselt we hooked up with Petit, who is also tagging along on tour. We had great food made by Petit’s madamme, Karen. The West-Flemmish guys in The Ignored surprised me with New Noise, a Refused cover. Second base played some new songs that were really good. We drank some Juupkes and Orvallekes and left the same night because we had a 1000 kilometers to go to the next show.

The plan was to drive to a hotel South of Paris, catch some sleep and hit the road the next morning. When we passed the first peage, Petit found a nice way to thank the French. We needed to lose weight anyway. After midnight traffic jams, snowstorms Parisienne and a Hors Categorie drive to the hotel, we managed to get some sleep.

Saturday January 30^th 2010 – Fumel, France

On our way to the South, we started with nice weather that changed into snowstorms again. If we wanted snow, we would tour Sörmland, Sweden! Why did we bring swimshorts anyway? We arrived at the venue and the other bands, Open Nightmare and Ivan Rebroff’s Armpits were already there. We had great food and had some nice conversations. The show was at Pavilion 108, a pretty big venue. The other bands played pretty well, especially Ivan Rebroffs Armpits blew me away. Too bad their drummer didn’t play with dinosaur bones. After the show we drank a couple of beers and went to the hotel, had another drink and went to sleep. Guess we were tired after a long day in the van. After breakfast, we drove to Toulouse, enjoy the beautiful French landscape. We went to Pierro’s place and again time for some relaxing.

Sunday January 31^st 2010 – Toulouse, France

We went to the venue, a pretty new squat. Too bad I stepped in a dog turd. Too good, Marnix stepped in one too! Again, we had a great dinner. First band was Monsieurs de Fursac. They played instrumental noisy rock. Like! Second was Ivan Rebroff’s Armpits again. I was hanging out at the merch so I couldn’t see the show, but I guess they rocked as hard as in Fumel. Great band! Before our show, we were asked to play Ordinary, but I don’t know how to play it. Sorry Toulouse, next time I’ll be able to play it! Think we played a decent show. I saw people singing along, that’s always nice to see. During the evening, Marnix was attacked by a drunk French woman. Something with biting I guess. Kinky!

After the show we drove back to Pierro’s house and had a good sleep. Lovely breakfast in the morning and excellent coffee and tee. I can imagine why the people in our tourcrew that have been there before called this their second home. We left, got some gas, got some food and took off for Torelló, close to Barcelona. Weather seems good outside of the van. Have to get my swimshorts out of the bag! Yeah!

Monday February 1^st 2010 – Torelló, Spain

Driving thru the beautiful landscape, we found our way to Torelló pretty easy. The way to the venue was harder. We drove down some muddy roads, watched some episodes of the Dutch New Kids show and managed to find the way to the venue. This night we were playing together with our buddies in This Routine Is Hell. Show was cool. I didn’t expect that many people on a Monday, so that’s awesome! This Routine Is Hell played a lot of songs from their new record. Like! Poke! We tried some new songs too, worked out pretty okay I guess. Think the old songs were also pretty new for the crowd. After the show we went to Toni’s house. Stole the internet of the neighbours and some guys went to a bar. At night, Boris Tarrel stepped on my hamstring, ouch! Then he started snorring really loud. If this continues every night, I might have to think about some punishment. After saying goodbye to the house and the evil cats (the cats had discovered the whole house in shit the day before we were supposed to sleep there, nice!), we continued our way to Zaragoza.

Last Saturday we played our last show ever with Yvo on bass. A crazy sold out show was a nice way to close this chapter. In Tom we found an amazing replacement presenting us a very glourious future ahead. Our first step is a tour that will hopefully get us somewhere warmer.

– Warm Winter Tour
– Dutch Export
– Recording a New Album
– Tour with High Five Drive

Warm Winter Tour

Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal seemed to be the best destinations when touring in January and February. If you live in the area, please drop by and say hi!

Jan 29 BEL Herselt, De Choke. w/ Second Base, more
Jan 30 FR Fumel, Pavillon108. w/ OpeNightmare, Ivan Rebroff’s Armpits
Jan 31 FR Toulouse, Les Pavillons Sauvages. w/ Ivan Rebroff’s Armpits (release show), Messieurs de Fursac
Feb 1 ES Torelló / Barcelona, l’Eclèctic
Feb 2 ES Zaragoza, Sala Ultimátum
Feb 3 ES Madrid, Sala Barracudas
Feb 4 Available
Feb 5 Available
Feb 6 POR Lisbon, Casa de Lafoes Afternoon show. w/ This Routine Is Hell, Albert Fish, Barafunda Total
Feb 6 POR Mouriscas, GDR Os Esparteiros. w/ Defying Control, The Wild Ones, Shake Shake and SMYP
Feb 7 POR Porto, Bar Altar Afternoon show
Feb 8 Available
Feb 9 ES Oviedo, La Antigua Estacion. w/ Threewordname, Mr. Lafleur
Feb 10 ES Pasaia (San Sebastian), Sala Mogambo. w/ Alaska Pipeline, Curasan
Feb 11 FR Bayonne, Bar Kixkil Ostatua
Feb 12 FR La Rochelle, La Barbarella
Feb 13 FR Brest, Espace Léo Ferré. w/ Speedball, Jeune Seigneur, Last Exit To Brooklynn
Feb 14 FR Lille, La Chimère

As you can see, we are still looking for shows on February 4, 5 and 8 in Spain or Portugal. Let us know if you can help us out.

Dutch Export

Since we are known to tour a lot Buma Cultuur (the Dutch authors- and copyrights organization) mentioned us in their press bulletin announcing that the export of Dutch pop music was raised by 15% in 2008. Read the Dutch version and the English version.

Recording a New Album

A week after we get back from tour we will be entering the studio. It has been almost 2 years since we released our last full length album “Testimony”. We will record 12 new songs with Nico van Montfort at the Erock studio in Panningen. On the upcoming tour and shows we will play a lot of these songs to get them into shape. A release will follow later this year.

Tour with High Five Drive

We never promised to slow down. After we finish recording, mixing and mastering we will embark on another tour. Together with High Five Drive from Canada we will be playing shows in France, the UK and Belgium between April 25 and May 1. Routing to be announced soon. Get in touch if you feel like helping us out.

Other shows:

Feb 17 NL Utrecht, ACU. w/ Nothington, Bivouac
Feb 19 BEL Wachtebeke, VZW MaNo. w/ Bound In Blood, Rumble Fist, The Dancing Morons
Feb 20 NL Krommenie, De Groote Weiver. w/ Sweet Empire, Union Town
Feb 27 NL Nijmegen Waalhalla. w/ Static Thought
Mar 6 NL Hoogeveen Het Podium. w/ Nuestros Derechos, Nuclear Driven Animals

If you feel like the recession is over and your liquidity is increasing (what?!), please consider visiting our webshop to fund our upcoming recordings. In the next issue of your favorite newsletter you will find some news about our new release, and more new touring plans. We hope.

This weekend we played Yvo’s goodbye show. It was heartwarming to see so many people coming out. There was quite a line outside of de Onderbroek before the doors opened. Crazy! First of all we want to apologize to the people that could not get in because the show was sold out when they arrived. Second of all it was really good to see so many faces from Sweden, Slovenia, Italy, Germany, Belgium and other countries. People we met them on tour,  gave us a place to stay or played a show with us. Thanks for coming down, it felt right to turn the tables and host you in our country and city! We will put links to pictures and videos on our Facebook and Twitter once we get them ourselves. Send them to us if you have any.

We promised you to post our year/decade lists. It might seem late, but it’s better than putting out year lists before the year/decade is even over! We will start off with the year list of our now more official than ever before new bass player Tom. Read, and you will understand why he fits this band so well.

1. Propagandhi – Supporting Caste
Hard choice between the new Propagandhi and Strike Anywhere record, both blew me away. But I love the combination between punkrock and thrash when it’s well done. Guess these guys are the only ones who know how to combine those two in a good way. And of course the lyrics, probably even more important than the music.

2. Strike Anywhere – Iron Front
I loved Change Is A Sound and Exit English. Dead FM was a bit disappointing, but with Iron Front, Strike Anywhere is back. Aggression, nice melodies, political lyrics. I love it! Listened to this one maybe even more than my number one of this year.

3. Megadeth – Endgame
Metallica released another abomination, Megadeth released another killer. Dave Mustaine is probably my favorite metal guitar player. Those riffs destroy! The ballad kinda sucks, but the rest is fucking awesome!

4. In-Sane – Trust These Hands…Are Worthless
I’ve been waiting a long time for the new In-Sane record. In my opinion the best European punkrockband at the moment. Awesome guys, great musicians. These catchy songs with heartfelt lyrics are worth the wait. Great record!

5. Over Stars And Gutters – Consider This Your Curse
Pretty new US band. Willem hooked me up with this one. Melodic yet raw. Pretty orgcore if you ask me. Hope to get my hands on the vinyl soon and hopefully this band will come over in 2010, because the record rocks!

6. Atlas Losing Grip – Watching The Horizon
After an excellent album, Atlas Losing Grip teamed up with Rodrigo from Satanic Surfers, one of my favorite punkrock singers. Good choice! The music is still fast and technical melodic punkrock, but with the new vocals it is absolutely brilliant! Must have for all melodic punkrockers!

7. Nothington – Roads, Bridges And Ruins
Didn’t get the chance to listen to this one a lot. Should have listened to it earlier. I already liked their previous one All In, but this one is better! Maybe less Leatherface and less Social Distortion than the previous record, but a more mature sound. Can’t wait to see them live in a couple of weeks!

8. Banner Pilot – Collapser
Fat Wreck still puts out great new bands once in a while. Banner Pilot is one of those. Bought this LP without really knowing the band, but it was recommended so I gave it a try. Didn’t regret a single euro. Good stuff!

9. Frank Turner – Poetry Of The Deed
The new Frank Turner is a really good record, but it can’t compete with Love Ire And Song, the previous one. That one really gave me goosebumps. This one is still good, although I was a bit disappointed. I was probably hoping for a new Love Ire And Song. Next time, less band, more Frank please!

10. Municipal Waste – Massive Aggressive
Hazardous Mutation and Born To Party are my favorite Municipal Waste records. The new one doesn’t bring you new stuff, but good old crossover thrash/hardcore. One of the few bands that I do like in this style. For everybody who is still into headbanging!

Maybe a little late as we are in the third week of the new year already, but the year started off pretty weird with our name popping up in the Buma press release. Ah well.

The past is written: 2009 has been a turbulent but all in all good year for us. We have played awesome shows with No Use For A Name, The Gaslight Anthem, and many others. We did cool tours together with Rentokill and After the Fall, resulting in 80 shows in 2009. We released our first acoustic EP ever and played some acoustic shows around that. Unfortunately a lot of cool Dutch bands have quit this year (Smash the Statues, 1000 Miles Ahead, Progress) and so did Yvo. Really too bad, but fortunately Tom from Smash the Statues was able and willing to take over the four strings, making him the third guy playing bass for us last year (a lot of thanks go out to Pitter for helping us out on tour!).

The future is unwritten, however: 2010 is going to be even busier than 2009 has been, if it’s up to us . In 1 week we will be leaving for a 3-week tour. 2 weeks later we will be entering the studio to record our 3rd full-length album. This summer we will release it and tour the shit out of it, throughout Europe and most likely USA, hopefully together with even more awesome bands!

In the next weeks you can find a small overview of the records and bands we enjoyed this last year and/or decade. To show off with our great and/or bad taste! Subject to discussion!

To conclude I wanted to emphasize one last time that we will be playing our “Good bye Yvo-show” this Saturday, January 23, at De Onderbroek in Nijmegen. OUR LAST SHOW WITH YVO ON BASS! Together with Smash the Statues’ last show ever featuring In-sane and The Acoustic Alarm (The Indecision Alarm playing acoustic). Come out and play! This is gonna be memorable. So far people from Belgium, Germany and Italy have announced to come over for this show. It’s gonna be awesome. See you there!

Have a good year!

This weekend Buma Cultuur (the Dutch authors- and copyrights organization) released a press bulletin mentioning Antillectual as one of Holland’s main export products in 2008. The press release was published in mainstream media (online and offline) like De Volkskrant, Nu.nl, de NRC, Het Parool and many, MANY other media. For an English version of the article go here.

Apparently Dutch pop music generated 50,2 million euro, 15% more than the year before. Now you know how we can afford our lifestyles!

Other Dutch artists mentioned:
André Rieu, Epica, DJ Tiësto, Peter Pan Speedrock, Armin van Buuren, Ferry Corsten, Within Temptation, Laidback Luke, Born from Pain, Marco V, Sander Kleinenberg, No Turning Back.
What a great company!