Folia has Fomo | Sex, Art & Rock n Roll
No plans for next weekend yet? Stressed by all the options in Amsterdam? Then check out our biweekly culture column “Folia has FOMO,” with culture tips from the editors for events between December 6th and 20th. From rocking in Volta to raving in the Nieuwe Anita.
There's No Recipe | €5 | Volta | January (due to bookings issues the concert of 14 december is postponed to a t.b.d. date in January)
“We perhaps take ourselves a little too seriously in today's band scene,” says singer Ziko Schilte, grinning. With his indie-rock band (alternative, more experimental rock), There's No Recipe, he is touring various concert halls in Amsterdam. In January they will perform at Volta, a pop venue where young people organize events. “They have regular band nights on Thursdays, where our own young audience comes, but so do old 'rockers',” Schilte explains. Amsterdam-based There's No Recipe takes its inspiration from Muse, Pearl Jam, and Radiohead, among others. “But,” the frontman stresses, “We're pretty down-to-earth guys. I don't like to get weird on stage like a Thom Yorke (singer of Radiohead, ed.).”
After completing his first year of Social Geography & Planning at the UvA, the Nijmegen-born Schilte also took a course in music engineering at the HKU. This allowed him and the band members he recruited to produce their own songs. This freed up the four friends' budget again to search “the complicated network of Amsterdam managers, promoters and labels.” Right now they are also concentrating on "beautiful melodies and compositions" for their new album.
In doing so, the band has yet to fit within Amsterdam's trend of “funny indie and punk bands.” The 25-year-old Schilte explains, “You have a lot of bands now with witty lyrics and somewhat simpler melodies, like the hugely popular Goldband, but also the Amsterdam punk bands Hang Youth and Asociaal Kabaal. Their albums, and especially their lyrics, are really clever. But it sometimes bothers us that people mainly listen to that kind of more specious music. For example, in a music competition we once lost at the last minute to a band whose members were dressed as pickles...”
There's No Recipe tries to distinguish itself in another way. “We are not particularly concerned with having our own, distinctive sound all the time. It's the songwriting and the melodies that we spend a lot of time on. Because of that, I think we have distinctively ‘intelligent’ songs,” Schilte says cautiously. The gig at Volta is also a test for the band. “The band IOK from Nijmegen is playing a long support act, and we have further improved our show to make it less ‘low-key.’ It's really tight. But I'll have some jokes in between, too.” So There's No Recipe will still storm witty Amsterdam.
Sextalks 'N' Dating | €35 | TenClub | December 12th
In the nineteenth-century industrial-style renovated building of TenClub, you get to spend an evening talking about everyone's favorite topic: sex. Writer Rhea Darens introduces the evening on the Nes with a lecture on open relationships. She will engage in conversation with the audience and sexologist Mariëtte Sinninghe Damsté. Then you may indicate whether you are “open to dating,” “open to a relationship” or just “open to a conversation.” Possibly that conversation could take place in the huge bathtub with copper bath taps.
Feed me. Cheat me. Eat me. | €10 | Eye Filmmuseum | Until January 7th, 2024
Greek artist Janis Rafa shows the tension of the relationship between man and nature. Dark fragments and dystopian frames show the dark side of a decaying animal world. She states that her work "constitutes a wordless ode to stray dogs and canines as pets, raided game, prey animals, animals in the bio-industry and other victims of late-capitalist society.”
Wave Invasion | €9 | The New Anita | December 15th
East Berlin in West Amsterdam. At De Nieuwe Anita you can always, but especially tonight, imagine yourself in the German center of techno. The dark space with frayed leather chairs, a smoky theater and Berlin wallpaper is filled with the industrial music of Xtort (the Dutch Kraftwerk) and synthpop of the German Alphamay. Get totally carried away by electric seventies sounds, because tonight you can fly over the East Berlin Wall to West.
But we have the moon! | €5 | Theater Perdu | December 9th
Poetry Bookshop Perdu is hosting a festive evening about and under the moon. The writers' collective De Kantlijn, “people from the street,” who have not always had an easy time in life, will bring colourful stories about our light in the night. And moon songs will be performed by guitar and vocals. Crime writer René Appel interviews poet Jos van Hest about the moon in his life. For anyone who believes in the power of the moon.
He/She/He/Huh? | Free | VOX-POP Binnengasthuis | December 12th
Ten UvA master's students discuss an increasingly relevant topic with the audience during the He/They/Him/Huh? event: gender terms in book translations. For example, how do we translate the English “they/them,” which at first glance may have a different connotation than the Dutch “zij/hen”?
Not to mention the endless array of German nouns. The students of “The Book Profession in an International Context” are going to venture out anyway. And are curious to hear the opinion of he/she/they who wants to talk to them/they.
UvA Orkest-Sweelinck: Autumn Concert | €13 | De Duif | December 11th
The UvA Orchestra celebrates its 145th anniversary with a tribute to understated romantic works by Brahms, Sibelius, Dutch Andriessen, and Elgar. Made up entirely of students, the symphonic orchestra also performs regularly at the Concertgebouw.
On December 11th, they will be performing at the nineteenth-century Catholic Church De Duif. They will perform works including “The Academic Festival Overture” by Johannes Brahms with references to student songs, and the beautiful musical poem “The Bosnian Nymph” by Jean Sibelius. Blooming late romantics for romantic late bloomers.
