Dier, Post-Punk, and Smartlap - An Interview with Citruks
Images by Luc Satter
DJ? Rock ‘n roller? Radiomaker? Citruks (Luuk van de Klundert) melds the worlds between sound, people, and space. On the debut EP Dier, sparse electronics break up droney voids of sound, synths glitch and wobble, with words and emotion leaking out. Operating at the intersection of ambient, art rock, and post-punk, Citruks has been infecting dancefloors and listening ears for years in Amsterdam. Through adventures on the decks, you might recognize the name from a Garage Noord lineup or the Echobox Radio catalog. Ahead of Dier’s EP release show at Occii, I sat down with Citruks to talk Judith Butler, post-punk mindsets, smartlap, and kitchen music listening.
How would you describe the new EP Dier in 3 words?
Awkward. Animal. Noise. …It's a good band name as well.
The merchandise would go crazy.
It could be my spin-off.
Much of the writing surrounding your work mentions a “post-punk mindset”. What does a post-punk mindset mean to you?
So it's really interesting. In the past five or six years, post-punk has become such a big genre again. There are so many bands now that position themselves as post-punk. With most of these bands, and this is not meant in an annoying or bad way, but they sound quite similar to me —it's very rhythm-driven, very groovy, and always guitar music. Post-punk for me started out by saying things like “We need to keep the energy from punk music, this aggression and this urgency, but we don't need to follow the rules, such as punk has to be a guitar and three chords and something about monarchy”.
Post-punk was an experiment for me. It's the most experimental genre because they were constantly asking “What is punk music ?” Is it a guitar and a bass and drum, or is it questioning the rules? “What is the essence of punk? What can it be?”. That for me, that's the post-punk mindset. It’s about not being tied to a genre or to a sound but constantly evolving and keeping the essence and the urgency very close to yourself.
In your work with Echobox Radio, I found it really interesting how some episodes read almost as ethnography, where you play music but also mix in quotes and samples from cultural and philosophical icons like Judith Butler or Bertolt Brecht. Can you speak on the idea behind these episodes?
I want to form episodes where sounds and words come together. For people, like Judith Butler or Bertolt Brecht…I even did an episode about Tonke Dragt. She's this amazing Dutch writer. Those are all people who are inspiring me and for me, they also contribute to deconstruction [the philosophical approach to challenging traditional beliefs and absolute truths].
Thinking of Judith Butler, especially of course, but Bertolt Brecht as well in his political and romantic ways of writing, I see them as contributors to the bigger deconstruction that I'd like to see. I think these philosophical concepts or writings are meant to bring feelings on, and I think radio is perfect for that because you can use sounds, songs, or atmospheres that underline those feelings.
I noticed this theme of folk in your work, especially the inclusion of the Dutch concept/musical genre of “smartlap”. Could you explain “smartlap” to me and the other non-Dutch speakers?
Yeah, it's a very classical old Dutch genre but there are forms of it in Germany, Belgium, and all over Europe. I think there are some different opinions about this, but it comes from a Roma background and Yiddish background. It's these songs that were made to be as honest as possible and to extract a feeling as much as possible. So “smart” in Dutch is quite an old word for something similar to sadness. Smartlap means like a handkerchief to dry your tears with.
How does this “smartlap” relate to your music?
What's inspiring to me about that genre is that it's as honest as possible. It’s not thinking like “Which metaphor shall I use now?” or “Which arty stuff will I put in now?”, it's like “I have this feeling and I want to communicate this to you”, which is something that's very hard for me. I'm very multi-layered in a lot of things and not really a direct person. But it inspired me to cut away all this other stuff when you're making songs, cutting it right to the essence. My lyrics or my songs are quite abstract but I wanted to have a certain clarity around the abstractness similar to smartlap.
What was flowing through your mind while you were writing Dier?
When I was working on the EP and mostly when I was finishing it, I listened to a lot of Section 25. They made these really sparse post-bop songs, they completely radically stripped it all down, and you can hear every hour of performances, every mistake in music, but it's still very coherent.
What do you appreciate about radio making?
It's really very powerful for me. It feels like so much is possible, like you can listen to people talking for an hour, for two hours and you can do 20 different genres within one hour. I feel like people in their homes listen differently than on a dance floor. People are maybe a bit more vulnerable or a bit more open in their homes than on a dance floor, that's really the magic of radio I think.
Where should the people physically listen to Dier?
It's definitely living room music, but it could also very well work in a bathroom, like while the shower is running. Maybe not the first track because it's a bit intense. But the rest of the tracks are; I think especially 'Herfstmeeuw” and “Hinder niet”. I think those are great tracks for in the shower, I think the dripping of water will go very well. And there is also the kitchen! The kitchen is for me also one of the best places to listen to music.
While you're cutting up cucumbers or something?
Definitely. It's one of the moments where I'm at rest. When I listen to music in the kitchen it’s because there's nothing else I can do. I can't multitask there, because otherwise you'll cut your finger.
Dier will be released on Belgian label, Kontact Group, on October 4th. You can listen to and purchase the EP on Bandcamp.
Images by Luc Satter
