Personal Trainer

Amsterdam's much-tipped seven-piece Personal Trainer return today with news that their debut album, "Big Love Blanket", is landing on November 4th. It follows two excellent singles this year, and a debut EP "Gazebo" that landed mid-pandemic on tastemaker label Holm Front (Walt Disco, Krush Puppies, Sports Team). 

The ten tracks of "Big Love Blanket" display a playful diversity of sounds and influences, landing on one all of their own that has been championed as "rapturously fun" by Ones To Watch, "incredibly catchy indie-led pop" by Record Of The Day, "curious and endearing" by Steve Lamacq, "remarkable" by CLASH and even compared to LCD Soundsystem by Marc Riley. The first song to be released ahead of the album, "Key Of Ego", was one of NME's New Bangers too, and rightly so. 

Co-produced with Casper van de Lans, Willem Smit, the group’s conductor and cheerleader,  rummaged knee-deep into the strongholds that conceived many of the past decade’s quintessential Dutch alternative records. The quest to squeeze out the most potential out of each song might seem somewhat at odds with Personal Trainer’s tumultuous modus operandi (which included a 24-hour concert streamed live at Amsterdam’s legendary Paradiso last year). The conditions Smit and Van de Lans set aren’t all that different: create that feeling of being a little bit out of your depth, a little foolish, and allow some of that silliness to guide the musical direction forward. “Whenever I catch myself doing something premeditated, I wouldn't like it if I just pretended to know it all. I think I would find that incredibly lame.”