The Amsterdam trio talk us through their newly released EP ‘Bark!’.

Parker Fans are a unique prospect. Formed in Amsterdam among a flourishing Dutch scene, their music brings indie attitude to a floor-filling dance sound. Their live show is intensely impactful and tremendous fun, its energy perhaps best captured on 2024 EP ‘Pool of Fish’. This month they are back with new EP ‘Bark!’, a slightly more lucid collection but nevertheless packed with addictive grooves. Playful pan flute riffs dance through intense opener ‘Enemies’ and into the looser title track, which is wound tight around a gem of a bassline. The EP’s dance climax is hit with ‘I’m Your Dog Baby’, which combines a ridiculously huge house keyboard riff with lyrics reminiscent of the knowing slickness of Confidence Man. Then things mellow out with closer ‘Verano Holandés’, an understatedly sprawling, shapeshifting piece. The band’s sound is really made by the contrast of the instrumentals provided by Sem Egter van Wissekerke and Thomas Geleijnse and the bold vocals of Kick Kluiving, who cut his teeth playing drums with Personal Trainer. As they prepared for the release of ‘Bark!’, we had a chat with the band about their story so far and the evolution marked by the new EP.

How did the band form? Was there any founding creative manifesto?

Sem: So I started this project with someone else for my final exam at the Conservatorium and we needed a singer. Kick and I were good friends already and I had wanted to work with him for a long time. I really liked Kick’s vocals, because we made very groovy music, so we didn’t want a groovy singer but someone who’s a bit more punky.

Kick: [laughs] …who can’t sing! Actually, when they asked me to sing in Parker Fans I was really happy because I was drumming a lot and I felt a bit, like, caged in the drumkit. I really liked that it was more groovy music because I only played in indie rock bands and if we played a groovy track it was really wide still. I think also with the drum computer it was really unique and cool – in the Netherlands at that time there were not really bands who were doing that.

What links the four tracks on ‘Bark!’? Was there any central theme you were aiming for?

Thomas: I think we wanted it to be a little less over-the-top and heavy in terms of the very high energy from the second EP [‘Pool of Fish’]. I guess there’s a bit more sophistication, but I don’t really like that word. It has a bit more, like, clear song structures and I think we chose the sounds a bit more carefully… instead of throwing everything together to get the maximum of energy out of the songs.

Kick: I think a few tracks like ‘Verano Holandés’ we were playing for a really long time live so it was one we really wanted to add to the EP. The rest is quite new and I don’t think we really were searching for a specific idea of what the EP should sound like.

Thomas: Weirdly they do fit very well together, also because of the sounds I think, they sound very cohesive. There are a lot of references to old school things but also very new sounds and that makes it a very compact thing.

Tell me a little bit more about the flute sound we hear on a couple of these songs. Was that all taken from the sample we hear at the end of ‘Enemies’?

Thomas: No but I like that you think that!  We had this sample for this artist explaining the pygmy flute, Francis Bebey … he used the flute on a CD I was listening to which I really liked and I thought we could use that sample. Afterwards, we made the song ‘Bark!’. I think we were testing out some sounds on a Korg and this pan flute sound came up and worked really well. It matched with ‘Enemies’ but it wasn’t really on purpose.

More generally, who were your key musical influences in making this EP?

Kick: I think in general we really like bands like Underworld and for me also Confidence Man.

Sem: I think the second EP we had a lot of influences from the UK rave scene, UK garage, hardcore, drum and bass, jungle… now it’s I think leaning more to Underworld and a bit more of the hip hop stuff, Tribe Called Quest kind of beats…

Thomas: We leaned a bit more into using the MPC, thinking about a cool sample with a cool break and that being the core of the track. I think the way of working was more specific to ‘This is the sample, this is the sound’ and then shaping the track around that specific thing.

What would you say is the ideal setting to listen to ‘Bark!’?

Kick: Maybe like on a bike?

Thomas: Or in a car ride… maybe let’s say like a 1am car ride.

Sem: Little bit tipsy…

Thomas: You’ve got four people in the car, you get one song each, everyone is happy.

Honing in to one tune, what is it about the phrase ‘making enemies’ that felt right for the chorus of ‘Enemies’?

Kick: I think that it was like, during the week you’re like normal guy doing normal work and then in the weekends you’re going all out… and being an asshole basically. I think it’s quite funny for me, that image. Especially, like, the salesman, for example. During the week they’re really serious and then you see them in a café on the weekend and their being a total asshole, shouting to girls, drinking too much…

What was the hardest song on the EP to realise in the recording process?

Kick: I think ‘Verano Holandés’ was quite difficult, because we were playing it for like a year.

Sem: Some tracks you play for a really long time live and then you have to translate them to a recording, and some recordings are just in the computer and you have to transform them to live. And both sides can be really difficult.

Thomas: I think the thing with ‘Verano Holandés’ is we had this really nice feeling about the track playing it live so we were committed to putting it on the recording. And then it turned out to be way harder to capture the feeling we have playing it live, but we were so committed to it that we tried. And I think we somehow managed… I think we thought it would be easier because we had such a nice feeling about it.

Kick: I think with ‘I’m Your Dog Baby’, when we first rehearsed that song it was really awkward….

Thomas: …Whereas for the recording, I think in three hours we had the whole basic structure.

‘Bark!’ is out now. Parker Fans have a run of shows coming up in Belgium and the Netherlands, but we’ll have to stay tuned for news of the return of their ecstatic live show to the UK.