Albums… Can you remember the first one you ever bought? And how excited you were to buy it? Sometimes we forget just how much work goes into them, and how magic it feels to go out and buy a physical product.
Dutch D&B dude Nymfo hasn’t forgotten. For his debut album Characters, he insisted it was given life in all physical forms. “It’s all about the whole package,” he tells us. “That’s very important for an album. I’ve been speaking to Klute about this a lot; it’s an album so it has to be vinyl and it has to be CD as well as the digital stuff. I want the total package. And it’s good to do something special for the vinyl die-hards!”
From the artwork to the blue vinyl to the startling range of sounds and styles, it’s an accomplished debut that sheds more light on Nymfo than any of his previous work.
“It’s all about my different vibes and different mood swings,” he tells us. “It’s very diverse. There’s some musical stuff, there’s experimental stuff, there’s your typical Nymfo rollers and there’s some harder stuff with Black Sun Empire. It’s all about the different territories of me! I also hope it’s a nice piece of music to listen to from start to end.”
Job done there, then. You can listen and download it right here and work that one out for yourself. In the mean time, we asked Nymfo what the first album he bought was. And give us three examples of the near-perfect long player.
“The very first album I bought was Public Enemy, It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back,” he says. “I still have it on vinyl! I bought it because I was really into hip-hop at the time. It was huge back then, everyone in school really loved it so I went out and bought it!
“To me an album means an artist can express themselves. It shows people what else you’re capable of. With my album, for example, a lot of people know me from my bassline rollers but I could do a lot more on my album. You can be diverse. For me and album must show different faces of an artist. That make an album. If you like an artist already and you hear their album it should be like ‘whoa! I didn’t know this person was capable of this!’”
Nymfo’s top three albums:
Trentemoller – Last Resort
“This is such a difficult question! There are so many to pick from but this has to be on the list. I love this because you listen to it in every different situation and it always adds sense to your scenario. You can listen to it on Sunday with a hangover and it’s a wicked album but you can see these tracks live at a festival and they go off and you can listen to it in the car. The production is amazing!”
Tribe Called Quest – Midnight Marauders
“One of my all time favourite albums. It’s easy listening hip-hop but you never get bored of it. It’s so funky and pure. It’s very timeless. I’ll still be listening to this in many decades to come…”
The Misfits – Walk Among Us
“Something totally different! I’m not really into punk music but I lived with a few friends years ago who were old punkys and they listened to a lot of this music. I hated a lot of what they played but every time they played The Misfits I was like ‘fuck man!’ I’ve seen them live a few times; I love their riffs and lyrics. They’re as good as punk can get and has been very inspiring for me as an artist.”
Last week we gave away a free Nymfo track. You can grab it right here. Better still, Characters is available now. Listen and download the whole monster right here!