Weelde Resident Presents: Spleen

When @weelderotterdam asked me to continue my residency I didn’t have to think long. I also didn’t have to think long about a concept and fitting dj’s when they asked me to curate a series of nights at de Zandbar. The nightlife in Prague, the city where I lived for a few months last year, has inspired me a lot. It felt like the focus in Prague’s nightlife is much more on dark and gloomy electronic sounds than in Rotterdam. These sounds were exactly what I was longing for, I was longing for the night and its obscurities after missing it for so long due to Covid. With this series of nights I want to bring an ode to the night and its darkness.

Spleen can be described as a feeling of uneasiness, of being unsatisfied and of craving something else of an indeterminate nature, which is difficult to concretize. The concept became established during Romanticism, and poet Baudelaire popularized it through his writings. A connection can be seen between spleen and the attitude of the New Wave and Post-Punk movement of the 80s, from which gloomy electronic music like EBM and New Beat emerged.