Pip Blom, Eton Crop

We are thrilled to have Pip Blom performing here as part of Independent Venue Week 2019!

22-year-old Amsterdam-based Pip Blom started writing, recording and releasing her own indie-pop tunes with a twist in 2016. Early songs, which were simply uploaded to the internet, quickly amassed thousands and thousands of plays – prompting Pip to recruit a band and start playing them live. In stepped brother Tender Blom on backing vocals and guitar, Darek Mercks on bass and Gini Cameron on drums, with Pip herself fronting on guitar on vocals. Since, the band have played more than a hundred gigs, rising from small pubs to the european festival circuit with performances at Eurosonic Noorderslag and The Great Escape – as well as being asked by the likes of Surfer Blood, Franz Ferdinand and The Breeders to join them on their various European tours.

The band’s energetic live show quickly pricked the ears of press and radio – with Vice’s music channel hailing Pip as ‘ready to join the ranks of 2018’s rising guitar acts’, and BBC 6 Music A-listing recent singles ‘I Think I’m In Love’ and ‘Pussycat’. The station’s DJs Marc Riley hailed the former as ‘perfect pop’ with Gideon Coe branding it ‘excellent’ and, elsewhere, on the UK’s most popular music station BBC Radio One, Pip Blom performed a live session at Maida Vale for Huw Stephens. Not bad going for someone whose early ambitions were to write a few songs and upload them to the internet in case people wanted to hear them.

Support from Eton Crop

Eton Crop were an indie band formed in 1979 in Nieuwkoop, Netherlands, and released a total of 12 singles and four albums over the next 15 years. Frequent visitors to the UK, they toured with many of the “pre-C86” groups like The Membranes and The Three Johns, the latter with whom they shared a not too dissimilar musical approach. While many groups from that era downed tools towards the end of the decade, Eton Crop battled on into the mid-nineties, their last full length album, Get Real!, appearing (on cd) in 1992, eventually bowing out in 1994 with the 4 track ep Everybody. The band later changed their name to the E.C. Groove Society and started producing techno music until 2003. Recently the band reformed under Eton Crop and performed in Stockton, County Durham, UK at the Peel Regenerated Festival in 2014.

The band recorded five sessions for John Peel in the space of five years and on his Radio Bremen show from 1991 on Peel 002 (Radio Bremen), he stated that this was his favourite Dutch band:

“And this is just about my favourite Dutch band and they have been for quite some time. I mean to be honest with you, couple of them are mates of mine anyway, which probably colour my judgement.”