Artwork is a detail of a picture by Joni Spaan, that was also featured on the front cover of our record Big Love Blanket. Amsterdam's much-tipped seven-piece Personal Trainer return today with their debut album, Big Love Blanket. 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).

Tonight their music has a Jam/Paul Weller feel that I hadn’t noticed before. I clearly hadn’t been paying sufficient attention when they played here last! Sorry guys….. Welly at the Green Door Store, Brighton 2.3.23 (pics Emma Bouterse) Personal Trainer transcend their influences in an album brimming with excitable chaos and the need to cram together tunes and lyrical ideas but produced with a clarity that highlights all these qualities. Wrap yourself in a ‘Big Love Blanket.’ Most bands should be familiar with the honeymoon phase, those lofty formative stages where creativity blooms as the purest of fruits. The fingers itch, the eyes wander off to rapturous highs, the body trembles electric with creative energy waiting to be unleashed upon unsuspecting onlookers. Unfortunately, the honeymoon phase is usually just that: a phase. Guitarist Franti Maresova hovers around the front of the stage for quite a while before the rest of Personal Trainer appear. She’s there for so long in fact that I’m tempted to ask her whether she’s going to be playing the show solo. However, the rest of the band eventually appear and they take the stage to the strains of Astrid Gilberto. Personal Trainer at the Green Door Store, Brighton 2.3.23 (pic Emma Bouterse)

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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 in 2021). 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.” Thank heavens, nobody told Personal Trainer this was all supposed to be temporary. The Amsterdam-based collective seek out sharp-witted ways to prolong the innate joy of being a band just plugging in and playing. Willem Smit, the group’s conductor and cheerleader, started the band as an ultimate love letter to the vibrant scene he himself inhabits. Initially, it meant playing shows in impromptu line-ups, with individuals of varying skill levels, interests and sensibilities. At the hub of this volatile energy, Smit embraced his role as jester in court, performing his own songs like a lost tourist on a karaoke bender.

Our live record - the first time all seven members of the Personal Trainer live band got together in a studio and recorded together - gets a physical release! A lovely white disc of vinyl in a nice white inner sleeve in a nice white outer sleeve. All hand-numbered.

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Willem Smit started the band as an ultimate love letter to the vibrant scene he himself inhabits. Initially, it meant playing shows in impromptu lineups, with individuals of varying skill levels, interests and sensibilities. At the hub of this volatile energy, Smit embraced his role as jester in court, performing his own songs like a lost tourist on a karaoke bender.