Amsterdam contains multitudes. If you’re from the British home counties, you probably visited the Netherlands' capital city as a spotty teenager and all that remains are memories of smoking on Strawberry Diesel and passing out beside a plate of franse frietjes. If you’re older (aka an adult on a stag-do) you might’ve done something similar but a little more x-rated. Or hey, maybe you really like art and canals and beautiful 17th century narrow houses. Who knows! We’re all different!
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While the ease of getting across to Schiphol airport may make us feel like we know Amsterdam inside-out, however, there’s one thing we don’t hear enough about – the city’s, and by extension, the Netherlands' music scene. The heads over at Noisey Netherlands have things on lock down for the really detailed and curated stuff. Here in the UK though, we don’t write enough about that scene. Of course we know the Fedde Le Grands and the Afrojacks and the Tiëstos. Who wants to listen to those, right? Riiiight.Enter: Yurrit. This guy is 23 years old. He was born in Amsterdam but he grew up in a small village not too far from the city. Later he moved to Rotterdam to study music professionally at their big arts university. While he was there he learned about Max Martin and Quincy Jones and all the big pop mavericks. Then, when he finished, he started to release some tunes that sit in a smooth area between rap, pop and electronic music. To date there are two: “Explode”, which has the sort of astronomical Spotify numbers that signify an artist on the rise; and “Not Enough”, which we’re premiering the video for below.The original idea for the video was to have a load of photographs back-to-back-to-back says Yurrit, speaking from his bedroom in Rotterdam. He’s just got back from a holiday with his girlfriend in the Canary Islands and his room is a mess. There’s discarded laundry all over the floor. He’s in a good place though. “I feel really hyped about getting back to work and doing all the stuff I was doing already but with a new mind,” he says joyfully, explaining how he’d been putting off going away for the last couple of years.
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As its video suggests, “Not Enough” is of the dusk and dawn world. A place of open highways, fast cars, row after row of street lights. He seems like the sort of dude who would be happy cruising along by himself, just a few tunes on the stereo and the window wound down. A lonesome kind of joy.Yurrit’s melange of genres came about after he spent his teenage years doing the normal things teenagers do. Y’know, house parties and that. In those days, the places were full of kids banging out electronic music and Yurrit wanted to be involved. “It was the vibe and context of those parties that made it a magical thing for me, and that led to wanting to figure out how that music was made” he explains.For a while he dove head first into the left-field, but then “I felt the need to create stuff that would be more accessible to people. So I combined a lot of influences I had from house and techno and into a form that’s accessible to more people by making more poppy stuff with R&B and electronic influence.” When he thinks about where his music should be played, 99% of the time it’s in a club. Somewhere not too big, but not too intimate either. A spot with just the right amount of space.For now, “Not Enough” is the next step in Yurrit’s introduction before his EP drops next month. Keep your eyes peeled for that one as things get more atmospheric and includes features from Beau Nox, Ashnikko and Terrel Morris. Re-ee-wind the video above and press play one more time.You can find Ryan on Twitter.Catch Yurrit on Instagram here.