Musical and Photographic Adventures at Popronde with NORE and Aarde aan Daan

Popronde is the largest traveling festival in the Netherlands. Every year, from thousands of submissions, Popronde makes a selection of bands, musicians, rappers, and more - artists they believe have real potential. These selected talents then go on a tour across the Netherlands, performing not only in traditional concert venues but also in cinemas, skateparks and boats. The best part? Visiting the festival is completely free, making it an incredible platform to showcase and support emerging talent.

At Lomography, we share a similar mission: to give photographers a stage and help them feel seen. Naturally, we love this initiative and couldn’t resist checking out the selectees. That’s when NORE and Aarde aan Daan (Earth to Daan) caught our eye! We reached out to ask them about their Popronde experience so far and to capture some backstage moments on cameras we think are very fitting: the Fisheye No.2 (with LomoChrome Metropolis film ) for NORE and the Simple Use Camera LomoChrome Purple for Aarde aan Daan!

Hi there, welcome to Lomography Magazine! Could you start by telling us a bit about your band?

NORE: Hiya! We’re a Dutch band called NORE, made up of the five of us; Jon Reintjens on drums, Jeremy Koetsier on lead guitar, Sven Lijssen on the keys and synth, Julian Weijers on bass and Tessa Meester as front vocalist and rhythm guitarist. We came together as a band a few years ago, where we started to define our sound up until this point.

We make a type of existential indie rock, with influences of bands like Black Country, New Road, Vampire Weekend, and Big Thief. Our focus lies mostly on the story behind our songs, not only lyrically but also in our arrangements. A song should be an emotional bridge between the audience and an act, and the story within is the thing that connects them both.

Aarde aan Daan: The band is called Aarde aan Daan, which consist of singer and songwriter me, Daan Hafkamp, Helena Mayorga Paredes on electric guitar, Joppe Vanwetswinkel on keys, Hanne Vandekerckhove on bass and Renzo Rijn on Drums. All members live in Belgium although we are a mix of Dutch and Belgian nationalities.

We describe the music of Aarde aan Daan as daydream-pop with energetic grooves and colorful sounds. The lyrics are in Dutch and rather cinematic and poetic, with also some relatable catchy phrases. Music and words intertwine to catch a vital and lustful vibe.

How did you celebrate being selected for Popronde 2024?

NORE: We were just hanging out at Sven’s place, listening to the radio show that announces the selected acts. It took a while, I think we were one of the last names to be announced. We’d been sitting there for an hour or two already, so you can guess how excited we were when NORE was finally announced as one of the participants!

Aarde aan Daan: I heard the news during the broadcasting of Dutch radio station NPO 3FM where they anounced it by playing our track called Verrassing (surprise), which is a very applicable song because it tells the story of two friends who overcome a feeling of melancholy by going on a road trip together.

Afterwards I called all the band members to share the exciting news and to already have some conversations about how we would do it. Because Popronde is usually only done by bands who live in The Netherland and we are a band from Belgium. Logistically it was even a bigger challenge to play so many shows, because we all had to depart and return to Belgium in order to play. Eventually we played 21 shows and traveled a total of 6.676 kilometers. That’s the same distance as from New York to L.A. and then towards Mexico City. Quite a ride! We had to make sure to manage the Popronde Tour as well as possible.

Do you have a favorite moment or city so far from Popronde?

NORE: We were booked on a docked ship called "Opoe Sientje" on the opening night in Nijmegen, which was already such a cool venue! We were really left to our own devices there, building everything up with the other band playing that night, Olaf Putker and the Scenic Sound.

The whole boat was packed up to the brim that night, with people even peeking through the portholes because they couldn’t fit inside anymore. It felt cozy and energetic at the same time, like everybody already knew each other for ages. People singing along from the top of their lungs, climbing on furniture to take a peek, it was awesome.

Aarde aan Daan: We really enjoyed our show at Stadsschouwburg Utrecht. The week before that we had a challenging weekend travelling from Belgium to play late at night in Groningen and Den Bosch, where we also experienced some technical difficulties.

After some days rest we were very well received by the people of Stadsschouwburg Utrecht who provided us with a good schedule, delicious food, a nice backstage and very good sound assistance by the venue. It helped us a lot to play in good circumstances and everybody felt at ease and excited for the show, which really got picked up by the crowd. When live musicians and a crowd are able to interchange good energy, than the magic starts to happen. It was such a vibe!

Do you have a favorite photo taken with the camera and why?

NORE: Not a particular favorite, because the fisheye effect makes every photo instantly cool. But love the overall vibe of this photo of our leadsinger Tessa writing setlists. The colors of the Metropolis work really well with all the brown going on in the photo as well.

Aarde aan Daan: This photo!

the way they hold the globes is the way people should carry their worlds. Light hearted, caring, relaxed and proud. The photo was taken when we just arrived at Paradiso, Amsterdam. A legendary venue where we played a show where we really enjoyed ourselves and our new live set.

What are your music hopes for after Popronde?

NORE: We had our second EP, This time will be different released on January 10th! So we’ll reach out to new venues to play even more shows, build our fanbase and try and get some airplay on national radio. It would be awesome to be able to do some support shows for bigger bands in the coming year!

Aarde aan Daan: Our hopes are that we can keep on expanding our connection with music lovers throughout the Netherlands.It was really cool to see that people from all over the country who previously had seen us support the band WIES during their Dutch tour in 2021/2022 came back to visit our own shows during Popronde 2024. We hope to keep on witnessing how our music brings something interesting and positive into people’s lives during the moments people are willing to share with us. We met some interesting people from the Dutch music industry and got some new bookings for 2025 so we can’t wait to share more music and explore the vibrant Dutch music culture!

Is there anything you’d like to share with the Lomography community?

NORE: Thanks for choosing us for this experience with the Fisheye camera! We love experimenting with different mediums when it comes to making content on Instagram in particular, so the Fisheye camera was really fun to experiment with. Hope you stick around for the music as well!

Aarde aan Daan: Lomography and it’s approach to photography is really refreshing. There’s so much to explore when you go into the world and try out different perspectives to capture it. Discovering the different camera’s and ways to use them is like going on a tour itself!

Thank you NORE and Aarde aan Daan for sharing this experience with us! Give them a follow on Instagram @wewantnore and @aardeaandaan to keep updated on all their news and find their music!

Keep exploring new music, and don't forget to bring a funky Fisheye Camera or Simple Use Camera when you do!

written by lomocato on 2025-02-18 #gear #culture #videos #music #tour #netherlands #fisheye-no-2 #lomography-simple-use Share Article