We have the pleasure in premiering the new video from Dutch-English singer-songwriter Gitta de Ridder for her new single Alternate Reality – both a song and a story, watch and read about it below:
Order the Single via Bandcamp here: gittaderidder.bandcamp.com
“It’s 8am, I’m woken up gently by the morning sun filling my London studio flat with soft light making the room look like it’s had instagram’s ‘rise’ filter plastered all over it and my phone alarm playing a Jose Gonzales song soothing me into the day. The background noise of the high-street outside the flat with it’s passing cars and emergency vehicles has become the sound of home over these past years. I feel dazed and startled from a night of restless dreaming. One dream where I was a pirate sailing the worlds seas brutally overthrowing others to gain more, I loved the feeling of power, of rough energy. Another where I was a baker in a small Dutch town making the most beautiful cakes and tasty breads, the people would smile at me, it felt good to give them something they wanted. Finally one where I was living my current life yet somehow everything was backwards, I’d be awake in the nights and sleep in the days and I’d speak my sentences backwards and nobody would understand a word I said. It’s at this moment that I realise that all is as it should be.
I grew up in the Netherlands dreaming of being somewhere else, of finding fulfilment in a far away place, in new people and new surroundings. In change. Setting off on my adventures through Europe I finally found my feet on the Great British Isles 7 years ago. I believe I was travelling in search of myself, of my words, of my voice. The reality is that I was “here” all along. These places, these dreams, these ‘other lives’ have a place in my day-dreams and my night-dreams. These days I often feel I live between two worlds dividing myself between the Netherlands and the UK. At home in both places. Simultaneously home-sick in both places. Yet we can only make one choice, can only do one thing in this very moment, can only sing one song at a time and that song can cross borders, conquer language and make feelings and worlds come to live.
This song Alternate Reality is about those choices, those options, about the desire to have things we can’t have, to live lives we can’t live. The curiosity about what life could be like if we made other choices.”
Dutch-English singer-songwriter Gitta de Ridder spent her childhood in the Netherlands and in her late teens set out on her travels through Ireland, Italy, Greece and Germany finally making her home in the UK. Living in London since 2008 she’s picked up much of the English poetic and musical heritage which is clearly shining through in her engaging and emotion-filled songwriting, folk rooted guitar playing and honest vocals.
Releasing her first EP ‘Come Find Me’ at the start of 2015 she picked up radio play by BBC 6 Music and several Dutch National radio stations (as well as here on Folk Radio UK) and continues her musical journey with this new single, the first of her upcoming debut album expected in 2016.
With the track being self-produced and having played all but Bass and Cello herself she proves to be more than just a singer-songwriter but shows an open mind to developing her own sound and ideas to bloom into an all-round artist and music-maker.
Read our exclusive interview and photo feature with Gitta here.