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The Black Atlantic

NL - Haldern Pop

The Black Atlantic is the Groningen, The Netherlands based folk-pop band formed around singer and songwriter Geert van der Velde. Their music is an ambient mix of acoustic instruments; repetitive piano, softstrummed guitars and gental percussion, relying heavily on multi-layered vocal harmonies. Repetition of deep and introspective lyrics sung through quiet harmonies make for a meditative listening experience. The Black Atlantics music often gets compared to Bon Iver, Sigur Rós or Fleet Foxes.
The Black Atlantic started as a project of van der Velde in his off time from his philosophy studies. Gradually the project turned more serious after Geert recorded his first song – a Valentine’s gift to his then girlfriend, now wife and mother of his baby girl – in February of 2006. After posting the song on Myspace van der Velde received some label interest and wrote and recorded ‘Send This Home’ in the early Fall of 2006 with the help of various contributing friends. He eventually abandoned his studies to focus full-time on the band.
Live The Black Atlantic made its first appearance, in one of many incarnations, at Eurosonic 2007. Since then the band has maintained a steady diet of touring with a revolving line-up around van der Velde (and for the past 2 years Janssen). In Europe the band has toured with Saturday Looks Good to Me (usa), Windmill (uk) and Woven Hand (us). The band also opened up most shows for Midlake in the Netherlands and shared the stage with The Tallest Man on Earth in the U.K.
In addition to their European shows, the band has toured the US a total of seven times. Most notably they played Filter’s Culture Collide Festival in Los Angeles, CMJ Music Marathon in New York City, NXNE in Toronto, and SXSW 2010 in Austin, one of the world’s largest music festivals. The Black Atlantic has been invited back to play SXSW in 2011 as an official artist.
The band is currently slowly working on a follow up to “Reverence…” but spends most of its time on the road touring.

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