Nicolas "KLZ" Hamel

“Drumming.... sometimes a perfect discharge, often pure pleasure. But always a way of life. Not being able to live without it. Playing pure on feeling, not thinking about prewritten laws, pure emotion”.
That’s what drumming means to me. Ever since I saw Keith Moon (The Who) at the age of three the drum virus has taken full control. At this age I received my first toy drum set which was demolished in full Moon-style within a day.
After years of molesting tables, plants, self-made drum sets made out of cardboard boxes, pots, pans etc. got my real drum kit at the age of 13 (brand Tromsa). All the influences build up though the years finally got set free on this set. These influences mainly were Steward Copeland (The Police), Phil Collins (Genesis and solo) and Keith Moon (The Who).
At the same time I began to discover heavy music like Iron Maiden, Anthrax and Metallica. Therefore the drummers of these bands (Nicko McBrain, Charlie Benante and Lars Ulrich)need to be noticed as new drum influences at that time.
Reaching the age of 18 I followed two years of lessons from local jazz maestro Theo Ooms which started to develop my drumming style to it’s current thing. Through Theo I got to listen to (inimitable) drum gods like Vinnie Colaiuta, Buddie Rich, Simon Philips, Dave Weckl etc. Those drummers were very prominent/intimidading in these years.
In the years following you try to reach a certain technical level as a player (I believe that every musician has at least one "technical phase" in life) until the day that you realise that reaching drum perfection isn’t what it’s all about. The emotion and feeling you put in your playing, that’s what counts. And that made my circle complete. For me it all came down back to drummers like Keith Moon. The complete freedom, the total lack of "drum laws", the immense playing pleasure, the communication between band members (and I mean Keith the drummer, not the sex/drugs/rock 'n roll/legend). That’s what drumming is all about for me. "Let’s see what comes out of the hands and feet this time"-type of playing.
And apparently this is true for more people looking at the tremendous amount of compliments I’ve received through the years from the likes of Hans Eijkenaar (a.o..Anouk, Trijntje Oosterhuis), Stef Broks (Textures) and Caesar Zuiderwijk (Golden Earring). This is absolutely not to be arrogant (I still see myself as a amateur and am very humbeled by the compliments), but it just tells me that I am doing something at least a bit descent ;)
Current bands/projects:
Discourse Avenue (Tilburg/NL)
New Noise (Utrecht/NL)
'K weet het niet, hoor (Schoonhoven/NL)
Former bands/projects:
Blind Justice (Gouda/NL)
Twaa (Schoonhoven/NL)
Past shows include venues like:
Paradiso/A'dam
/Tivoli/Utrecht
Pinkpop/Landgraaf
013/Tilburg
Melkweg/A'dam
Nighttown/Rotterdam
Waterfront/Rotterdam
Zalen Schaaf/Leeuwarden
Doornroosje/Nijmegen
Plato/Helmond
Atak/Enschede
Groene Engel/Oss
+ almost every little sh@thole possible in Holland + tours in England, Tchech Republic, Belgium, Germany
CHECK THESE REVIEWS!!
Aardschok magazine june 2008
Music From june 2008
3voor12 september 2007