Nico Brandsen
    on XK-5

During the nineties Brandsen put the Hammond organ back on the map in Holland with contributions to succesful albums and tours of for instance Van Dik Hout (platinum record), Anouk, Jan Akkerman, Ilse DeLange (two platinum records), Angela Groothuizen, Marco Borsato and Kane (one platinum and two golden records). Nico created a signature sound on his Hammond X5 with Leslie Combo pre-amp II and vintage Leslie 760 and played stages such as De Kuip, The Amsterdam Arena, Pinkpop, Lowlands, Ahoy, Carré and toured in the UK and Germany.

Next to his session work he always played with his own bands The Feel (Pop), In de steen (Dutch Soul), Ro & Paradise Funk, Fishpot (Hammond Soul), OLaBOLA (Breakbeat Soul) and since recently Vintage Future.

In 2002 Nico Brandsen founded his company Drawbar Music.
In 2004 he was chosen Best keyboard player of The Netherlands by his collegues.
In 2005 he joined The Conservatorty of Amsterdam where he is now staff teacher.
In 2009 he received an Edison as organist/co-producer for best single ‘No surrender’ with Kane.
In 2012 together with Angela Groothuizen he received the Annie M.G. Schmidt prize for Best Theatre song and performance with the Hammond song ‘Vinkeveen’.
In 2016 he founded Vintage Future Records.

Vintage Future & Mell have released their new single Central Station on 15-02-2018.
A full album is expected in 2018 and tourdates are under construction.

"A few years ago I started Vintage Future together with drummer/writer/producer Ton Dijkman. The idea was to explore collaborations with youngsters in a hybrid concept of vintage instuments, sounds and techniques with a modern day 'do it yourself' workflow and attitude. After releasing three well received singles with singer Mell, early 2017 was the time to take the idea to the stage. Ton and I decided to perform as a duo behind Mell so I faced an interesting challenge: how do I play Hammond, footbass, wurlitzer, rhodes, pianet and piano on one set?

I started off with a Hammond XPK-100 footbass and a vintage wurlitzer piano with a Hammond XK-3c on top of it. As we decided not work with a bass player we needed my footbass to go into a bass amp and at the time the only way to do that was to sample my Hammond's 16' and 8' into Sampler and play that through Ableton. It worked for a while but of course I really missed the two manuals to play real organ.

Then came a phone-call from Hammond Suzuki Europe: "Come over Nico, you should check out our new Hammond XK-5..." The moment I layed my hands on it everything fell into it's place. This definitely was a real Hammond organ. Man, they did it!

Other than that, this was also a superb midi controller that offered me the opportunity to play everything I needed on one system. At the very time I needed it the most!

Already having the time of my life on the XK-5 with Vintage Future & Mell on stage the story recently got even better. I was asked by Hammond to give their new Footbass XPK-130G a try. A bass pedal with a build in sound generator (next to the midi configuration). Are you kidding me? This is synchronicity taken to a whole new level...
Needless to say that playing the hybrid Hammond XK-5/XPK-130G system is a dream come true."