Personal Trainer - Rug Busters

By Jon Milton

If there's any justice in the world, Personal Trainer's new single 'Rug Busters' will be a massive hit and people all over the world will be spontaneously breaking out into its dance moves whenever it comes on. Before you read on, click on the link below, watch the video and tell me that I'm wrong!  

​Not only is Rug Busters a great tune, but they did that brilliant video in ONE TAKE! I'm not particularly one for dancing but even I can't stop wiggling to this one. 

If you're not familiar with the band - they're Dutch and the brainchild of Willem Smit, the band's front man and a multi-instrumentalist. They're all about the unpredictable, with the band made up of a shifting line-up of friends and peers playing together with only one rule: there are no rules. Willem says of the single: 
 
“I wanted to make a song to dance to for everybody - no one excluded. The idea was to make a song that brings people closer to each other, no matter who they are, who they are with, what they believe or what they've done. 

"Dance", "Dance Dance Dance" and "Song 2 Dance 2" were three of the working titles before I settled on "Rug Busters" - "busting a move" meets "cutting a rug" or something."

The video was filmed by the band's own Kilian Kayser in the parking lot beneath their keyboard player Abel Tuinstra's studio. 

"Coming up with a simple idea that feels a bit dumb, but sparks something inside of me or the band - then trying to give it your all to make the idea into something cool - has become a recurring approach for Personal Trainer.

I think we applied this to both the song itself as the video. I'd been trying to come up with an idea for the video in the van with the band or on the phone with my fellow Trainers. On our way back from a show we decided we should write a choreography and perform it, preferably in a nondescript space. The first ideas for the choreography were written in a bar in Amsterdam on that very night by a couple of Trainers, but the bulk of the thing was written and rehearsed in my bedroom.

It was a sight to behold watching six twenty-somethings busting rugs in a relatively small space. I was and am still very proud of everyone's perseverance and heart, and I think the video turned out great. I think most Trainers - including myself - are a bit ashamed of the video too!"

The band have just begun their UK tour. Go and see them and you can try out a few of those moves...

MAY

4 Manchester - Yes Basement
5 Leeds - Hyde Park Book Club
6 Newcastle - Head Of Steam
7 Edinburgh - Sneaky Pete’s
8 Glasgow - Broadcast
10 Nottingham - Rough Trade
11 Bedford - Esquires
14 Brighton - Hope & Ruin
15 Bristol - Crofters Rights
17 London - Moth Club

Photo: Kilian Kayser