Minny Pops

Minny Pops emerged as post-punk experimentalists whose output consistently blended dark wit with jagged electronics, often adopting a stern tone that could turn humorous or combine both qualities at once. Under the leadership and frontmanship of Wally van Middendorp, the group surfaced from Amsterdam’s underground Ultra scene toward the close of the 1970s, issuing both a debut 7" and the album Drastic Measures, Drastic Movement by decade’s end. Entering the following decade, they became the first Dutch act to tape a session for John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show and kept supplying Factory and Factory Benelux with material that remained inscrutable yet compelling, beginning with the Martin Hannett-produced single “Dolphin’s Spurt,” which reached the U.K. independent singles chart in 1981. After the comparatively accessible second album Sparks in a Dark Room, sporadic activity yielded further releases that stretched from the 1985 album 4th Floor through a series of characteristically enigmatic singles issued from the late 2010s into the early 2020s.

Wally van Middendorp established Minny Pops in September 1978, taking the name from a Korg drum-machine line. Earlier that year he had played in the punk group Tits, whose lone single appeared on the Plurex label he co-founded with fellow Tits member Sam Tjioe. Three months after forming Minny Pops, van Middendorp (handling drum programming and vocals) was joined by Frans Hagenaars on bass and Peter Mertens on guitar for the band’s first performance. The following March they released a Plurex 7" that contained “Footsteps,” “Nervous,” and “Kojak,” the last of which allowed van Middendorp to exercise his Telly Savalas impersonation. With Dennis Duchhart and Stephen Emmer added on guitar, van Middendorp, Hagenaars, and the new members recorded the album Drastic Measures, Drastic Movement, which surfaced in September 1979. A 7" EP titled Live, drawn from shows in Amsterdam and Delft, appeared in 1980, as did a John Peel session—featuring synthesizer player Wim Dekker, bassist Lion van Zoeren, and guitarist Gerard Walhof—that aired that December; Peel, an early champion, had already broadcast every track from the studio debut.

Support dates with Joy Division and New Order drew Minny Pops into the orbit of Factory Records. Recording with producer Martin Hannett and engineer Chris Nagle, and with Pim Scheelings substituting for Walhof, the band recut the Drastic Measures, Drastic Movement track “Dolphin’s Spurt” and coupled the tightened version with the new song “Goddess.” The resulting Factory single entered the U.K. independent chart in February 1981 and reached number 23 across its five-week run. By the close of 1981 Minny Pops had stopped performing live, though they had previously opened for or toured with Scritti Politti, the Comsat Angels, and the Names throughout the Netherlands and had played shows in Canada and the United States, including a New York date alongside Suicide. Their busiest year arrived in 1982, when the lineup consisted of core members van Middendorp and Dekker plus bassist Pieter Mulder and drummer Orpheus Roovers. Moving to the Brussels-based Factory Benelux imprint and continuing to self-produce, they issued the “Time” 7" followed shortly by the album Sparks in a Dark Room and then the single “Secret Story” on Factory proper. That same year Dekker and Mulder also appeared as two-fifths of Smalts, whose Werktitels EP came out on Plurex, while Minny Pops, assisted by Dennis Duchhart, composed music for the play Poste Restante; a recording of the score was released on Plurex in 1983.

Minny Pops disbanded in August 1983. Plurex ceased operations around the same time, its catalog having included releases by additional Dutch acts such as Nasmak, the Young Lions, and the Tapes, as well as Eric Random and Pere Ubu’s David Thomas. In 1984 the fledgling LTM label, which would later oversee the core Minny Pops catalog, put out a 7" single pairing “Een Kus” (previously issued on a magazine flexi-disc) with “Son.” Across 1984 and 1985 van Middendorp and Dekker, recording as Streetlife, released two Factory 12" dance singles in a style recalling Cabaret Voltaire, Colourbox, and labelmates Quando Quango. Minny Pops briefly reconvened in 1985 for the album 4th Floor, which occupied a midpoint between earlier work and the Streetlife singles; the set appeared on van Middendorp’s short-lived Prime imprint, a Megadisc subsidiary where he served as label manager before later tenures at other independent and major labels.

During the 2000s LTM reissued most of the Minny Pops catalog. Expanded versions of the first two albums were supplemented by the compilation Secret Stories, which gathered both sides of the “Dolphin’s Spurt” and “Secret Story” singles along with all four tracks from the John Peel session. Van Middendorp, Dekker, and Mulder regrouped in 2012 for concerts in the Netherlands, England, and Belgium, with Mark Ritsema and Thomas Myrmel alternately contributing guitar. They concluded the year with the single “Waiting for This to Happen”/“Glistening,” produced and released by the Charlatans’ Tim Burgess. Subsequently based in the U.K., van Middendorp sustained Minny Pops with a rotating cast of nearby and remote collaborators. In 2019 and 2020 the project issued the tracks “Slow Car Fast Car,” “Dat Dead Dad Dog,” and “Dat Dead Dog Dad,” plus the Outernationale Remix EP; “Experience [Piano Version],” a collaboration with Pihka Is My Name, followed in 2022. All of this material appeared on Dekker’s Blowpipe label.