Vandalberg

In November 2024, Gijs van den Berg was asked to give a talk at the Art Directors Club of Europe. The theme was Agents of Change. He decided to make a case for what he called “the creative riot”, a plea against the predictability that the creative industry had become comfortable with. To demonstrate his point, he recorded a 45-second punk song called Deadline. Wrote it, recorded it, mixed it. All by himself, in one go.

It was the first time he had done that. And it felt right.

Van den Berg has spent twenty years in the creative industry, building stories for other people. As a Creative Director and partner at an international creative agency, his days revolve around collaboration, consensus, and the careful process of making ideas survive committees. He is grateful for the work. But somewhere along the way, the act of making things with his own hands had disappeared.

He had always created autonomous work alongside his job. Photography, mostly. Visual things. But this was different. Writing and recording music was new territory. He watched endless tutorials, experimented with sounds and production techniques until he found something that felt right. The rawness of not knowing exactly what he was doing was the point. No brief. No feedback round. No safety net. If it was bad, it was his fault. If it was good, same thing.

After Deadline, he kept going. He wrote four songs about the frustrations of twenty years in the industry. Endless meetings. Pie charts presented as progress. The slow erosion of giving your best hours to a fluorescent ceiling. Then he wrote four more about everything outside of work. The life he craves because he is always working. Running faster in the dark as a kid. The impossibility of finding gluten-free food at airports. Small moments that feel big when no one is performing.

Together, the eight tracks became Work/Life. A skatepunk record about office culture and the things that matter when you log off.

Every instrument, every vocal, every production decision was made alone. Not because Van den Berg couldn't find people to work with, but because he deliberately chose not to. In his daily work, everything is shaped by collaboration. Vandalberg is the opposite. The most pure form. If it connects, it connects honestly. He would rather make something that is either really good or really bad than something that is carefully optimized to be fine.

The tracks were finished and mastered by Damian Kucera (Krang, Rabies). The album is released on White Russian Records and pressed on vinyl in a limited run. Side A is Work. Side B is Life. What started as a personal riot somehow turned into a concept again. Old habits.

The name Vandalberg is a play on his surname, van den Berg. The vandal part speaks for itself.