Irish Whip - Biography

Last updated: 17-03-2007

There are two members in the band, Pivo and Im (real names: Ivo vd Horst and Pim vd Horst). They tried several times to form a band with two guys and one girl, but the drummer moved to another place and with no drums, no band. However, the singer ande guitarplayer (two brothers) wanted to keep on making music, so in 1998 They formed their own band: Irish Whip. Because they were both students, they got the time to make songs and practise. In december 1998 they recorded their first album, From Unknown, mostly in the christmas holiday.

As you can probably hear, their is no drummer and no bassplayer in the band. This lack is filled by the computer. Irish Whip used to use ScreamTracker 3 for the drums and bass. Later on, from their third album (Black-Winged Angel), they used the program ImpulsTracker. This program is better, because you can easily change the volume of each instrument, channel and the whole song. Another problem was, that ST3 didn't work on their new computer.

The band has got two members, but sometimes they use the help of other people, like The Posermen and Tamar.

After the first album was released, on 01-01-1999, there was a second attempt to form a band, but because the moving of the drummer, this attempt also failed. From that moment, Irish Whip decided to go on with the both of them. The result was the second album: In the nick of time, released in the end of may 1999. On this album they used dome help from other people, like dr. FE who wrote the lyrics of Vera and Feldwebel Balk who did the lyrics on Koos Korswagen. They also hired a manager, Petorie, who managed to sell 5 albums!

In the mean time, Irish Whip had done some gigs, all of them in the AVH-canteen. AVH is the local Athletic Club in Headville, Lake Harlem. A great succes it was!

The band kept on making songs. On the first album, most of the lyrics were written by Pivo, but on the second, and later third, album Im also wrote some lyrics. All the guitars are played by Im and he also creates all the music. On this moment Pivo is learning to play the guitar. Perhaps he may perform a song on the fourth album.

In october 1999 Irish Whip released the third album: Black-Winged Angel, the most succesfull one. This album contains the hitsingle 'Satan rings my bell'. This song is based on the disco-classic 'Ring my bell' by Anita Ward. Another classic on the album is 'One cool moddafocka'.

After this album, the band came in a small creative crisis. The songs didn't come very easy. It took 6 months took make the fourth album: Yes Indeed. Then it took even more time to made the fifth album: Not Even Close. Although it took some time, the fans didn't forget Irish Whip. The last album contains the already legendary songs "Ozzy", with Tamar on the vocal in the chorus, and "Posermen", highly appreciated by all the fans.

From now on, the band decided to take some more time to make and record the songs. With the new Boss BR8, a digital recorder, that was all possible. Also, during the 5th and the 6th album, Irish Whip reached their 10 minutes of fame. Here's the story:
A guy from an Australian radio station found this website and wanted to play some songs from Not Even Close, because of the Irish lyrics. The program played traditional Irish and Folk music. Irish Whip sent him a cd and he promised to play a couple of tracks. A Dutch local newspaper found out about this and they wanted to do an interview. So that happened and the article was read by a Dutch radio program, called 'Schiffers.fm'. He found the story very nice and so Irish Whip did an interview on the national public radio. You can find the article and the radio-interview in the Media section. This all took place in January 2002.
After this, the media attention was back to what it was before: zero. In February the 6th album was released: Lousy But Commercial. It turned out to be the second best selling album, after In The Nick Of Time. Tamar did the vocals on 'This is it', the rest was played by the two members themselves.

After this album, the band thought it was time for making a Best Of album. The fans could vote for the songs on the website, which was a great succes. Bj�rk did the same thing on her website, but off course after she saw it here, at irishwhip.com. Most songs were re-recorded except for Aufsalzen. This album, called Was Hast Du Gelernt (a sentence from the song Herr Kaktus), was a very big success. It was released in 2002. They even received a platina (well, sort of) record for it! Over 30,000 were sold, so it was the biggest success for the band so far.

The expectations were very high when Irish Whip went on making the next album. It took some more time than the other ones and the album Beg To Differ Little Missy (number 7 already, released in 2003) sounds a bit different than the previous ones. No songs about Posermen or assholes this time. Not all fans appreciate this album, but the band itself is very proud of it.

In the meantime the band sold over 100,000 copies of all their albums and singles. Also the merchandise was expanded with a great product: Irish Whip picks! They come in orange and in green with white imprint.

With these picks the band recorded the new album: Suitcase (released in 2004). There are only covers on this album. It was a wish of the band to make such an album. It contains 16 songs which the bandmembers like and also knows how to play (very important!).

Somewhere in 2003 mr Im bought a drum, just because he liked to play it. The band recorded several songs with a live drum and they sounded very special. The already legendary song Die Kip Hoort In Het Water sounds very cool with these drums. At first the band thought it might be cool to put some songs with live drums on the album, but it was too difficult to get it sound good enough.
In 2005 the band released their 10th (!) album called Ad Libitum Ad Fundum. For the first time they recorded a song in Finnish! Ok, the pronounciation might be not 100% correct, but it sounds very cool, according to the band. This album has got some really rocking songs on it and the band is very proud of it.

After this album the band had a long break. They didn't have enough time to write new songs let alone to recorde them. The guitar playing skills of mr Pivo did improve a lot, so they did some gigs with him on guitar and mr Im on drums. At the birthday party of the executive director of Walhello.com they played for a rather large crowd with cool songs like Breaking The Law and some new material.

This new material ended, eventually, up on the 11th album of Irish Whip: Like You Know And Stuff! It was released on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day. It contains some bonus tracks the fans really appreciated. Beside those songs there are 11 songs on it, most of them are rocking your socks off! One of the best songs is Focus And Execute, an already legendary song with an amazing (somewhat stolen) riff.

In 2004 the first video was shot: AddLip Alert. It's about mr Pivo longing for the unreachable. It was a great success and both the fans and the band liked it very much. So they started recording more video's. The first video for the Ad Libitum Ad Fundum album was for the song Ruotsalainen Homo, the Finnish song indeed. It contains just some pictures that correspond with the lyrics. So if you have no idea what the lyrics are about: just watch the video!

At this moment there are no concrete plans for a new video to support the latest album, but you'll never know!