Vinyl Record
Remy van Kesteren - Leave What You Know
Remy van Kesteren - Leave What You Know on LP vinyl. A 2025 record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.
LP ยท 2025
Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.
Buyer notes: 2025 LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.
Leave What You Know is Remy van Kesteren moving the harp out of its expected frame and into a song-led, collaborative pop language. Released in 2025, it follows years in which the Dutch harpist had already crossed between classical stages, clubs, electronic textures, festival settings and experimental projects. The title is not decorative: the album is built around leaving behind the safe identity of the virtuoso and letting the instrument become part of a wider emotional architecture. The striking change is vocal. Van Kesteren had previously made his name through instrumental imagination, but here the music opens itself to singers and lyric-centred writing. Robin Kester, Kim Janssen, Pitou, Marcel Veenendaal, Nana Adjoa, Luwten, Banji, Roufaida and others help turn the pieces into songs rather than showcases. The harp remains present, sometimes bright and exposed, sometimes folded into electronics, drums, guitars and atmospheric production. That makes the album more than a crossover curiosity. It listens like an artist testing whether an instrument associated with refinement can carry uncertainty, intimacy and pop structure without losing its strange glow.
The album matters because it reframes van Kesteren as a songwriter-producer as much as a harpist. Instead of treating the harp as a novelty texture, Leave What You Know asks how it can sit inside contemporary song forms, guest voices and studio colour. For a collection, it marks a clear 2020s route through modern classical crossover: less polite, more porous, and closer to art-pop than recital culture.
This is a useful record for collectors who follow the point where chamber-trained players move into pop without sanding away their instrumental identity. It belongs near Nils Frahm-adjacent modern composition, left-field Dutch pop and vocal-led art-pop shelves, because it carries all three instincts at once. The reason to own it is the album's unusual centre of gravity: familiar song shapes held together by an instrument that keeps changing its role.
Art-pop and chamber-pop shaped by harp, electronics, guest vocals, soft rhythmic detail and a production style that lets delicate string colour behave like modern song architecture.
Recommended for: Listeners curious about harp outside classical recital settings; Fans of art-pop collaborations with unusual instrumental colour; Collectors following modern classical artists crossing into song-led albums.
Is Leave What You Know a classical harp album? No. The harp is central, but the album is built as contemporary song-led art-pop with vocals, electronics, drums and collaborative writing. Why is this album a notable step for Remy van Kesteren? It moves him from instrumental boundary-pushing into lyric-centred, guest-vocal songwriting while keeping the harp as the album's most distinctive voice. Who is this record best suited to? It suits listeners who like modern classical texture but want the emotional immediacy of songs rather than a formal recital programme.