In this week’s 10 Questions we get to know Kaminski, an Art-Pop artist from the Netherlands
His song ‘No Pets Allowed’ is currently featured on the NAS Spotify Playlists, and his new single ‘Tom’ is due to be released this week
You can follow Kaminski on Instagram, Facebook, Threads and X (formerly Twitter).
1. Tell us a little about where you are from.
I’m from the Netherlands – a country flat enough to hear your own thoughts echo. Right now, I’m finishing the last pieces of my second album, which should arrive in 2026 if the stars, deadlines, and analog tape machines align. It’s the quiet phase: writing in fragments, erasing just as much as I keep, shaping something that feels both inevitable and completely uncertain. The bones are there – now it’s about stitching the last nerves into place.
2. What inspired Kaminski to start playing and making music?
It was never really about inspiration. It was necessity. Music became the only place where I felt entirely able, entirely safe – a kind of magic circle I could step into and disappear from the noise outside. It let me rearrange the past, give shape to what didn’t make sense yet. Over time, it became a way to deal not just with my own ghosts, but with the larger ones – the things we’re all quietly carrying. The cruelty, the beauty, the absurd state of it all.
Music became the only place where I felt entirely able, entirely safe – a kind of magic circle I could step into and disappear from the noise outside.
3. Who are Kaminski’s biggest musical influences?
Zappa taught me not to fear the grotesque. Sunny Day Real Estate showed me how to bleed with volume. The Beatles, but only when they were unraveling. I’ve always been drawn to sounds that feel like they’re breaking down while trying to hold together – broken machines still humming, imperfect voices, analog ghosts. If I must name it, maybe: art rock, art folk, crank wave, indie prog?
4. What are your goals in the music industry or as an artist?
None. “Music” and “industry” should never appear in the same sentence without a restraining order. I make music to share something honest – an invisible part of me – with someone who might need it. If that connects, that’s everything. If not, it still exists, and that’s enough.
“Music” and “industry” should never appear in the same sentence without a restraining order.
5. Tell us about your creative process.
Process is the wrong word. It’s more of a quiet haunting. A sound, a phrase, a mistake – these things pull at me until I follow. I don’t chase songs. I listen, and wait for them to make the first move. Creativity lives somewhere just behind language, and every song is a little exorcism. When one makes it through, it feels like a small miracle. Or theft.
6. What is your all-time favorite song by another artist and why?
There are hundreds – each tied to a specific moment, a version of me I’ve already buried. But when everything else falls away, I return to “Blåguten” by Hoff Ensemble. It’s more than a song—it’s a space. Sparse, slow, untouched. It allows silence to be part of the music, and sometimes that’s all I need to survive a day.
7. What is the best advice you have either given or received in terms of music?
I was raised to feel small in the face of something greater – maybe that’s religion, maybe just life. But in music, I try to reclaim that smallness, reshape it. The best advice I can offer is this: make something that feels like you’re allowed to exist. Let it be imperfect, confused, even fragile. That’s where the truth lives.
Make something that feels like you’re allowed to exist. Let it be imperfect, confused, even fragile. That’s where the truth lives.
8. What is your proudest accomplishment?
Strangely enough, my proudest accomplishment is not one fixed event, but the act of becoming Kaminski. Watching it unfold has been like observing someone I almost recognize, slowly stepping out of the fog.
For years, I struggled with the feeling that I didn’t quite belong anywhere – not in music scenes, not in institutions, not even in the rooms I found myself in. I made sounds because I had to, not because I thought anyone would listen. But over time, I saw something take shape. Kaminski became a vessel -half me, half other – through which I could finally speak clearly, even when I didn’t fully understand what I was saying.
The proudest part is staying honest in that process. Not chasing trends, not tailoring songs to algorithms or moods of the week, but letting the work be quiet, strange, raw, and unresolved when it needs to be. Allowing vulnerability to lead, even when it’s deeply uncomfortable.
There’s pride in finding people who connect with that version of truth – however niche, however small the circle. Pride in seeing my daughter dance in a cathedral to a song I wrote about grief. Pride in continuing, when giving up would be easier. Kaminski blooms slowly. And I’m still here to witness it.
9. What’s been your most embarrassing moment so far?
Everything I release. There’s a part of me in each track I’d rather hide – but I leave it in on purpose. Vulnerability is mortifying and necessary. Maybe that’s the point.
10. Tell us about your lowest and highest points in music so far.
The so-called highs are easy to list: signing a record deal, touring across Europe with Marillion, hearing from strangers in distant places who felt seen inside a song I made alone in a room. Those moments shimmer. They affirm something. But they’re not the core.
The lowest point isn’t a moment – it’s a state. A quiet, persistent doubt that lives somewhere in the gut. A sense that no matter how much you make, or how deeply you feel it, the world may still turn away. That weight has followed me since the beginning. But oddly, it’s also become a kind of starting point. A necessary pressure that turns songs into something worth keeping.
And then there’s Tom. A requiem for a friend I lost – someone I hadn’t truly seen in years, until it was too late. Writing that piece nearly broke me open, but in doing so, it stitched something back together. Grief became form. Absence became music. And in those five minutes, it was all okay.
Humans are disasters. Beautiful ones. Music knows this better than we do. Maybe that’s why I keep going.
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