Introducing: Long Fling
The new collaborative project of Personal Trainer’s Willem Smit and Pip Blom
Announce debut album Long Fling out October 3rd, share debut single “Flung“, and EU / UK tour
Long Fling by Joni Spaan
Past support for Pip Blom and Personal Trainer
“confessional songwriting, earworm melodies and a quietly beating heart beneath the surface noise.” DIY ★★★★
“A vibrant tapestry of sound that showcases the Amsterdam collective’s knack for musical exploration.” – DORK
“What a banger” – God Is In The TV ★★★★
“It’s impressive stuff, full of craft and invention.” – MOJO
“The pair’s melodic magnetism is ever-present.” – NME ★★★★
“Pip Blom cleverly weaponizes lapses in concentration to craft perky, grunge-lite melodies.” – Pitchfork 7/10
“Fabulously eclectic… fine-tuning their melodic instincts without sacrificing the anything-goes chaos that makes them such a thrilling proposition… Wonderful.” Uncut – 8/10
Amsterdam indie stalwarts Pip Blom and Willem Smit, respectively the songwriter & vocal force behind Pip Blom and the driving creative mind behind Personal Trainer, have come together after a decade of intermittent collaborations to launch a new project: Long Fling. The duo’s self-titled debut album arrives 3rd of October, 2025, unveiling a collection of charming, offbeat guitar and drum machine, kraut-rock tinged anthems, touching on everyday oddities like socks, shoes, and the allure of staying home.
Unlike typical duets, Long Fling doesn’t focus on harmonies or traditional back-and-forth vocals. Instead, Pip and Willem trade lines over minimal, melodic arrangements that reflect their shared sensibilities. The songs are direct but often playful, shaped by a mix of guitars, drum machines, and off-the-cuff lyrics. On stage, Pip and Willem expand the sound with Sal Rubinstein, Darek Mercks, and Tender Blom.
Their debut single “Flung” is out today, capturing the sonic chemistry found between Pip and Willem. Willem describes it as “one of the easiest songs on the record to write”, featuring a “spanky” guitar, gifted to him due to being “impossible to tune and beyond repair”, matched by synths that lean into more dissonant places than either Pip Blom or Personal Trainer would normally visit. The drums, made by Willem at home by slapping a mic against anything from the cupboards to the floor, before being digitally processed, give the track a raw yet polished feel, making it a live favourite that builds irresistibly toward its climax.
Listen to “Flung” HERE
Pre-order/pre-save Long Fling HERE
Over the course of ten years, Willem and Pip’s songwriting process evolved from tentative beginnings filled with creative tension to a natural, collaborative flow. Willem reflects: “Over the years, I feel we’ve grown more comfortable making music together… Assembling a record we have been accidentally making without the goal of making a record was fun, but also weird. It felt a bit like archaeology sometimes. We tried to change things… but found out quite quickly that it made most sense to stay true to the initial ideas we had.”
Pip adds: “We’d never done everything including the mixing ourselves before. I think we both felt comfortable doing it this time because we were in it together, and we were okay with the idea that the record didn’t need to be super polished or perfect… When we each asked our dads whether the album sounded more like a Willem album or a Pip album, they both said the other’s name. I really feel like we made this album together – it’s a true blend of the both of us.”
Long Fling made their surprise live debut in May at Amsterdam’s London Calling Festival and have already earned themselves a busy summer, road testing their upcoming album at six European festivals, including Dorset’s legendary End of the Road Festival. Following the October 3rd release of Long Fling, the band will embark on a seven-date tour across the Netherlands and the UK. See the full list of dates below.
“Flung” single artwork
Long Fling EU / UK Tour
13th June – Best Kept Secret (NL)
5th July – Wilde Weide (NL)
17th July – Valkhof (NL)
31st August – End of the Road (UK)
5th September – Misty Fields (NL)
4th October – Come As You Are Festival (NL)
15th October – Brighton, Hope and Ruin (UK)
16th of October – London, Lexington (UK)
18th of October – Manchester, Pink Room (UK)
1st November – Groningen, VERA (NL)
5th November – Nijmegen, Doornroosje (NL)
12th November – Amsterdam, Tolhuistuin (NL)
13th November – Utrecht, Ekko (NL)
Long Fling bio:
Long Fling is Pip Blom and Willem Smit, Of Pip Blom and Personal Trainer fame, respectively. The two make charming, offbeat guitar-and-drum-computer anthems about socks, shoes and staying home. Duets, but only in the technical sense of the word, since they contain no converging cries of longing, no climactic payoffs and not even any vocal harmonies. Elusive and effortlessly cool in all the wrong ways, and raising more questions than they answer. Can we call a record DIY when the people who did it have clearly done this before? How should you pronounce the word “can’t”? And so on. The longer the fling, the longer they sing. On stage Pip and Willem are joined by Sal Rubinstein, Darek Mercks and Tender Blom to form a five-piece rock band.
Long Fling artwork