Solex
Solex Ahoy!
Elisabeth Esselink, aka Solex, has always done things her own way. The Dutch sorceress of sound reset the boundaries by blowing them clean away with albums like ‘Pick-Up’ (released in 1999 on Matador Records) which, 14 years on, is still namechecked by the likes of Annie Clark aka St Vincent, who calls it a huge inspiration. She continues to be beyond comparison in her approach to amalgamating samples, live instruments and her own vocals, creating an incredibly unique pop and electronica.
In 2010 she created a masterpiece in the shape of ‘Amsterdam Throwdown, King Street Showdown!’, which was a supernova of genre-bending delights in a brainiac’s dance party, and gave collaborators Jon Spencer (Blues Explosion) and his wife Cristina Martinez (Boss Hog) a funk soul playground through which they could run free.
What you have here is nothing like the above. This truly unique and special album is the soundtrack to the documentary film of the same name. During the course of the summer of 2008, Elisabeth (and her partner in sound, Bart van Poppel) trekked the numerous rivers, lakes and waterways covering the twelve provinces of the Netherlands by an old motorboat. In each province a different cast of musicians was invited to climb aboard and, purely a l’improviste, create a homage to the Dutch landscape. On returning to her home base in Amsterdam, Esselink took the resulting material of noises, moods, voices and rhythms back to her studio where she set about processing the recordings into twelve separate soundimage compositions, one for each province. ‘Solex Ahoy!’, or better still, ‘The Sound Map Of The Netherlands’, is a reflection of the perilous route. An homage to the Dutch waterways.
‘Solex Ahoy! (The Sound Map Of The Netherlands) is released on vinyl with CD and DVD included. It’s the first release on Bronze Rat’s Seriés Aphonos, a new music library which focuses on left-of-centre musical meanderings, soundtracks, and strange treasures from hidden corners.
Tracklist
Nood-Holland
Friesland
Groningen
Drenthe
Overijssel
Gelderland
Limburg
Noord-Brabant
Zeeland
Zuid-Holland
Utrecht
Flevoland