Solex: Low Kick and Hard Bop — basement jazz-pop, now on vinyl
Matador reissues Solex’s Low Kick and Hard Bop on vinyl — Elisabeth Esselink turned a tiny Amsterdam CD shop and a basement sampler into cozy, clever sample-pop.
Elisabeth Esselink’s Solex began in a 15-square-metre secondhand CD shop in Amsterdam and a basement studio where she sampled the very discs she sold. Bandcamp Daily reports that for the 25th anniversary of her third album, Low Kick and Hard Bop, Matador is finally issuing it on vinyl — a neat excuse to revisit her thrift-store bricolage.
What makes Solex sing is specific: obsessive sample-hunting, an eight-track rig bought at an auction, and the strange workaround of re-recording ‘‘samples of samples’’ to dodge clearance headaches (Bandcamp Daily). The results are jazz-tinged, cartoonish and oddly cozy — think smoky-jazz life filtered through a basement tape-recorder.
We like this because Esselink’s music keeps the tactile weirdness of crate-digging intact while sounding humane, small-scale and witty. Recent work with Mike Watt and a 2009 collab with Cristina Martinez and Jon Spencer are noted in the piece; Bandcamp Daily sums up the new chapter.
"Solex Says Look Out." — Bandcamp Daily
Read more: Bandcamp Daily.
Got something wrong? Tell us and we will fix it.
