Solex Low Kick and Hard Bop LP

Solex is the pseudonym of singer-songwriter and former Amsterdam record store owner Elisabeth Esselink, who came up with a deft blend of low-key techno and 'found sounds.'

Solex Versus the Hitmeister (1998) was her debut album for Matador and was composed using snippets from crappy, unsellable CDs. In a change of tack, Pick Up (1999) was constructed from dozens of recordings that Esselink had secretly made during the gigs of local bands in Amsterdam. It can be considered a variant of a live album. This extraordinary technique culminates on Low Kick and Hard Bop (2001), where she sourced material from old vinyl, television, the better-looking talk show hosts, films, bootlegs, radio, street noises, and animals.

Throughout that time, Solex kept great company, performing with my bloody valentine, Cibo Matto, Yo La Tengo, and The Notwist. She has remixed Grizzly Bear, Wire and St. Vincent, and has collaborated with Mike Watt.

15 songs built out of a dizzying array of elements: a Nancy Sinatra bassline slips by; elsewhere there is a kind of exuberance you thought went out of fashion with The B-52s.... 'Comely Row' and 'Have You No Shame, Girl?' have an echo of surf punk or classic 60s girl groups...even The Slits. Solex's multitracked voice produces a buoyant presence that floats the entire album. With such references there is a collapse of time inherent in her process. And yet, paradoxically, Low Kick could be of no other time than now....Low Kick is a reflex action in the groin of the Prog rock tendencies of anyone who forgets what a studio's for.

Listening to a new Solex album is a bit like being suddenly and completely immersed in a foreign language. At first it sounds alien, unpredictable, and impossible to decipher, but as time goes by, its rhythms become natural, and charming idioms and turns of phrase slowly reveal themselves.