Liesbeth Esselink
During the course of the summer of 2008, Bart van Poppel and Elisabeth Esselink trekked the numerous rivers, lakes and waterways covering the twelve provinces of the Netherlands by an old motor boat. In each province a different cast of musicians were 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 full of noises, moods, voices and rhythms back to her studio where she set about processing the recordings into twelve separate sound-image compositions, one for each province. Solex Ahoy, or better still, The Sound Map of the Netherlands is a reflection of the perilous route. A homage to the Dutch waterways. DIARY: Solex Ahoy - province Friesland / POTS & PANS We had to cross the IJsselmeer in order to get ourselves from the province Noord-Holland to Friesland. The IJsselmeer (sometimes translated as Lake Yssel) is a shallow lake of 1100km2 known for it's unpredictable behavior in bad weather. It was created in 1932 when an inland sea, the Zuiderzee was closed by a 32km dam. It's the largest lake in Western Europe. Officially every boat that sails the IJsselmeer has to be sea-worthy and our boat the 'Nenuphar' is far from that. Last friday the weather forecast was good enough for us to risk the two-and-a-half hour trip. The first two hours were great and everything went smoothly. Just when we had some land in sight the wind was increasing and the waves became bigger and bigger. Pots and pans were flying across our heads and although I didn't think we were going to drown I was pretty scared. When we entered the harbor in Friesland we both took some shots of whisky to celebrate our arrival in one piece. In Friesland we recorded a couple of improvisations by some fine musicians. The last one was by Sido Martens on mandolin. In The Netherlands he had a hit in 1974 called 'Kaapren Varen' when he played in Fungus. He's a lean tall guy with huge hands and he had a mandolin with a broader neck build especially for him so it would fit his hands. Quite a guy! We're heading to Groningen now. The third province out of twelve. Solex Ahoy!
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