By and large the Dutch don't tend to hype their artists, but at one point it looked like they were prepared to make an exception for Bloem de Ligny. The serious media have been following her since her remarkable (solo) performance at the prestigious Crossing Border festival in The Hague two years ago. Way before the release of her debut album, Haarlem's enfant magnifique was on the cover of both rock magazine OOR and lifestyle monthly Blvd. Now that the CD Zink has finally seen the light, the ugly word hype should be taken back immediately. Eat your words, and use your ears for a change, as this is an electrifying musical event. Welcome to Zink, the sea according to Bloem de Ligny. High and low tide in extremis.
Hype doesn't go with careful, long-term career development anyway. Bloem has taken plenty of time to come out with her CD. 'First I wanted everything to be right. It was all about having the right people around me and finding the record company [Columbia] which would suit me best,' says Bloem, justifying the long wait. 'I had ideas enough of my own, but in my search for the ideal producer I was looking for someone who could act as a catalyst.' She found what she was looking for in the person of Ex-Boomtown Rats-bassist Pete Briquette, the sound architect in volatile dance genius Tricky's universe. 'I was well lucky,' she expresses, revealing her adolescent years.
Relocated to London, between March and August she was able to work undisturbed on Zink. The musicians to be heard on the CD are more or less the same as featured in her live band, namely guitarist Maarten Veldhuis, bassist Thijs Vermeulen, drummer Martijn Bosman and keyboards player Wiboud Burkens. The latter has since been replaced on stage by Rob Daenen due to other commitments. Now and then guest musicians 'on the Zinkside' pop up 'from the dunes' such as a strings section on the ballad Ice & Angels, simultaneously stonecold and boiling hot. Briquette himself does a thing or two on bass guitar as well, while Tricky's sticksman Perry Melius coincidentally bangs the drums.
'I could basically do what I'd wanted to. Layer by layer we've built up the music as if we were building a house. First we laid the foundations and then for instance we put in the water supply system,' tells Bloem, referring to the artistic process. 'Every time we had guests in the studio it felt like a house warming party with each visitor bringing along something special. Everyone understood what I wanted. Pure magic it was.'
Even children's book heroin Pippi Longstocking would blush at Bloem's wonderland. The lyrics are absolutely bizarre. Try to read them in the CD-booklet, if you can, as her handwriting is both curious and incomprehensible without instructions. The letter 'q' or 'g' for example should sometimes be read as a letter 'a'. Anyway, one would like to see her wild thoughts worked out in a book. Something she admits is a secret ambition.
The crazy track Pirates alone could be turned into a film. In that song Bloem is a cyber pirate at a virtual sea. The stereotype pirate is described by her as a rough and tough sailor with a wooden leg and a five o'clock shadow on his cheeks. He is missing at least one tooth and a burning fag end hangs out of his dirty mouth. With the one hand he holds the helm and in the other a beer, while the boat shakes dangerously on the wild waves. Ship ahoy!
'The pirate is constantly spinning yarns,' explains Bloem. 'Two mermaids hang on to the boat to listen to him. In order to impress them, he grossly exaggerates until the story reaches the climax, at which point the mermaids climb aboard and grab him. One of them hits him hard with her tail so that our pirate sees stars and drops to the floor. They lie down by his side, while a third mermaid takes over at the helm. She carries on with the story telling, mimicking the pirate's pompous style.'
A film producer should already put his scriptwriters to work for Blue Nix, indisputably one of the outstanding tracks on the CD. Bloem recorded it lying upside down. 'It's not by chance the first track of the album. Without that number the rest wouldn't have existed at all,' reveals Bloem. 'That "ahahaha"-vocal line I've had in my mind since I was six years old. I didn't work it out into a proper song until I was fifteen. It's about this little ice queen living in her ice cave world where nobody has ever been. Seated in her cave, she asks herself questions the whole day, and all she can see is her own reflections. The "echo voices" you can hear in the song are her own as well. These voices challenge her to start doing something.'
Our queen doesn't tease lonely sailors, like the legendary Lorelei figure, who steered navigators on the Rhine to their deaths with her amazing vocals. The only one she's teasing is herself. 'What's the use of all this beauty in your cave when you're the only one around and you've got nobody to share it with? Moreover there's nothing you can compare it with,' continues Bloem telling her ice cold tale full of fire. 'Suddenly her cave bursts open - which you can hear in the music - and the sea's overwhelming beauty is shown to her for the very first time in her life. On a big ice cube she floats into the great wide open, escorted by a school of fish. Finally she sees the world. The cave is left behind to be used by others.'
Without feeling the urge to moralise, Bloem experiences her own fabrications as parables, from which she can learn something herself as well. 'The way things happened in that song was what happened to me too. From the age of fifteen I started to discover things myself. I started discovering that everything is related to everything else in one way or another, or so it seemed. I had no idea that I was on a voyage of discovery just like that ice queen.' All of my songs are based on this kind of strange metaphors. The pirate, for instance. I've been him too. There was a period in my life when I was convinced I knew it all, just like him. When you act blindly like that, something should make you punch yourself in the face with your tail too. How naive I was, that I didn't understand that.' Since she swears by putting things into perspective.
The name Bloem has allowed her to keep her barely hidden childlike-ness. Fortunately, her impulsive stage persona has been left fully intact on the album. What's more, she never changes her original intentions with a song. From the moment she starts writing, she bangs out everything in one go, including the lyrics and the mood. It is a matter of waiting for inspiration, switching on the four-track recorder, and letting it all come out.
'When I replay my own music afterwards, every time it feels like listening to somebody else. It's like giving a present to yourself. If you would alter anything in the lyrics or the vocal line, then you wouldn't be fair to yourself. Even if the content of a song can be quite confronting, like on Pirates, you should still keep your hands off it. Apparently that was the way it was meant to be. As a matter of fact the song only tells you something you knew yourself already for quite some time. It doesn't surface from the subconscious, and I don't believe in reincarnation, but it always gives me a sort of d萰?vu feeling. I like to call it a "parallel line of thought" which exists next to your ordinary reasoning. The human brain is capable of far more than we think. Call it an extra sense which hasn't been named yet.'
Bloem's touch, eyesight, hearing, smell and taste seem to be aimed at the sea. Zink is her pet name for her own fantasy sea. 'The [Roman]God Neptune envies Zink, as it's the only sea he is not the king of. Sometimes you think you see "something," but it appears to be nothingbut an illusion. Then we always say that it's Neptune who's trying to fool us.' The concept of Zink imbues the CD-artwork as well. Accompanied by photographers Wim van de Hulst en Marion Rosendahl she went to the Atlantic coast in Normandy, where the ocean can be most Zink. 'I walked into the wild sea in my "cyber ball dress". I was surrounded by fluffy foam. As a backdrop there were these massive white cliffs,' describes Bloem. The ambience was unique. 'The sea felt creepy and dangerous, it was so strong. The sea teases you, it has something sexual about it. When you're standing in the water, you feel connected to something really powerful. Your heart starts pounding harder and harder. Along the way you get the feeling like you're in love .'
Standing in the breakers, the waves washed past Bloem, and crashed into the rocks to end up washing over her in one rush. 'The sea likes to show off, the sea is a macho. I had sex with the sea. The water was ice ice cold, but super tough.' On the album artwork Bloem is pictured in a car, just after she has come out of the sea. 'You can see how cold I am, but also that picture radiates warmth and happiness, as I was still enjoying that mighty experience.' Recently Bloem was on the cover of rock magazine OOR, standing on the Northsea beach, dressed in a wet suit. If this girl isn't Zink, who is? In its total fierceness, the title track Zink sums it all up. 'That bassline is like the waves. Exactly the same sound I've always heard in my head has made it to the album.'
