Dutch art-pop trio the Homesick (Elias Elgersma, Jaap van der Velde, and Erik Woudwijk) are back with a quirky little single “Esperanto.” The new song arrives alongside the announcement that they signed to independent Austrian label Siluh Records.
“Esperanto” is wacky in a new wave/Devo way. It has rubbery synths and bouncy vocal shouts. The title is a reference to an “international language” created by L. L. Zamenhof in the late 1800s. His goal was to create an approachable universal second language and build a “community of speakers.” Elgersma shared that the band played “Esperanto” live for over a year with improvised lyrics.
He continued:
I always just sang ”Esperanto”, no clue why. While recording I came up with a short little lyric about Nostradamus. For some reason Nostradamus reminded me of Lejzer Zamenhof, the guy who invented the language of Esperanto. What they both have in common is that they both became famous historical figures with kinda useless stuff; inventing a pointless language and predicting nonsense. In the studio (my livingroom) we added layers to make it more disco-y and Jaap came up with a guitar line at the end in the style of Echo and the Bunnymen.
Watch the video for “Esperanto” below.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source stereogum.com ’
