“My parents were never really into recorded music. I think they had two records. There was Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, which my mother used to put on twice a year and cry to, and my dad had this Best of The Ink Spots album—I think I can still sing every line on those two albums.”
“The one thing we did have on vinyl were fairy tales. Like Grimm’s stories, those are some of the deepest memories of my childhood. Lying on a sheepskin rug listening to my favourite one about Vrouw Holle—I think that translates as “Mother Hulda”—where a girl jumps into a well and ends up in this magical land where eventually she is showered with pure gold. I remember trying to imagine how that would feel, all this gold over your body.
The first album I bought for myself was Prince’s Purple Rain. I still have it—I loved having that album, for me it opened up another world. Just knowing that it was there, that there were people who made stuff like this, with songs that were riddles to me, lyrics that I didn’t really get, but felt some way. On the back was this weird story that didn’t make a lot of sense but I memorised it anyway and later wrote it down on the gym floor of our school with a permanent marker. The only act of vandalising I committed in my teens.
My next vinyl chapter was definitely the library. Because I couldn’t afford to buy a lot of albums I went to the library and borrowed them. And then made mixtapes—I went through a Blues phase, a Dylan phase, a Melanie phase, a Neil Young phase, and then ended with a Lou Reed phase.
The funny thing I realise now is that I’ve lost all of those mixtapes along the way, but have held on to almost all of my vinyl. With each and every one of those I have a special relation. It’s never just an object or a collection of songs, it’s also the memories of unwrapping it for the first time, reading the lyrics on the inner sleeve, feeling the cardboard with your fingers, turning it around, wandering about the artwork, the thank-you’s, the notes, the credits and the instruments played.
Having something on vinyl always makes the connection to the music deeper. It then somehow gets embedded in a physical sense on top of just the auditory experience and sinks into other parts of your brain. To now have my own An Average Woman on vinyl is a source of infinite joy to me, especially because two of my close friends, Floor Koomen and Amie Dicke made the artwork with so much love and artistry. It’s a real thing now, not just a figment of my imagination.”
—VanWyck
VanWyck’s debut, full-length release, An Average Woman is in stores now—on vinyl.
