Haarlemmerhout

One look at the sleeve of Haarlemmerhout, the new album by Dutch electronic musician Coen Oscar Polack, and you immediately know he is a romantic soul: blossoming trees in spring and blue skies with fluffy clouds. It’s urban escapism. It's the park in which you want to get away from other people, it’s the place you want to forget time. And that is also what he wants his music to sound like.  Coen Oscar Polack made a name for himself on the Dutch Narrominded label. With The Skipping Monk (2009) he took us on a sound documentary through India, and on his last offering, Fathomless (2013), a collaboration with IDM-artist Herman Wilken from Hydrus, he made a soundtrack for an expedition to the depths of the arctic ocean and the inaccessible mangroves in the Bay of Bengal. After several collabs with the noise lords of Glice, Polack is finally back with a full solo album. For Haarlemmerhout he seeks inspiration closer to home, in his hometown of Haarlem, and guess what: he never sounded more exotic.