Spinvis is the one man band of Dutch singer songwriter Erik de Jong, born in 1961 and long based in Nieuwegein, just outside Utrecht in the Netherlands. He studied composition in Amsterdam and spent years working night shifts sorting mail, recording songs in his attic in whatever time was left.
He was already 41 when his self titled debut arrived in 2002, with almost every instrument played by himself. Dutch critics loved it, the album went gold, and the magazine Oor later named it the best Dutch record of the century. In 2004 he won the Annie M.G. Schmidt prize for the best theatre song of the year. His music mixes fragile, almost spoken vocals with tape loops and toy instruments, and his lyrics are loved for finding something enormous inside very small everyday details.