Pink Oculus (NL)
Esperanza Denswil, better known as her alter ego Pink Oculus is a dutch recording artist, singer songwriter, mc, producer and actress.
After independently releasing ‘sweat’ in November 2013 Pink Oculus made name for herself in Holland and throughout Europe touring
Denswil was born on February 27th, 1985 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands where she spent the first 5 years of her life along with her mother Agnes Aboikoni, father Maarten Denswil and sister Gwen Denswil.
The first seeds toward an existence on stage were planted when at the age of 2 Esperanza saw a mime act on television and caught the acting bug. At the age of 5 she moved to Amsterdam with her mother and sister where she would spend her formative years. At a young age she started writing short stories and won a writing contest at age 12. Early inspirations are Mos Def, Common, Erykah Badu, Non Phixion, Wu-Tang Clan, Dinah Washington, Sam Cooke and Janet Jackson.
Her first steps into music were made at high school at formal gatherings where she and her classmates would sing. While studying at Lucia Marthas Dance Academy Esperanza got a part on a national dutch soap opera called “Onderweg Naar Morgen” where she would cut her teeth on television acting. She worked on the show for 6 months after which her character’s storyline ended.
In 2010 when she studied at Albeda Music College Esperanza released The Birthday EP. A free downloadable EP available via several national and international blogs. In june of that year ‘Numaads’ a collaboration between Esperanza and Sense (Daniel Wils) released their EP “Now” via the German record label Project Mooncircle.
In 2013 Esperanza introduced her alter ego Pink Oculus after working with visual artist and director Bouba Dola. Several still unreleased songs were created during that collaboration, among them was “sweat”. Badjekkah (two man electro hip hop band consisting of Mano Yeah & Gino Cochise) recreated & reworked “sweat” together with Esperanza and it was then independently released. The song got picked up by 3FM DJ Giel Beelen via Radio6 DJ Angelique Houtveen and he mentioned the single on the dutch national television show DWDD. After an impressive performance during the 2014 Eurosonic/Noorderslag Festival Pink Oculus backed by Badjekkah was able to embark on an national and international unofficial first tour which lasted all throughout 2014.
On February 27th 2015 the single ‘overdue’ was released.
On October 1st the Delicious EP was released. Pink Oculus is currently on a mini tour in the Netherlands.