Anneke van Giersbergen & Agua de Annique was the solo project of the former The Gathering vocalist, Anneke van Giersbergen. The project was announced in June 2007, the same day that both The Gathering and Anneke van Giersbergen issued separate announcements that van Giersbergen would leave the band in August. She wanted to have a band name that also had her name in it. Anneke’s Water appealed to her because water of course is a metaphor for the infinite and it’s her favourite element. So she used the Spanish word for water and another word for her name, making Agua De Annique.
She and her new bandmates laid down some basic tracks for the first album at the Waterfront Studios in Rotterdam and recorded overdubs at The Void in Eindhoven, as well as in her own home studio. Several of these songs were made available on the band’s official web site. A track, “Ice Water”, features a string arrangement by Jeffey Fayman. Additional vocals for the track “Lost and Found” were done by Kristin Fjellseth, who also wrote the track “Sunken Soldiers Ball”. Heleen de Witte plays flute on unspecified tracks while Timothy Conroy provides some trumpet work. They released their first album called Air at the end of 2007, mixed by Jon Anders Narum.
In the first week of July 2009, ‘Pure Air’ (a compilation of tracks from Air but also of songs featuring Anneke with other artists like Within Temptation) entered the GfK Dutch Charts at No.42 during the first week of release, her highest ever chart position.
A second album, titled In Your Room, was released in October 2009. This production is the first project that has been fully recorded at her home studio, in The Netherlands. Anneke took the time to create several online video-diaries that enabled fans from around the globe to follow this process that took place in “her room”. When the recordings were complete, Anneke is promptly going public with a surprising collection of her personal pop-rock songs: In Your Room. The catchy single Hey Okay! was the lead single from the album was also released in mid-October.
Under the name Anneke van Giersber.gen & Agua de Annique, they released the concert album Live in Europe in 2010. In 2011, Anneke signed to PIAS Records as a solo artist. Her debut album under her own name, ‘Everything Is Changing’, was released in January 2012.
