Elisabeth Esselink had a problem. Owning a small used record shop just around the corner from Amsterdam’s infamous red light district, she had more CDs than she knew what to do with.

“We have many CDs that are unsaleable because they’re too bad,” Esselink said in an interview with College Music Journal. “Like CDs put out by bands themselves because they couldn’t find a record company — and for a good reason!”

Instead of throwing the used discs in a box and selling them to the other used shop down the street, Esselink had a stroke of genius. She began moving the CDs to the basement of the shop, which would eventually be the birthplace of her alternate identity, Solex.

The process began at an auction in Amsterdam.

“I always go to auctions to buy CDs for the store,” Esselink told Request Magazine. “And one day there were no good CDs. But they had this eight track recorder and sampler, and I raised my hand, and on the first bid, I had it.”

The sampler was a vintage Akai, a ’70s sampler of very limited memory. Because it ran off of original five-inch floppy discs and was able to hold only eight-second samples, the eight track player proved to be the only memory backup available.

Esselink began to make use of the stacks of unsaleable records. Sampling everything from Eurojunk techno to early ’90s gangsta rap, she made music — songs consisting of nothing but samples.

The random sampling sessions led Esselink to christen herself Solex — her musical alter ego. Named after a vintage scooter company, Esselink chose the name because it was easy to remember.

Solex’s musical personality was as decomposed as the music she sampled.

“The challenge for me was to find good fragments in bad CDs,” Esselink said. “The worse the CD, the better for me. It’s much more fun to make something good out of something bad. I don’t use longer samples because then they’re too recognizable.”

Before long, Esselink had a 10-track demo. Without telling her friends or ex-bandmates, she sent it around to different American and British labels. Five labels immediately expressed interest.

A few months later, Solex found herself sitting in the New York offices of Matador Records signing a contract. What started out as a 10-track demo was now being released as Solex’s debut CD, “Solex vs. the Hitmeister.”

The album was a testament to Solex’s musical schizophrenia, with every song on the album containing her name. From “One Louder Solex” and “Rolex by Solex” to “Solex For a While” and “Peppy Solex,” Esselink has been said to have outdone even the likes of Run DMC when it comes to giving herself props.

“Solex is the main character in every song, but it’s not necessarily me,” Esselink said. “It’s more like some sort of liquid comic strip figure. I can put myself in lots of different characters.

Is Solex’s music received as weird? Maybe. Sane? Doubtful. But her music and ever-multiplying personality hasn’t stopped with “Solex vs. the Hitmeister.”

“Pick Up,” Solex’s latest project, has the same beginnings as her first album. The album was entirely self-recorded, produced and mixed in the basement of her record shop in Amsterdam.

Most of the samples found on “Pick Up” are from recordings made at live shows, ranging from classical orchestras to metal bands. “Call it a live record of sorts,” Solex said in a recent press release.

“Pick Up,” which contains no silence, was recorded in the same process as “Solex vs. the Hitmeister.”

Solex spoke of her songwriting process with CMJ: “When I make a song, I never have any idea what it will be like. Normally, I start with a drum loop on one track, and I push the button for about three minutes because … well, because it’s a good length for a song.”

This seemingly simple songwriting process is not evident on “Pick Up.” Solex’s swooning voice spouts scattered sentence fragments over syncopated guitar riffs, strange noises and complicated rhythm patterns.

From humble beginnings in a record store basement to a big record contract with a big label, Solex is living proof of the well known and over-used phrase — simplicity is beautiful.