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I suppose I need to make this thread to make this place feel like home.
Also, to take stock of RZ’s 2012 output so far. The Celer collabopration alone has made this year a memorable one for Rutger-watchers, but i would also put Strromtoon and Lichtung in the top bracket of MF relkeases.
Anyway, in approximate order of essentialness:
- Celer & Machinefabriek - Maastunnel/Mt.Mitaake 7”, Numa/Penarie 7”, Hei/Sou 7”
- Machinefabriek - Stroomtoon CD
- Steve Roden & Machinefabriek - Lichtung CD
- Celer & Machinefabriek - Greetings From… (2.5 hours of live material)
- Machinefabriek - Colour Tones CD
- Machinefabriek - 15/15 LP
- Machinefabriek - Elastiek 3”CDR
- One Man Nation & Machinefabriek CD
These are not yet heard and forthcoming:
- Jaap Blonk & Machinefabriek - Deep Fried (already out - not sure who this Blonk person is, sounds a bit atypical?)
- Machinefabriek - Forks (a super limited tape made from tuning forks that doesn’t seem to be available anywhere - very sad)
- Machinefabriek - Secret Photographs CD (due out on Important Records, a long and minimal film soundtrack piece)
- Machinefabriek - Doepfer Worm CD (RZ’s first album of vintage synth music, due out on Entr’acte Nov/Dec)
- Chris Dooks & Machinefabriek - The Eskdale Harmonium (LP of treated harmonium things due on Komino)
Right now, I’m listening to the Celer singles, which are just so beautiful. they also have great artwork…
I haven’t worked out how to put links behind text here yet, so hereare a few places of interest:
- http://www.machinefabriek.nu/index.php/news/upcoming_releases : a direct link to the MF site, where some of these things can be obtained in return for clams.
- http://soundcloud.com/machinefabriek/secret-photographs-album : Secret Photographs Soundcloud preview
- http://acloserlisten.com/2012/05/21/sound-propositions-01-machinefabriek/ : Interview from May with A Closer Listen
Finally, a pretty film preview for Maastunnel/Mt.Mitaake
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wow
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Thanks alistarr - that is the first time this new code has seemed easier
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I listened to the Celer & MF singles on the bus home and really enjoyed them today. It was raining and grey in a really attractive way, and my bus goes all along the coast, past the docks, the harbour and the port. The Rothko-skyline is gorgeously blocked out by a succession of interesting things - rusty ships with Scandinavian names on the side, huge piles of wooden pallets, crazy lonely bearded people fishing inappropriately, a power station, a rubbish-cruching place, weird cement-making contraptions, little yachts and kite-surfers - it made an excellent real life video today.
I should take my camera one day, but here are a few images from goog, all of which are on my route:
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hooray!
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Nice! I prefer soundcloud to youtube in most cases, so this is great :-) Thanks Trousers!!
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Nothing much to contribute to this thread, since I have been unable to keep up with Rutger properly this year, but I always enjoy reading your reports and have made a mental note to check out those records you mention as your favorites, none of which I have heard!
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One Machinefabriek-related trend I’ve noticed in 2012 is that each time Rutger comes to town, I catch a cold. I’ll probably miss out on tomorrow’s show (which seems to be him playing the soundtrack to the film Sol LeWitt), again.
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Not surprising with the kind of activities depicted in your avatar picture, huh? Seriously, that sucks, get well soon!
Still haven’t gotten around to the new ones, but had a very nice time revisiting Dauw and Gris Gris the other day.
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Something new…
“Alvin Francis Karpis was a notorious bank robber in the early Thirties. After his release from Alcatraz in 1969, Karpis spend the last years of his life as an obsessive photographer. He shared his work with practically no-one. Canadian film maker Mike Hoolboom was lucky enough to find a large archive of Karpis’ stunningly beautiful pictures. He decided to make a film dedicated to these photos. As we speak, the movie is still in the making. Working title: ‘Secret Photographs’.
As you might have guessed, I was asked to make the soundtrack for this film. It resulted in the music you hear on the cd that is now released on Important Records. 75 minutes of solemn, dare I say meditative drone music, which might sound static at first, but is filled to the brim with details.”
Available @ http://machinefabriek.bandcamp.com/album/secret-photographs
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I ordered that just a couple of days ago, along with Lichtung and Stroomtoon. One of my favorite Machinefabriek records in a while, I think!
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I don’t know whether to order it or not as I’ve kind of exceeded my music budget these last few months. Perversely, I think I’d be more inclined to buy it it were just digital. I know it’s heresy, but I don’t really want the CD. I expect I’ll crack soon though.
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I don’t really use my Machinefabriek CDs all that much as I tend to listen to him mostly at the computer and sometimes on my IPod, so I can sympathize with that, but they always look so nice that second thoughts tend to go away when you hold them in your hand…
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Something new for December, now up for pre-order at the bandcamp page
Described as ” an exciting 40+ minute journey through warm drones, soft melodic gestures, mysterious crackling and outbursts of digital noise.”. Which is good enough for my 7 euros.
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drum machine fabriek Machinefabriek: Vergezicht 10” by alientransistor
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Interesting. That’s Mariska Baars of soccer Committee in there too. I wish he’d make things available in digital format though. Machinefabriek is one of those artists I’ll always support by buying his stuff, but I have no use for a 10 inch record any more.
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These three (Doepfer Worm, Vergezicht, ..&Barnabila) are all in regular rotation on my Walkman now, and sounding excellent. Not quite so enthusiastic on the more austere 55-minute Verstilde Tijd drone he released (for the first time) as Rutger Zuyderfeldt, but it kind of heartens me that he made it nevertheless.
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Machinefabriek’s performance as support for Mirrorring at Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Amsterdam in March is available for free download at his website.
Signals, his collaboration with Minus Pilots, is out now too - a sweet half hour trip through bass loops, clarinet and string samples, vinyl crackle and whatnot.
Machinefabriek & Minus Pilots - Signals (CD preview) by Dronarivm
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Stroomtoon II coming out soon - someone round here was really into the first one, was it Pants?
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it was me! stroomtoon ii, stroomtooner?
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There are some new releases to mention too.
First, under the name CMKK comes Gau, a promising looking project with familiar collaborators Celer and the two Kleefstras
Machine Rooms is a collaboration with photographer Sanja Harris, with recordings arising from a sound art installation in some sort of creepy and abandoned building in Amsterdam
There’s also a second album with Banabila due soon.
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Oh yes, and there’s his ‘Stay Tuned’ multi-speaker installation project based on the moment an orchestra tunes up. 150 of Zuyderfeldt’s friends and fellow musicians have donated an ‘A’, including loads that I love like (deep breath) Aidan Baker, C.Spencer Yeh, Kenneth Kirschner, Molly Berg, Oren Ambarchi, Peter Broderick, Sylvain Chauveau, Colleen, Gareth Dickson, Greg Haines, Nils Frahm, Gareth Davis, Stephan Mathieu, Paul de Jong, Erik Skodvin, Geoff Mullen, Stephen Vitiello, Ryan Teague, Scott Tuma and Ryan Vanderhoof. A sort of Superdrone!
Here’s a preview
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I put Vergezichten on the big speakers at work and it has a constant low-bass hum I never even noticed listening on the computer
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A couple of nice things to catch up on.
Gau (wehich I mentioned upthread) is out now, a further collaboration with Will from Celer, as well as old friends the Kleefstra brothers. It’s a single 47-minute piece edited down from an afternoon of improvisations in a barn somewhere in Friesland. It’s a fluid, constantly changing slow-burner, laid over a base of hollowed-out, draughty drones. There’s some nice, sombre Frisian (I think) poetry from Jan Kleefstra too, so a bit of a sibling to the Piiptsjilling releases. You can hear a bit, or buy it here
Vignettes is by Machinefabriek and guitarist Sergio Sorrentino. He has compared it to the Glisten/Patina releases he made with Tim Catlin. I think it’s quite melodic, even borderline catchy in places :-) One of my favourites among the 2013 output, I think.
Travelog is the follow-up to Machinefabriek & Banabila, and is impossible to describe really, veering all over the place with an array of textures, sound sources and styles. It’s almost like some of those post-rock bands who blended electronica with their jams, Tape etc. Fascinating stuff anyway.
And I’ve literally just this second downloaded Measure Tape from his bandcamp page, originally a dance score released as part of cassette day.
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Thanks Nick - I haven’t been able to keep up with Rutger lately, but these progress reports are always fun to read and will I’m sure come in handy when the time to catch up comes!
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Sometimes it helps me listen to this kind of music if I have something to do with my fingers. So, I thought why not update this thread with Rutger’s 2014 releases. Deep breath…
Dubbeltjes is one of his catch-up records, bringing together some earlier releases (2008’s Huiswerk, 2010’s The Hilary Jefrey Tape and Nerf, the recent Jazz Standards Vol.1 release with Gareth Davis - including a version of My Funny Valentine, as well as Danse Des Loops and the 3 Ontrafelde Tonen tracks). It’s great.
Drum Solos is bits of drum kit processed and recontextualised as minimalist composition. Also great.
This is from a soundtrack project for a documentary about young footballers. It’s a free download from the bandcamp page linked there. Regular collaborators, Gareth Davis and Leo Fabriek blow things and hit things respectively. I really like it.
DNMF is a project with Dutch black jazz grindcore outfit, Dead Neanderthals. Together with the Shivers album below, it seems to mark a heavier, darker turn to Machinefabriek’s music this year. He started as a metal fan, of course. The first track, ‘The Thing On The Doorstep’ is gloomily enjoyable, but the second piece, The Colour Out Of Space sounds like the Boredoms disappearing under a steamroller. Noisy!
Shivers is another collaboration with Gareth Davis and Leo Fabriek, and is on Miasmah (Erik Skodvin’s label, half of seminal dark ambient duo Deaf Center). It’s another more ominous and at times noisier release, and a tribute to David Cronenburg. Probably not ideal for a mid-August picnic, but excellent if you want to scare the bejeezus out of yourself walking home from the pub.
Halfslaap II / Stiltetonen consists of two quiet half hour pieces. The first overlaps Anne Bakker’s violin loops and the second uses piano as a starting point.
Kluwen is a 23 minute collage of experiments with an analogue pulse generator, two tone generators, three korg monotrons, a buddha machine, a reverb pedal, a freeze pedal and a small mixer.
Stillness is a series of soundtrack pieces for a film by Esther Kokmeijer.
Stay Tuned is a single, 50-minute drone based on an installation piece which involved Zuyderfeldt’s friends submitting an ‘A’, the note an orchestra tunes up to. There were 150 musicians involved altogether, including Oren Ambarchi, Aidan Baker, Molly Berg, Peter Broderick, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Tim Catlin, Sylvain Chauveau, Gareth Dickson, Nils Frahm, Hilary Jefrey, Paul De Jong, Kenneth Kirschner, Aaron Martin, Stephan Mathieu, Geoff Mullen, Benoit Pioulard, Erik Skodvin, Sten R.Smith, Ryan Teague, Scott Tuma, Stephen Vitiello and C Spencer Yeh.
Molkedrippen is a return for the Piiptsjilling project, featuring Mariska Baars heavily-processed vocal, Rutger’s electronics and the Kleefstra brothers on guitars and Fresian spoken-word poetry. It’s slow, atmospheric and sombre. There’s a siter-album, Moarntiids, due out soon too.
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This is great - still out of the Machinefabriek loop like I was last time, but I enjoyed reading your write ups and will make an effort to check out some of these. The DNMF thing in particular sounds intriguing.
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Despite Nick’s heroic efforts, I haven’t really checked out this dude until now, but - intrigued by the description of Drum Solos - I gave that one a listen. Gotta say, I’m digging it right now.
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One of us. One of us. One of us. One of us.
I remember the first time I listened to Machinefabriek actually. It was at a bus stop in Mangwondong, Korea. I’d been lightly experimenting with the more accessible end of ambient/modern classical music, and I’d got hold of a copy of his Marijn album. I remember that I wasn’t at all sure whether I liked it, or that what I was listening to was music at all. But something made me listen to it again, and about 8 years and 200 albums later, here I am, mildly obsessed and converting monkeypants to the cause. :-)
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quiet day at work so I listened to Drum Solos. at the end we said “nice gong”
shivers is sick
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That stuff he did with Celer last year was some of my favourite music of all time.
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This out-of-print cassette release from earlier this year has just been made available for download for only 3 euros. I have bought it but not yet listened to it.
[edit - listening now, it’s cool]
lastfm: You’ve listened to Machinefabriek 4,026 times, but not this track.
:-)
Dansmuziek is an hour-long improvised ambient piece, available for free download (https://machinefabriek.bandcamp.com/album/dansmuziek) -
Brace yourselves for a shock - Machinefabriek has several projects in the offing for the early part of 2015. I haven’t heard any of these yet, but I just bought Loos at an insultingly reasonable 3 euros.
Loos A 30-minute minimal piece recorded live in The Hague
Rusland II
A follow-up to the 2008 recordings, these are pieces edited together from what were apparently fairly difficult shows in Russia, with lots of audience chatter and so on resulting in cruder sounds.The Cold And The Quiet This is another film score, this time for Colleen Griffen and Joe Chapelle. The last soundtrack release Rutger put out was last year’s Bij Wat Ook Moog’ Gebeuren, made with frequent collaborators Leo Fabriek and Gareth Davis and for a film about, of all things, football. It was a brilliant album, and one I should have included on my end-of-year list, but which fell victim to my ‘one MF album only’ rule.
Bouyant With someone called Dirk Serries. No further information on this, but by the looks of it Serries is a fellow traveller in the Dutch microsound circles.
Whorls This is probably the most exciting of all, as it’s a further collaboration with guitarist, Tim Catlin (after Glisten and Patina about 5 years ago). Nice cover art too!
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A new one just out - The Measures Taken. It’s from another one of his dance collaborations, and it’s a dynamic, occasionally rhythmic and multi-part piece. Great stuff.
The piece is 43 minutes long, but there’s a condensed version here which gives a flavour…
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Just picked up Sneeuwstorm, a single long-form piece based on saxophone edits, electrical equipment, coil pick-ups, field recordings, loops, guitar and other samples.
http://machinefabriek.bandcamp.com/album/sneeuwstorm
It’s already shaping up to be a vintage year for RZ.
edit - this is a ‘Rutger Zuydervelt release, by the way, not a ‘Machinefabriek’ one, not sure why but it seems like he’s been doing that more lately (Stay Tuned, Ijstid, Verstilde Tijd…)
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great cover
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More action. The Tim Catlin album mentioned above is now out and it’s incessantly fabulous. 14 short pieces that sound like nothing else he’s done before. I think it’s my favourite Machinefabriek release this year.
Also, ‘Beginner’s Luck’, a couple of 10-minute live pieces with modular synth-er, Sergey Kostyrko. Very nice too, and notable for crediting Rutger with playing, amongst other instruments, a “bat detector”.
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I have bought so many records this year that this would be utterly ridiculous, but I kind of feel like ordering Whorls on the strength of your recommendation now!
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edison said: I have bought so many records this year that this would be utterly ridiculous, but I kind of feel like ordering Whorls on the strength of your recommendation now!
Well, on the one hand, I do have a tendency towards hyperbole, and on the other hand, do it now.
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I would have, but it turns out shipping costs for vinyl have also become prohibitive from the Netherlands!
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edison said: I would have, but it turns out shipping costs for vinyl have also become prohibitive from the Netherlands!
Ah, that’s a shame. I just bought the mp3s though, as I have no soul :-)
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I always knew you were a robot!
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edison I would have, but it turns out shipping costs for vinyl have also become prohibitive from the Netherlands!
How expensive? I’m considering getting myself a copy (perhaps in the bundle with Snowstorm), and shipping costs within the Netherlands seem to be 7 Euro, regardless of whether I get one or two. So if you’d like, I’d definitely be happy to pick up an extra copy for you, send you the mp3 link for now, and pass on the physical artifact next time we meet.
