machinefabriek

[Nick Ink]

With a burgeoning fan club over in the Best Of 2008 thread, a 13th release of the year out (on mp3 anyway) now, and edison snapping at my heels like some sort of rabid ambient electronica-obsessed dachsund, it is clearly time Machinefabriek had a devoted thread all of his own.

I envisage spending the forthcoming long, winter evenings, huddled over my monitor, only a weak candle and a bit of granulated drone to keep me warm, discussing his seminal Marijn and Weleer releases, but before that I think we really ought to get to the bottom of all this 13 releases in one year nonsense.

How is it possible that they are all so consistently great, and which ones do you feel are slightly more fanatstic than the other ones.

Dauw seems to have been the flame that has aignited the blue touch paper. Here is the powder keg about to go off underneath it, in the shape, as kindly rrequested by the aforementioned insane continental canine. of some mad ramblings I put on my lastfm journal a while back.

Machinefabriek or The Redundancy Of Year End Lists in 2008

Slowly but surely, the work of Rutger Zuydervelt has crept over my listening schedules like a particularly voracious moss. It all started at a bus stop in Mangwondong*. Fiddling with my mp3 player under that high, blue early morning Korean sky, I decided to give this new Marijn album a try, having read a great review on boomkat.

At first, I was a bit alienated by it, unsure how all these crackles, hums and hisses were meant to work. A couple of weeks later, the album had opened itself up through repeated listenings and I'd realised that this was patient music, that it revealed its secrets only gradually and over time.

This, for me, is the beauty of [artist]Machinefabriek[/artist]'s music. It alternates between ambience and attention-grabbing, small details achieve huge effects, long, metamorphosising passages at first conceal their logic and structure, but like whalesong, sort of emerge, almost subconsciously after time.

Machinefabriek runs along a wide arc from austere to playful, from cold and alien to warm and cosy, but somehow achieves a consistent and unique tone. He combines so many moods and generes of ambient, experimentalism, drone, sampling, sound manipulation, field recordings and electronics, and always arrives with something distinctively himself.

After Marijn, my next discovery was the Weleer collection. I think I'd recommend this as a starting point for a newcomer. Not only is it consistently brilliant, but perhaps more than any other of his releases, it perfectly balances the different sides of his music. Since then, there have been many highlights - too many to discuss here.

It could even be that this dizzying prolific release schedule puts some people off. Surely, this much output can't all maintain a high standard? Well, to these ears, it really does. And 2008 has been even busier.

So, the reason for this journal entry was just to look at the releases from this year. And to throw a few extremely personal and off-the-top-of-my-head reactions to the music down onto paper. Abstract and experimental music is always resistant to description, and I'm quite sure that others would respond very differently to the music. But for what it's worth, here's what runs through my mind when I listen to it:

Dauw

Feels like a real, coherent album. Overall, quite subdued and controlled, but the moments of melody stand out all the clearer for their irregularity.
Porselein (7.05) twangy nylon sounds and slidey metallic clangs stretched over low hiss, bassy rumbles and some nice ticking. All very delicate, makes me think of a robot walking the plank.
Fonograaf (3.49) hiss and crackle with a ghostly, circular melody overlaid. Bad-tempered, cumbersome bassy giants plod in halfway through along with some gusts of wind. Ominous and pretty.
Engineer (6.16) indeterminate sound sources fray, fracture and pop out of place as scary rusty hinge-creaking and never-quite-flourishing-cymbals pan around from time to time. The listener stares into the TV snow for signs of intelligent life.
Dauw (5.40) 4 beautiful guitar notes recur and morph as a cyborg plays a broken toy trumpet in space. In the last minute, a choir of Slavic horsemen pitch in with a sorrowful chant. In [artist]Machinefabriek[/artist] terms, it's a pop song.
Singel (27.17) A long quiet-bit louder-quiet arc of a track. Vinyl static and a quietly shifting echo-guitar melody gradually take and lose shape over lots of gorgeous space and silence. You need good headphones or a quiet room for this one.

Ranonkel

Another proper, rounded, fully-realised release, described in some quarters as the true successor to Marijn.
Trouringh (7.18) Perhaps the prettiest and most melodic [artist]Machinefabriek[/artist] track I can think of. I don't know quite how he achieves the effect, but a 4 note xylophone melody is splattered by bad mic connections and rushes of hiss before being devestatingly swept up in a wave of heart-melting bass tones and glassy sounds. It all dissolves apologetically into 3 or so minutes of light hissy drizzle. One of my top 5 Mf tracks.
Stofstuktoon (6.37) a long, deep, reverberating, resonating drone which disappears from view a couple of times. Understated and hypnotic.
Ranonkel 1 (5.15) string-scrapes and quietly buzzing electronics. Like an orchestra of little metal bees tuning up in the stuck groove of a [artist]Boards Of Canada[/artist] record. Very pretty.
Andermans Thuis big bassy flutters punctuate a low, quiet soup of pops and crackles before evening out into a thin line of sound, blown out to sea like lost yacht.
Ranonkel 2 (1.41) Minimal. Small plops of glassy rain landing in a soggy field.
Zink (17.09) starts and ends like one of [artist]William Basinski[/artist]'s decaying loops, but with a middle section that quickly builds and drops a reasonably terrifying and suspenseful noise level. I'm seeing strips of stinking, dried and cured flesh from Stravinsky's rotted corpse, laid out on the deck of a sun-bleached gallion, but that might just be because I'm hungry. 

Music For Intermittent Movements

This was early '08, and is apparently a collection of soundtrack pieces commissioned by American filmmaker John Price (?). Ridiculous to call it accessible, but it's full of changes of texture, pace and tone and has a very complete all-round feel to me. Recommended, you say!??!
Camp Series 1 (12.22) Like a cathedral being simultaneously filled up with sand and sucked up by a typhoon.
The Boy Who Died (6.43) There's quite a plaintive, mournful little melody tucked away inside this Russian doll of static, noise, silence and hiss.
(Interlude) (3.25) plain, pretty piano-loop
Intermittent Movements (7.07) This might be how sewers would like music to sound, if anyone ever stopped to ask them.
Camp Series 2 (7.03) Gentle, elegaic, distorted guitar strums fall slowly and repeatedly in a radioactive field. I find this piece particularly emotionally affecting. Kind of makes me sad, this one.

Box Music (Machinefabriek and [artist]Steven Vitiello[/artist])

As boomkat reports, 'the concept behind Box Music is that each artist would send the other a package filled with (usually non-musical) objects with which to start a composition'. The results are quite austere and certainly at the more experimental, spare end of the Machinefabriek spectrum, but there's a lot of detail, a lot going on, and a lot of textural variety to keep you interested, especially on headphones.
Bells, book, tin foil, buttons (11.10) twinkly and soft
Crackle box, thumb piano (12.49) big, squelchy [artist]Keith Fullerton Whitman[/artist]-on-Multiples-like synth noises and scatterred, extraterrestrial whistles and whoops. All very agreeable, and a bit different from his usual sound palette.
Field recordings, rocks, speakers (9.07) arid, microscopic pops and knocks scatterred over tuning-the-dial frequencies.
Broken record, cassettes (8.46) revisits the signals-from-outer-space of Crackle box and then sidewinds across a Martian desert with ghostly choirs of multicultural tribesmen. Some kind of mad puppeteer hovers over the whole track, disorientating everything with an array of unexpected noises and samples. My favourite track on the album, for its continuous element of surprise.
Chocolate sprinkles, tape, egg cutter, rice, plastic bag (9.02) The egg cutter is a bit showy, but it works.

OAHU (Freiband and Machinefabriek)

Another collaboration, and a relatively minor release, I suppose, but, unsurprisingly, I'm still claiming it's great. I think it was Freiband's absolutely horrifyingly abrasive remix that stopped me getting into [artist]Machinefabriek[/artist]'s Kruimeldief LP last year (which was a mistake, because some of the other remixers on there did a great job on him), but he redeems himself here.
Oahu 1 (1.24) This is the original sample of [artist]Martin Luiten[/artist]'s lapsteel guitar that forms the basis of the two longer tracks.
Oahu 2 (21.53) This is Freiband's track mainly, I think. It's still a bit harsh and frosty for me, kind of lacks the low end or warmth that cushion some of [artist]Machinefabriek[/artist]'s noisier moments.
Oahu 3 (19.56) And this is unmistakably the Rutger Zuydervelt track. The source sounds are far more prominent, there are the trademark pull-out-the-plug noises, the familiar low, gaseous rumble. It's another one of those longer tracks that he does so well, kind of convincing you there's a pattern in there if only you could squeeze the track's narrative in to viewable parameters. But then, perhaps it's the out-of-viewness that keeps it interesting.

Vloed

Three longer live recordings, all exhilarating exercises in suspense, repetition and emotional heft. A great place to start investigating for those more into the longer, dronier, more minimal aesthetic.
19.10.2007 Bimhuis, Amsterdam (22.36) An almost Middle Eastern spiral of sound circles around before dissolving overhead into hot, flaky ashes of static that then set the whole room alight as things catch fire in the final third.
06.07.2008 Bimhuis, Amsterdam (16.38) A million-strong line of operatic footsoldiers emerge over the horizon and march, shoulder-to-shoulder, sadly towards you. Fantastic.
09.06.2006 Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (18.17) You're driving along a deserted motorway at night. the rain is falling silently on the windscreen and the gaseous amber glow of the street lights repeatedly passes through you and the car's interior, covering everything in disorientating shadows and light, mesmerising, drawing you further down the white lines. Zero as a limit, time's arrow, the hypnotic momentum of speed slowed down. I always fall asleep at the wheel.

Mort Aux Vaches

Death to cows. Or pigs, if you're English. But still, this probably pips the Vloed live recordings as my favourite of the 'minor' releases this year. The 3 tracks contain measures of everything I love about [artist]Machinefabriek[/artist] from the fragility and patience to the noise and experimentalism, and from the organic to the artificial.
Bathyale 1 (10.02) Nice, deep, organic drones, split open by sharp guitar notes and electrical interference. A bit similar to the dynamic of the longer pieces on Marijn.
Bathyale 2 (9.10) Jittery electronics eventually congeal into a gorgeous, [artist]William Basinski[/artist]-like loop. Memorable and meditative.
Bathyale 3 (15.50) Quietly, cavernously, dizzyingly, sickeningly gorgeous.

(nb - apologies for any inaccurate attributions to instruments, sound sources or recording techniques - I am a non-musician and just mean to describe what it sounds like to my amateur ears - others will have more insight into technical aspects of the music)

Please support Machinefabriek by ordering music and sending him money, hats and cakes at :
http://www.machinefabriek.nu/

Other 2008 releases:
Fabriek Bakker Fabriek (with Anne Bakker and Leo Fabriek) - I have this one but haven't listened to it yet. I think it's mostly the violin and piano of the other two, with subtle electronic washes from our hero.
Drawn (with Soccer Committee) - More sC than Machinefabriek in overall sound, but jolly nice and fit for fans of Grouper, Julianna Barwick, and of course, Soccer Committee herself.
Onkruid (with Matt Davies) - two long pieces, both great
Rusland - one superlong one, which has a few movements and nicely distils his current sound - lots of ear-catching little fragments of melody and found sound sparingly strewn amongst hillocks of lovely noise.
Tapes Of The Day - Field recordings taken from his trip to Jerusalem in december last year.
Stukjes - 16 short pieces, just released this week. I'm off to part with £3.95 for the mp3s from boomkat right now, in fact!


* Incredibly, this disclosure revealed that one of my samll group of lastfm friends, another Brit, had also heard Machinefabriek's music for the first time in Mangwondong! Seriously hard to believe, but there it is! Truth, as they say...

[edison]

Thank you, I am now a happy dog and you may no longer fear from the safety of your slippers.

I listen to Dauw on a daily basis now, but I'm considering exploring further any day now, probably with Weleer and Marijn + two or three recent releases, I think. Have you heard Stukjes yet? It's also available in CD form from his website, apparently. Any ideas on whether that intriguing Dagpauwoog CD/DVD would be worth it? Just noticed there's a link for MP3 of that, actually - I'll check them out tonight.

edit: the link doesn't seem to work.

[Danen]

This has been a great year for this sort of music. My top 30 is winding up with no less than THREE of these sorts of dreamy records: "Dauw," Fennesz's "Black Sea" and Phillip Jeck's "Sand." The funny thing is, the latter was the only one there a few weeks ago, and "Dauw" seems poised to kick Jeck out of the vote-weighed top 20!

I've intended for a bit to get into Machinefabriek, but he puts out more music than Jandek does. As Janky fills my collection with between three and seven albums (and up to four DVDs) a year, it makes it hard to tell people where to start, and 56 albums have stacked up since 1977. But consider that Machinefabriek has stacked up 60 since 2004, well...that's crazy!

So this post makes a great "in" point to recent Machinefabriek, and I imagine collecting much more this winter. This kind of passion amongst listeners is, I think, what makes this board work.

[Nick Ink]

Thank you, I am now a happy dog and you may no longer fear from the safety of your slippers.

I listen to Dauw on a daily basis now, but I'm considering exploring further any day now, probably with Weleer and Marijn + two or three recent releases, I think. Have you heard Stukjes yet? It's also available in CD form from his website, apparently. Any ideas on whether that intriguing Dagpauwoog CD/DVD would be worth it? Just noticed there's a link for MP3 of that, actually - I'll check them out tonight.

edit: the link doesn't seem to work.

I'm going to buy the mp3s of Stukjes from boomkat, either right now or tomorrow!

As for the Dagpauwoog thing - is that the band he was in? Because as much as I liked PJ Harvey in her day, I don't want to hear Rutger doing that at all. I'm basically sticking my fingers in my ears and pretending that's not happening.

[edison]

Thank you, I am now a happy dog and you may no longer fear from the safety of your slippers.

I listen to Dauw on a daily basis now, but I'm considering exploring further any day now, probably with Weleer and Marijn + two or three recent releases, I think. Have you heard Stukjes yet? It's also available in CD form from his website, apparently. Any ideas on whether that intriguing Dagpauwoog CD/DVD would be worth it? Just noticed there's a link for MP3 of that, actually - I'll check them out tonight.

edit: the link doesn't seem to work.

I'm going to buy the mp3s of Stukjes from boomkat, either right now or tomorrow!

As for the Dagpauwoog thing - is that the band he was in? Because as much as I liked PJ Harvey in her day, I don't want to hear Rutger doing that at all. I'm basically sticking my fingers in my ears and pretending that's not happening.

Yeah, that's it. In the meantime, I managed to hear 30 seconds of a song on one of the YouTube links, but not more because it was just taking forever to load. Not much of a basis to form even a premature opinion, then (those 30 seconds did sound like Low).

[edison]

I was checking out the guest charts over at Boomkat earlier - here we have an example of someone who went for the option of not choosing between 2008 Machinefabriek releases:

Peter Broderick's list

[Nick Ink]

I was checking out the guest charts over at Boomkat earlier - here we have an example of someone who went for the option of not choosing between 2008 Machinefabriek releases:

Peter Broderick's list

Yes, that's what I'm going to do elsewhere. It's only blucas' points system which has forced me into choosing one here.

What is this Samamidon business I keep seeing on people's lists? I don't like the cover art - I think that put me off.

That Peter Broderick list is odd, for me. MF at #1, good. Then 2-15 I've never heard or never heard of, then 16-20 all good again.

[edison]

I don't really know about Samamidon. I think I listened to a MP3 once and remember it being singer-songwritery stuff, but I could be wrong.

Back to Machinefabriek - Listening to the Live in Antwerp that's downloadable for free from the Wire website -  a live version of "Singel", it transpires. Must have been great to experience!

[edison]

And ahem, the official website mentions yet a newer release for January 2009, Gris Gris, described as "slow, dark, droning music".

[davy]

[Nick Ink]

So, just found out it was 14 this year, not 13.

[edison]

Great artwork, as often (was this released earlier in the year and you missed it, or is it something new again?)

I'm waiting for an order to arrive, will probably have more to contribute to this thread in a little while!

[Nick Ink]

Great artwork, as often (was this released earlier in the year and you missed it, or is it something new again?)

I'm waiting for an order to arrive, will probably have more to contribute to this thread in a little while!

I'm not sure exactly when it came out - someone pointed out to me that my list of his 08 releases was incomplete!

I think, unless he's sneaked anything else out cince Xmas Day, Stukjes is the most recent one.

What did you order?

[edison]

Great artwork, as often (was this released earlier in the year and you missed it, or is it something new again?)

I'm waiting for an order to arrive, will probably have more to contribute to this thread in a little while!

I'm not sure exactly when it came out - someone pointed out to me that my list of his 08 releases was incomplete!

I think, unless he's sneaked anything else out cince Xmas Day, Stukjes is the most recent one.

What did you order?

It seems to have come out earlier this year. I got Weleer, Marijn, Dauw, Ranonkel, and Stukjes.

[Nick Ink]

That's a lot of good music to absorb there. Hope you enjoy them.

[edison]

Oh, I wouldn't worry about that (listened to everything except Marijn this afternoon). He also slipped a poster in the package, which I'm looking forward to putting up over my desk.

[Danen]

After digesting "Dauw" for a few weeks and enjoying it more and more, I'm ready for the next step. Should I order the collection and "Marijn" then? Seems like those were recommended somewhere.

[alex]

That is what I would do indeed, though I have to admit that I don't have much else myself, anyway, so I'm maybe not the best judge.

I, too, have been enjoying Dauw immensly in the last few weeks and feel like I'll also have to order a package again at some point soon.

[edison]

I haven't digested any of the others enough to make further recommendations, so I'd trust Alex and Nick and indeed go with Marijn and Weleer.

Last night I listened to Stukjes on my Ipod in bed. I was tired and must have dozed off somewhere in the middle of the record, and a few minutes later I was brutally shaken out of my slumber by a section in the last third that somehow terrified me (I don't remember exactly what part it is now). Very weird experience, but it's pretty cool nonetheless that music can have such an effect, even though I'll listen with caution next time.

[Danen]

Okay, ordered "Weleer" (could only get one) and am anticipating hearing a wider variety of sounds - thanks again!

[narlus]

finally listened to _Dauw_.  quite nice.

[edison]

I go away on vacation for a week and upon returning learn that there are apparently two new 2009 Machinefabriek releases already out, with a few more on the way - any early reports?

[Nick Ink]

I go away on vacation for a week and upon returning learn that there are apparently two new 2009 Machinefabriek releases already out, with a few more on the way - any early reports?

Is Stukjes one of those? I bought it but haven't really got around to it yet as I've had limited time and there have been so many brilliant releases in the last few weeks (Alva Noto, Animal Collective, Tim Hecker). Anyway, it's very short tracks and I found them less engaging for their brevity on first impressions. Gris Gris is the newest I think - got reviewed on boomkat this week and sounds promising - 3 much longer, more minimal pieces with his frequent collaborator out of Soccer Committee.

[edison]

I didn't mean Stukjes, which I've had for a little while and am enjoying, but Ijspret, which is probably even shorter, and yes, Gris Gris, which I would be ordering if I didn't have such a ridiculous amount of new albums to digest already.

[Nick Ink]

Ijspret ? Hmm, you're one step ahead of me there!