My god, what does time fly. Over the last few months I completely lost track of what Rutger Zuydervelt, who probably needs no introduction as Machinefabriek anymore, has been doing. His prodigious amount of releases is probably quite well known. If not: about every month sees a new 3" or some collaboration on his own imprint or some label.
I can only imagine what his day looks like. Does mister Zuydervelt actually sleep at all? Who knows. It will probably remain a secret where he gets the time and inspiration for all this enormous music production. And if it all wasn't enough already, now he is even back with the official follow-up to the full length album Marijn. His new offspring is called Ranonkel (Dutch for Ranunculus) and is brought to us on a silver disc by Burning World Records who might also bring it on vinyl later this year.
On Ranonkel we get five new songs and one re-issue of Zink that was released before as a 3" cdr on Cut Hands in February of 2007. This is, according to Zuydervelt, because it fits very well with the rest. And I must agree with him on this one.
In comparison with his previous full-length album marijn the approach here is really minimal. Instead of building up to climaxes here there is a keen eye for silence.
The album starts with soft loops of glockenspiel and guitarplay which are reworked with several effects. These sounds are layered upon each other glitches, tape hiss and a drone are added, where the tone of this album is set.
Though, this is not all. For example the second track stofstuktoon is one clean drone of sine tones slowly evolving through the space filling up the room with sound. The influence of of Oren Ambarchi isn't far away here.
Luckily in other works Machinefabriek really seems to leave his own trademark, if we can even speak of just one with such a variety in works. At points drones seem to take over the whole sound, but when listening with headphones on you can hear such soft details changing in the background that it really makes you want to dive into the sound again and again. A good example of this we find in Andermans Thuis (someone else's home).
To finish this work off there is the last piece Zink (sink/zinc). This is about 17 minutes of dark moody music. Melancholic tones are spread out over the listener leaving no for even the slightest smile. Here again we hear the guitar playing up in snippets, but the main ingredient are drones, heavy drones. This must be one of the heaviest, darkest tracks made so far by Machinefabriek but it suits him very well.
As one could expect all the main elements from his previous releases are here, and by now we know all about this, but still Rutger Zuydervelt knows how to keep it interesting. A nice release that is certainly worth it and for most people a better buy than all his 3" releases and of course for the fans an essential one. |
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