Format: 2xCD
Price: £11.00

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Album:
Weleer
(LAMP009)

Artist:
Machinefabriek

Release Date:
May 2007

Tracklisting:
Disc A
Oi polloi
Uiterwaarde
Chinese unpopular song
Color rosa
Hieperdepiep
Voor het meisje met mijn dooie mus
Onweer
Stotterpiano
Roes 9
Wintervacht

Disc B
Schrijven
Donderwolk
Bye bye boat, bye bye building
Kale bomen langs de weg
Gruis uit het plafond
Lief
Roes 4
Carps remix
Maris
Ryan
Fluister
Monster

REVIEWS:

Other Music
May 2007

Under the guise Machinefabriek, Rutger Zutdervelt dropped his debut album Marijn last year, an austere record of sly grace that reveled in tempered crackle and drone. But prior to that, Zutdervelt kept busy with an insanely impressive schedule of super-limited, 3" CD-R releases, unloading dozens of them over the course of three years, showcasing a work ethic that could put a colony of carpenter ants to shame. Zutdervelt's latest effort Weleer is almost a bit of a public service, then, as it collects bits and pieces of his best limited edition releases to effect a generous, double-disc survey of the many sounds and styles this man has come to call his own.

It's tough to accurately summarize the depth of Weleer, as from track to track Zutdervelt emerges with whole new bag of tricks with which to play. Hell, on a track like "Hieperdepiep" alone he manages to bound from crackling acoustics to a Basinski-esque wrecked choral sample to aggro speaker crunch all in just thirteen minutes, with the type of balanced transitions that make it seem as though these disparate elements have always belonged together. Elsewhere he deals in delicate field recordings, warm ambient drones, and deftly mutated samples, matching simple piano lines with an incessant digital hum on "Roes 9," while dipping wordless vocals into a fine digital bath on "Carps Remix." It's the triumphant "Lief," however, that truly brings out the best of Machinefabriek, crafting a slow-burning climax out of neatly building tones that cascade over and around each other until they overwhelm and burst into a broad strokes of overdriven, distorted fuzz that are somehow placid in their intense resonance. Far from summarizing the Rutger Zutdervelt's work, Weleer suggests whole new chapters that Machinefabriek has only just begun to explore. [MC]

WFMU's beware of the blog
May 2007
There's such an avalanche of music to overwhelm the senses these days, especially all the artists who have been making epic, album long journeys into drone, ambience and doom. For every Sunn o))) record (and there are sure enough), there's your William Basinskis, Nadjas, Slomos, hourlong Utech CDs and Boredoms Super Roots reissues, all very enjoyable, but I tellya, if I want to sit down and have a 75 minute long headphone experience, there's just so many hours in the day, you know? I think I still have to answer the door or attend to a burning dinner everytime I throw that Gavin Bryars record on I've been trying to listen to since 1996. And more Terry Riley reissues picking up where Cortical left off? Forget it. Who are these people with 7,000 drone albums in their Soulseek folders, and when do they get anything done?? It's my job to listen to stuff and I still have a giant Santa/reindeer combo up on the roof that's begging for me to pay attention and deal with it five months later. Yet it continues. It still keeps coming, especially now that CDRs have grown into such a commodity. I know that I'm going to spend an hour with that new single-track Abruptum CD (and probably kill yet another little corner of my soul when its over). Maybe I will just get rid of everything and only keep that Jud Jud 7". I will, however, also keep this Machinefabriek double CD, which I was so into that it warrented a full listen in one swoop, twice in one week.

This is a great collection of recordings culled from older 3" CD releases from Dutch musician Rutger Zuydervelt, yet arranged and sequenced in a way that makes it a perfectly flowing listening experience. The warm ambience definitely harks back to some groundlevel krautworks, but almost every instrument blurs into placid soundscapes that are constantly shifting and evolving, electronic crackles rise out of dark lakes of guitar drone; the sounds are very intimate, immediate, not overwhelmingly dark but definitely indicating Zuydervelt's past as a guitarist in a doom band. With both live instruments and assorted programming, the sheer human emotion injected into a machinated music form is stunning, and the variety of places these tracks go to (even within the course of a piano-based 20 minute composition) are timed perfectly to hold the listeners' attention and reveal a seemingly limitless bank of ideas that I can't recall being utilized since the golden days of Seefeel's Polyfusia record. Very grand.