Machinefabriek — Vloed
The album was originally released by Sentient Recognition in 2008 and this CD re-issue includes an extra track Vrijhaven that was recorded live at the Hague in 2008 (all the other pieces are taken from performances in Amsterdam).
For the live performances Rutger Zuydervelt used electric guitar, tabletop guitar, pedals, loopers, sampler, tone generator, radio, memorecorder, bow and other various objects and he manages to create some outstanding pieces with depth warmth and a whole glut of emotions.
Tracks one and four (Allengskens and Vloed) the two tracks that bookend the album are fairly similar in style both having that Gavin Bryars (and maybe William Basinski) air about them that I mentioned earlier. There’s a lot of string sounds and minor melancholy sounding chords going on. Very filmic in a way and you’d be less than surprised if you heard Machinefabriek crop up on a film soundtrack.
Track two (Drijfzand) is a bit more experimental in nature it has some gentle melodic (what sound like ) plucked string sounds on it but accompanying that is what sounds like amplified jackplugs being played about with and the odd scraping sound here and there. It develops like this for the majority of the track until it mutates into some choral sounds that slowly get more and more distorted until the tracks climax.
The third track (Vrijhaven) which is the bonus piece reminds me of Zoviet-France. Made up of plucked string instruments lots o f delay and reverb and other more percussive sounds it wouldn’t be out of place on something like Z-f’s “Just an Illusion” album.
All in all another staggeringly good release from Machinefabriek and I can only hope that Cold Spring carry on re-issuing gems like this or even some new material.