Machinefabriek
Aliases: Rutger Zuydervelt
Wisps
On 5 April 2022 I e-mailed Anne about working on a follow-up to our album Oehoe (released by Where to Now? Records in 2020). On April 7 she recorded a bunch of violin, viola and vocal improvisations at home. Gorgeous sounds and melodies, a gold mine to work with. The material basically wrote itself. I started editing and adding electronics (mainly virtual instruments, I don’t own a real harp), and by the end of that month, the album was finished. I always found the music that Anne and I make a b…
Dream Sequences Volume 1 Orphax Reframed
First compilation in a series where other musicians reframe pieces from Orphax's ongoing Dream Sequence cycle, an open-ended sequence of experimental ambient and drone works. Haarvöl, Jos Smolders and Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) each take a different Dream Sequence as point of departure, returning quiet contemplative re-readings that fold their own languages into the source. A study in remix-as-translation across the Dutch and Portuguese electronic-experimental axes.
Texturalis
If Texturalis was a real word it might have something to do with the density or porosity of organic compounds. In the case of Machinefabriek's Texturalis, the word fits the sounds on this album. Sounds indeed, not songs. Anyone familiar with Machinefabriek knows his interest in anything crackling, fizzling and buzzing. For Texturalis, Machinefabriek choose to work on just that; not to be bothered with creating elaborate compositions, but to focus on creating intriguing textures. This resulted in…
Voltas
Rotterdam-based quartet Hydra Ensemble features cellists Nina Hitz and Lucija Gregov, double bassist Gonçalo Almeida and Rutger Zuydervelt on electronics. The ensemble is a juncture of four distinctive expressions finding common ground – together they form a four-headed entity that emerges from highly pensive collective improvisations, creating an intricate patchwork of concurrent melodic lines, textural explorations and expansive drones. Its sonic language exists on the cracks of free improvisa…
Barbatrama
The Portuguese word Selva means “Jungle”, and this collaborative opus with Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek is one more incursion towards Paradox. The Selva made this paradoxal enterprise its trademark: a trio with two string players (cello, bass) and a drummer with free improvisation and creative jazz as the matrix of their playing, but combining it with other musical languages, going from a deterritorialized kind of imaginary folk or world music to the picking of Renaissance and contempora…
Orphax Reworked (4CD Box)
Four-CD box collecting reworks of Orphax's 44 Sketches of 44 Seconds, in which Sietse van Erve handed forty-four short source sounds to friends with an open brief to take them outside their usual practice. The contributing artists - TVO/Ruaridh Law, Modelbau, Fani Konstantinidou, Machinefabriek, Jos Smolders, Elif Yalvaç, Siavash Amini and Orphax himself - produce over four hours of new music, each retaining their compositional fingerprint while submitting to a constrained shared palette.
Porcelain (Original Film Soundtrack)
The soundtrack for Dutch/Belgium/Italian co-production Porselein (Porcelain), a psychological drama by Jenneke Boeijink. Besides the music from the film, the album contains 12 extra outtakes. Rutger Zuydervelt (who mostly works under his pseudonym Machinefabriek) regularly works for film, though mostly for documentaries. Porcelain is his second feature film score, after the Canadian mystery drama The Cold and the Quiet. A common modus operandi for Zuydervelt is to collaborate with instrumentalis…
Stillness Soundtracks II
The friendship and collaboration between Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) and Alessandro Tedeschi (label founder of Glacial Movements, has been going on for several years now and it is constantly evolving. The Dutch artist, in addition to carrying out the graphic designs of all Glacial Movements' releases, is also part of the label’s catalog with the album Stillness Soundtracks released in April 2014. Almost 6 years from its publication, here is the new musical tale of the fantastic journey in…
Sileen II
2018 release **
"An adaptation from "Sileen", a composition commissioned by Musica For The Festival Oortreders at Neerpelt, Belgium, 2016 performed with 50 members of a local music school; "Sileen II" was realized with only Gareth Davis on bass clarinet plus sounds from Machinefabriek, recorded in the same pitch and tempo as "Sileen', then slowed to half its speed and one octave lower. Stunning!"
Dwaal / Wold +
Originally released by Ghent's Dauw tape label in 2016 and quickly sold out, here reissued on CD with two new interpretations added. The original is a pair of eighteen-minute pieces: Dwaal layers orchestral washes against radio static and erratic noise, while Wold spreads sparse piano notes over a bed of fine hiss, supported by wind and bird recordings from Vriescheloo. The reissue adds remixes by Benoît Pioulard (organ and guitar) and Nicola Ratti (synth sputters and rhythm).
Pierdrie
Pierdrie is a project by Marco Douma, Roel Meelkop and Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) about the visual and sonic phenomena of pier drie in the Rotterdam Waalhaven. A colourful and atmospheric hommage to Rotterdam harbour industries, the images of the 3 monitors are merged and edited for use with one screen - the DVD format offers the opportunity to play this in full surround sound as well in stereo.This is a one screen version of the Pierdrie installation that was originally presented as a 3…
Tides
"I had sent Neil an electronic ‘backing track’ to improvise on, with the idea to keep my part intact as the spine of this new piece. But once I received Neil’s recording, things turned out differently. While toying around with his saxophone improvisation, I noticed it was full of fantastic details, and wanted to emphasize these. I tried overlaying looped parts, with wonderful results. So the original idea went out the window, and I decided to solely work with Neil’s improvisation. I approached ‘…
Compendium
Late in 2011, Celer and Machinefabriek teamed up and recorded the 7" 'Maastunnel / Mt. Mitake', to coincide with their tour in The Netherlands. They then decided to make it into a trilogy of 7" singles, all self-released in limited editions. Now, Irrational Arts has compiled the six tracks of the 7"s onto a CD‚ titled "Compendium (Collected Singles and Remixes)". The CD also includes a new, additional track by Celer and Machinefabriek, and remixes by Stephan Mathieu, Sylvain Chauveau and …
Deining
Mini album, CD, self released by Machinefabriek, November 20, 2015. 200 copies. The Dutch word 'deining' (pronounced 'dining') translates to 'heave' and also 'commotion'. For 'Deining', I asked violinist Anne Bakker to bow each string of her instrument while sliding slowly from the lowest note to the highest, for exactly five minutes, as fluently as possible. Obviously, it turned out nearly impossible to do this really smoothly, but the unavoidable irregularities are a welcomed bonus. Anne also…
Whorls
Following previous Low Point releases, Glisten (2009) and Patina (2011), Whorls is the third collaboration between Tim Catlin, a guitarist and sound artist based in Melbourne and Machinefabriek, nom de plume of Rutger Zuydervelt from Rotterdam. Catlin made initial recordings drawing upon a wide range of approaches, preparations and techniques for instruments including acoustic guitar, bowed piano and zither which were then sent to Zuydervelt for the addition of extra sounds, editing and sequenci…
Memory Space
The central concept behind Alvin Lucier's Memory Space is the representation of another time and place through the use of a new set of sounds. In his instructions, Lucier asks the performer/s to go to an environment and record by any means (notes on paper, graphics, audio recording or by memory) the sound situations that are present, then, at any later time, in a different space, attempt to recreate that situation. The purpose of the work is to avoid elaboration or embellishment, but given that …
Drum Solos
**Initial copies pressed on Initial copies pressed on transparent wax** Driven by my love for solo albums by drummers and percussionists like Jon Mueller, Wil Guthrie, Nick Hennies and Burkhard Beins, I've made Drum Solos. It's my take on a solo drum record, despite the fact that I lack the talent to hit a steady beat or a play a drum roll. Instead, I used the sounds of a drum kit as a source for further processing.I booked a rehearsal room with a drum kit, and recorded as much sounds as I could…
Stroomtoon II
"In December 2011 I recorded the album Stroomtoon, which was released by the French Nuun label the year after. The music was constructed using recordings from improvisations with a setup that I was trying out for upcoming live performances. It's the same setup that I still use nowadays, mainly consisting of an old Phillips analogue tone generator and a selection of effects units. When making Stroomtoon, it felt like moving into new territory that was worth explore more. While that album is very …
Vergezichten
Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek is a master of self-made sound and time-stretching, sensitively handling organic recordings and samples on countless releases, and regards preset sounds in an organ or a cheap keyboard as a tonal find, as a part of the cacophony of everyday life. These bontempi-rhythms plus the computer-stretched sounds of saxophone (Espen Reinertsen) and voice (Mariska Baars) are the base elements of "Vergezicht 1" and "Vergezicht 2." It is stunning how Zuydervelt man…
Secret Photographs
Beautiful new work from Machinefabriek. Secret Photographs was composed as a soundtrack to accompany a film made by Mike Hoolboom using photographs taken by notorious bank robber Alvin Karpis.
Filmmaker Mike Hoolboom discovered a batch of Karpis' photos for auction on eBay. He was the lucky winning bidder. With his newly found treasure, Hoolboom began working on a film consisting of still images, slowly dissolving one into another. Intensifying the slow, hypnotic pace and transitions, the musica…