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May 24th, 2006 by Jonathan Fletcher (Permalink)
Label: Lampse Year: 2006 Add Comments |
‘Marijn’ is the debut album of Dutch musician Rutger Zuydervelt and the follow up to a string of increasingly acclaimed hand-made CD-R releases. Utilising acoustic and electronic instruments, it straddles its own unique margin of decaying ambient noise, throwing up multitudes of evocative images and parallel earth images- like an Yves Tanguy landscape found buried in the future.
Opening track ‘Kreukeltape’ announces itself with cavernous clicks and cuts, massively amplified plugging and unplugging of guitar, wilting piano and backwards noise and there are certainly shades of decomposition hero William Basinski. But this reference quickly fades as Machinefabriek staggers into territory all of his own sculpting. ‘Somerset’ combines eerie drone, brittle panning textures and glockenspiel with acoustic guitar and rapid submerged bursts of processed noise, which slowly build to overwhelm space. ‘Wolkenrabber’ forms out of stark piano and its shy drones unfurl quietly as digital wind and waves give way to bewildering interruptions of strange sound eventually surrendering to a tightly shimmering guitar loop reminiscent of both Fennesz and Steve Reich. As the noise takes on a menacing air and a disturbing outburst becomes anticipated the sound falters and we’re into the disconcerting and eerie ‘Schipbreuk’.
Throughout the album, Zuydervelt proofs himself a master of atmospherics and control, creating Hitchcockian tension building suspense and pulling back. Drones give way to piano and then to noise and so on and so forth. This threat and promise is finally exorcised on the extraordinary 20 minute ‘Lawine’ where these oscillations range at their most extreme from the stillest of silence to a slowly enveloping noise whilst all the time a simple piano treads tentatively, the eventual collapse into sheet cacophony exhilirating and liberating. For all its noise, these pieces never lose their emotional heart.
A truly remarkable work.
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