Machinefabriek - Stukjes (self release, 2008)

1 Stukje 1 (0:48)
2 Stukje 2 (2:03)
3 Stukje 3 (1:29)
4 Stukje 4 (0:56)
5 Stukje 5 (0:57)
6 Stukje 6 (0:47)
7 Stukje 7 (1:56)
8 Stukje 8 (1:36)
9 Stukje 9 (1:42)
10 Stukje 10 (1:15)
11 Stukje 11 (0:55)
12 Stukje 12 (1:30)
13 Stukje 13 (1:10)
14 Stukje 14 (1:10)
15 Stukje 15 (1:12)
16 Stukje 16 (1:47)

Bien si mes comptes sont bons Machinefabriek aura réalisé 21 disques cette année, record de l'année précédente enfoncé, mais il reste encore deux jours.... Excellent travail, comme d'habitude....

Given his unprecedented work rate, you might find it difficult to believe that this will be the final Machinefabriek release of 2008, but Stukjes seems like a reasonable place to let the year end for Rutger Zuydervelt - he'd certainly be rounding things off with a high. It's been another busy, prolific twelve months for the diligent Dutchman, and Stukjes is as fine a short-form release as he's come up with, taking the shape of a sixteen track collection of sketches and enigmatic miniatures, drawing on processed location sounds, instrumental dissections and drawn out electronic tones. There's an eerie emptiness to much of this music, and the proliferation of wispy, high register drones and deep, low frequency resonance gives the music a peculiar ambiguity. At times all this sounds like sound design for a film, a meeting of low-down soundtrack music and detailed acousmatic foley work. Occasionally the stillness is broken however, and you might hear the odd glaringly loud guitar recording towards (complete with waspish fret buzz) and even some noisy, sliced up shortwave sound towards the end, but the magic of Stukjes resides in those wonderfully understated dialogues between digital sound and abstract field recording. Excellent, as usual.
Boomkat

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