Machinefabriek, III

(with Peter Broderick) Review

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Dutch composer Rutger Zuydervelt is a composer that uses any means necessary to create his aural architecture. Rutger Zuydervelt, AKA Machinefabriek, uses cassette recorders, tone generators, radios, synths, and other hi-fi curio to build a soundscape around the human voice being used as an instrument. Machinefabriek is releasing a new album in January of 2019, that will be titled With Voices.  Until then, he is releasing single from the album titled, “III.” The album will be eight tracks built around vocal works from Peter Broderick, Marissa Nadler, Richard Youngs, Chantal Acda, Terence Hannum (of Locrian) and others. These human voices are featured as musical instruments rather than mere vehicles of lyrical content, resulting in a sub-linguistic mosaic of primordially stirring moods. Zuydervelt was inspired to create the album when he was creating music for a dance company and watched an Instagram video featuring Wei-Yun Chen. The idea stirred Zuydervelt to create a single 35-minute soundscape upon which each vocalist on With Voices was encouraged to improvise, be it talking, reading, singing, or wordless, guttural intoning. Such vocal smatterings were then used to determine how the other tonal elements should be arranged, dictating where each musical passage would ultimately lead. “The idea was for everyone to just do what came naturally” he recalls, “the element of unpredictability was important to me.” “III” is an imaginative composition that uses the human voice to create rhythms, harmony and melody, the result is creative and astonishingly fresh. That’s the short of it!