The record is dotted with rustic crackle and tiny ignition sparks that fall from the grid, patternless at times.
This is Machinefabriek (Rutger Zuydervelt) at his most lucid. Daas is dense and mysterious, midtone gray. Consisting of five tracks, four which had been previously released in other formats. As the shortest and new title track opens the proceedings there is this cross between pulled tones and tense low-fi frequency. Like the embers in the aftermath of a massive campfire it burns in cold honey-like slow motion. “Grom” is hesitant, like a scope of some sort, observing a territory or surveilling people. The lengthiest piece here (at just about 20 minutes), “Koploop,” starts like some type of coy exploration with stringed instruments c/o Greg Haines and Anne Bakker. There’s an almost butoh pace, precise and exploratory, as if you can see every muscle move, just so. It’s a loop akin to some fine works by William Basinski, yet seems more clinical somehow, a bit less emotionally topographical. The slow-moving piece taunts with a bit of old Western dustiness and a slight subversive strumming that’s somewhat trance-inducing over a mechanized cycling sound. “Onkruid” is the most spacious evolved track here, chilly and sea-faring in its pitch on atonality. It’s dark out there, in the twilight of the abyss. The record is dotted with rustic crackle and tiny ignition sparks that fall from the grid, patternless at times. Overall Daas is melodically striated with a lure that seems to be channeling some spirit forms. More ghostly than ghastly Zuydervelt’s method for crafting the bottom end really brings out an intimate relationship, activating the listener. (Toneshift, 2010)
Daas is out now on Cold Spring. [Listen | Purchase]
