A. Machinefabriek - Graniet
B. Philippe Petit - In Corpus Voluptas
tape on Forwind, August 2016
More info
Angry Ambient Artists started life as a tongue in cheek take on the contrast between the calm, blissful work of certain artists and their less than happy online personas. The potential for some Spinal Tap type humour is obvious, as it is with any musical scene that takes itself very seriously. The idea with the AAA series is to have a poke at purist rules, play with genres, labels, categorisation and what you are 'allowed' or expected to do.
Machinefabriek opens up the series with ‘Graniet’. Rutger is probably most widely associated with a refined textural approach to electro-acoustics. So we asked him to do the nastiest track he had in him.
“The idea was to make something ‘brutal’, but with that, I also tried to make it beautiful and captivating simultaneously”. Graniet is an exemplary meld of the distorted and dissonant with some artful and arresting sound design.
Philippe Petit has been making all manner of challenging and exciting music from the fringes for over a decade. Here he takes us down the next twist in the road after Rutger, with a raw composition using theremin, guitars and electronics.
‘In Corpus Voluptas’ sees the ‘musical travel agent’ head for the unhinged and macabre in an eerie and ominous piece that could just be the perfect soundtrack to someone’s world unraveling for goo….
They won’t be playing this tape in Ibiza this summer.
Review
A Closer Listen
Machinefabriek’s “Graniet” may be the best piece he’s released since last year’s Sneeuwstorm, and in light of his productivity, that’s saying quite a bit. As one might expect from the title, the piece sounds like agitated grains heating and colliding. The Forwind label asked for his “nastiest” track, and while this isn’t quite it, it does contain a purposeful veer from the accessible. One can still hear the restful influence in the sine wave, while the sawtooth seeks to dissipate any ambient thought. Some seconds sound like dripping stalactites, others like clanging bells and the closing of large metal doors. Sorry to say this, Rutger, but “Graniet” is still accidentally gorgeous.
