soccer Committee & Machinefabriek
3-inch cdr, May 2007
A collaboration with Mariska Baars, a.k.a. soccer Committee. Her voice manipulated to a 20 minute drone piece, housed in a white stencilled stock carton wallet.
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Reviews
Boomkat
Has it really been over a month since the last Machinefabriek release? Where's the guy been? We've all become addicted - it's like heavy narcotics, you can't start limiting the flow at this crucial Point! But then this extra special 3" release has been seriously worth the wait. The first big difference between this and Rutger's previous releases is the absolutely gorgeous hand-made packaging - a far cry from the usual tidy plastic packs we've become so accustomed to, 'Clay' comes in a lovely brown stock sleeve, hand painted in the most sublime fashion... it also happens to be a collaboration with the wonderful soccer Committee (aka Mariska Baars) who we all fell hopelessly in love with last week on the release of her debut album 'sC'. Phew... a pretty important meeting of minds then, but Rutger Zuydervelt couldn't rest easy co-producing a piece of abstract pop, rather he takes Baars' voice as the backbone and starting point for the twenty-minute piece and proceeds to morph it into a haze of slow-burning ambience, building from almost nothing into a shimmering fuzz of breathy, vocal noise until hitting near silence again for the glacial conclusion. So maybe this is more obviously linked to Machinefabriek stylistically than Miss Baars' measured output, but knowing its her voice underpinning everything you are hearing gives the track a humanity and a soul that's all too often lacking from experimental music. This is the sound of life slowed down to a crawl, like one of those three dimensional freeze-frames that allows you to absorb your surroundings with intimate detail and awareness. "Clay" is another deeply impressive chapter in Machinefabriek's acclaimed catalogue, he is quickly developing into one of the most interesting and engrossing artists we have had the pleasure of stocking here at Boomkat and you can't help but get the feeling that these releases are going to be regarded a bit like early material from collectable painters and artists who go on to achieve much wider public acceptance. Once again, you already know the deal with these - we have 70 copies only and they ain't gonna last so hurry to secure yourselves a copy. Essential purchase!
Vital Weekly
Rutger did a remix of Baars before, and have been working together off and on since then. 'Clay' uses the voice of Baars (whom I saw play live in June, and who sounded like a female Oren Ambarchi, but with like wise sparse vocals) and the electronics of Zuydervelt, into a seventeen minute piece of drone music. The voice of Baars is merely chanting or humming and picked up through the microphone and effects of Zuydervelt and crafted into a great drone like music piece that works towards a heavy crescendo in the middle, and then dies out into total nothingness that lasts for quite a long time, and which is quite unlike Zuydervelt. Great piece.
