Mariska Baars / Rutger Zuydervelt

eau (30:10)

cd/dl/stream, May 2019

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Mariska Baars and Rutger Zuydervelt go way back. And although they regularly work together in the quartet Piiptsjilling, their last effort as a duo stems from 2008, the album Drawn (on Foxy Digitalis/Morc).

But now eau is here. eau (pronounced “oh”) means ‘water’ in French, and that’s how it sounds; like gently rocking waves of sound, or like a babbling sonic stream of fractured audio debris. It also sounds a bit like the equivalent of sunlight dancing on the ripples of a lake’s surface.

eau is not really a song, or a composition. Well, technically it is, but it functions more like an atmosphere that fills the space. Just let it play (on repeat…) and let the sounds hang in the room - let them co-excist with any other sound that’s there. Open a window if you wish! Or, experience the trip on headphones, let these soft tones, gentle voices, buzzes and crackles tickle the inside of your skull.

eau was mastered by the one and only Stephan Mathieu, who made this carefully crafted audio patchwork shine even more.

Reviews

Touching Extremes

Already a prolific creative specimen when he acts alone, Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefabriek) reminds us of his collaborative potential in this joint venture with vocalist Mariska Baars, the pair having been working for a long time in diverse contexts. Baars is the owner of a sweet timbre, between an angelic soprano and a singer of hypnotic lullabies. And, in fact, “mesmerizing” is the adjective to accurately depict the essence of Eau.

Besides the voice, the acoustic palette comprises an electric guitar – some of its components presumably enhanced with preparations – plus small percussive sources (a mbira, or equivalent African instrument, materializes in places to add pinches of tangibleness) and, just maybe, an electronic keyboard for further degrees of luminescence. All in all, the merely instrumental matters range from cleanly picked/plucked tones and harmonics to mild rattles, gently crackling noises and subsurface hums. Zuydervelt subjected the mix to a looping process, in which Baars’ cantillated particles appear, disappear and superimpose upon themselves.

The textural wholeness often fluctuates, a perfectly tonal segment turning into its very image reflected on a liquefied surface, the contours imprecise and trembling. Those are the junctures where the music becomes genuinely charming, its cuddling traits fully functional. For a vague idea, imagine a blend of Akira Rabelais’ Spellewauerynsherde and the most ethereal imagery elicited by the Andy Moor/Yannis Kyriakides interaction, the whole slightly altered by a set of colored lenses.

As recommended by the artists, this single 30-minute piece needs the “repeat” mode for best results. It’s simply constructed and bewitchingly graceful, its reiterative sonority appearing as a natural phenomenon with calming properties.

Just Outside

A dreamy half-hour spent floating with Baars and Zuydervelt. Baars' lovely voice is overlaid, enhanced and manipulated in, I imagine, many ways--though never losing its essential "song" sound - sometimes seeming to be singing in some imaginary language and woven among (appropriately) liquid electronic textures, what sounds like backward guitars and doubtless much more. Given the title and cover image, the result is almost a kind of program music, as one easily imagines diaphanous water spirits wafting through the azure, drifting slowly down into the ever-darkening blue. A few surprising and mysteriously sharp clicks transpire later in the piece--sonar pings, perhaps. Distant voices? Boat motors? Hard to tell as one's senses have numbed somewhat. Ambient done right, well worth a listen.

Wajobu

There is an awakening, but the mind is foggy, vision blurry and hearing is trying to clarify.  Then the realization, the nearly imperceptible, but ever-present rhythm of waves, and the enduring ebb and flow of the tides.  It is caused by the slow dance of the Earth and Moon as well as the sinuous atmosphere.  The flow is incoming, then retreating, at advancing times each day.  The macro-rhythm of the water moves predictably, but it’s never the same.  One could awaken one day to an ebb, and the next to a flood.

States of mind can change in daydreams as alpha waves are created and then dispersed by fleeting sounds, glimmers of light, gentle movements or drifting aromas.  Where do we begin with eau, where do we end, does it really matter?  Perhaps, in a way, that’s kind of the idea.  It’s cyclical, it cleanses the mind, washing away thoughts that are distracting, while immersion within it aids in blurring the sense of time.

Although moderately indistinct, while in a state of relaxation, I detect that eau is divided into four parts, but again, does it really matter to the overall perception of the experience?

One: At first, jittery granular voices, with gently plucked electric guitar (buzzing occasionally with a tightly controlled Frippian growl).  Then there are more distinct and gradually entwined loops of voices and guitar, which transform into choral harmonies.

Two: About halfway into the recording there is a respite of tonal percussion, keyboards and (perhaps) guitar harmonics, but still with a gentle undercurrent of voices.  It’s like lying in the bottom of a boat, in a gentle breeze, and hearing the water gently wash against the hull.

Three: At about seventeen-and-a-half minutes, voices and guitar return (recurrent flow), but it is a tide with percussive flotsam and jetsam.  Some surprises have washed in.  Sounds are crisper.

Four: Just before twenty-two minutes, a threshold is encountered after expanding layers of voices and sizzle (more of that subtle growl too).  Then…a plucked string casts the sounds off into the distance, where they gradually become more indistinct.  The voices and sounds are gradually hushed, akin to a quiet harbor at night.  A fog seems to roll in, with the quietude.

In a way, like the shift of advancing tidal rhythms, eau could be encountered at any point in the recording, and left to loop, even slowing the speed to change the sounds and distort the sense of time further.  The choice of how to encounter eau could be up to the listener.

There are no rip currents here, only calm seas.

Toneshift

Rutger Zuydervelt and Mariska Baars latest collaboration – and their first since 2008’s Drawn – is a swirling tapestry of affected vocals, an emergent sea of abstract utterances that is as beguiling as it is restrained. The album revolves around a single theme, perhaps even a single compositional device – processed, disjointed vocals that form a horizon upon which an increasingly melodic – even jazz-inflected – guitar roams, bringing with it new and subtle electronic colours, fizzes, scrapes and distant jangles.

The title – Eau – is lived out by the composition. Baars vocals swirl and compress like the tide itself, slowly ushering forth radical – yet seemingly fluid – changes in the composition as a whole. Later, as the guitar takes hold, her voice is in turn submerged, serving as a swaying bed, a seascape by which to locate the rest of the music.  Simplicity is key – no one sound ever over-extends itself, nothing is granted enough personality to upend the delicate relationship between parts. It is like a marriage, successful for its lack of dominance, even as the distinct voices of which it is comprised vie for their share of the space they mutually inhabit.

The beauty of Eau lies in its utility of a particular aesthetic, without either becoming over-indulgent or so inquisitive as to compromise its integral form. The voice, and its omni-present processing, rarely changes from its singular treatment, ebbing and flowing by ultimately relying upon the same fundamental technique. Likewise, the guitar, though increasing, slightly, in complexity over time, proffers only that same tone, that same method of performance that defines our first encounter. On some levels, one might be critical of some potentially cheesy aspects – their is a certain smoothness to the guitar in particular that is reminiscent of lounge-jazz or another easy-listening, sunday-afternoon vibe – but as a composition its elements are employed with an unusually robustly sense of pace and nuance. It is not the individual sounds that make up the work, but the thorough exploration of the relationship between them, the emergent timbres and moods that are brought to life throughout their time together.

Baars and Zuydervelt describe the album as ‘an atmosphere that fills the space’, and this seems a fairly accurate description. There is little here to grab you, nothing likely to stick in your memory – and the piece is all the better for the lack of any such conceit. Like many of Zuydervelt’s compositions, the result is something that washes over you, immersing you in a subtle and persistent charm that manages to be entirely ambient in spirit whilst seemingly eschewing many of the obvious trappings of the genre

Fluid Radio

Mariska Baars and Rutger Zuydervelt go way back. Although they regularly work together in the quartet Piiptsjilling, their last collaboration was 2008’s Drawn, an incredible eleven years ago. ‘Eau’ means ‘water’ in French, so the theme of the record quickly reveals itself, turning into a natural liquid thanks to its stream of watery song and its currents of light, looping texture, choosing to go downriver and advancing in a single direction. A feminine voice spools outwards, occupying every inch of the record but never feeling like a drag.

Like ripples on a lucid cyan pool, solar flares mirroring light, eau reflects the lag of an afternoon sun on a summer vacation, forever young, unchanging. The glinting voice is susceptible to a few glitches and stutters along the way, as if it were being grazed by the sandpaper of sediment along the way, but it’s imbued with a fascinating flexibility, the voice building transparent arenas for aural gymnasts.

It escapes out of the palm – like water – and it easily slips out of its hiding place – like water. The electric guitar melody evokes a past era,ala Velvet Underground, with its crisp and clean melodic lines returning to the psychedelic era. The neon melody is a sun-burnt mirage, awash in psychedelia, glimpsing a taste of Miami or California while drenched in the stifling heat of August. The voice continues to swirl – it can and wants to sing in a brighter, alternative timeline, where her voice is gently bent and left to echo in the background. Other sounds flit and scrunch against the speakers, making for perfect background music and music for your immediate attention. It can switch between the two.

A deeper bass enters through a window left open for a spring breeze, and the sound rumbles against higher trinkets and clanging instrumentation. That bass never threatens the piercing light of the album, because a bright, exotic guitar returns again and again, reminiscing over paradise and reincarnating its palm trees from time to time, as a photograph will bring it all back in a flood of remembrance, acting as carer and babysitter, keeping watch and ensuring that the sun still gets through.

There’s no hurrying or any pressure to get to the finish line, despite its condensed running time of half an hour. Because of that, eau floats, untethered of any rigid expectation and choosing to part with the dangers of musical autopilot. It’s as fresh as a mountain stream. Like young hearts, its water runs free.

Drifting, Almost Falling

The thirty minute single piece “eau” feels like it could be part of a live interpretive dance piece, sound installation or soundtrack to a silent film. “Eau” has a free flowing feel that has motifs that reappear throughout without being repetitive or predictable. Musically it transcends genre clarifications slipping in jazz sounds, ambient tones, experimental guitar works, chimes, haunted female torch song singing, gritty and granular soundscapes move through winding territories taking the listener on a journey that is map less. The name and its meaning described in the press release above is fitting as the piece has a very fluid feel (and if you look closer it slightly hinted in the blue tones of the artwork and the video below).

The piece’s opening is where the abstraction starts (with the same vocal snippets also closing the piece), from this point it gets as conventional as it ever will be with the faintest hint of ambience being created with buzzing tones. Around the half way mark the piece goes through a debris section which changes its completion by introducing a collection of disparate sounds that give it a grittiness and also highlight the excellent mastering job of Stephen Mathieu which gives the section a real depth of sound and textures for the listener to feel in a physical sense. A note should be made about the angelic and manipulated vocals of Baars that find their way winding in an out, sometimes singularly, others as a choir through sections of the piece. The pace of the piece is part of its success as it never rushes through its course. Sure, some sections are more sonicly dense than others, but all are consistent in the way that they let the sounds reveal themselves naturally. This is a piece of music that reveals more of its character with each listen and is a welcome addition to both artists catalogs.

Avant Music News

This short album (or long EP) features Mariska Baars on vocals, guitar, and kalimba, with Rutger Zuydervelt on guitars and sound processing. But that simple description does not capture the essence of Eau, which is French for “water”. And that title is apt, as the music ebbs and flows like a stream of consciousness.

Baars' vocals are heavily processed with echo and delay. She both lilts and lulls, navigating through a haunting and alien soundscape. Her words are not as important as the timbres and melodies of her voice. The closest analogy is perhaps to Eastern European folk music with a post-modern approach. The guitar playing features cleanly picked or sustained electric notes that compliment Baars more than accompany her.

Consisting of a single 30-minute track with generous studio manipulation, Eau is a gentle yet unconventional dream sequence laden with minimalistic effects, crackling elements and a bassy rumble or two. Overall, while too busy to be considered “ambient” in the traditional sense, the album is best listened to as a member of that loose genre. An unusual and highly compelling release.

Ambientblog

Mariska Baars and Rutger Zuydervelt (a.k.a. Machinefabriek) have been working together for many years, in different projects. Piiptsjilling comes to mind first, along with many other occasional projects featuring the Kleefstra Brothers, such as Fean, Seeljocht, and numerous other collaborations with various artist such as Drifts, Clay, Gris Gris and Zeeg. 
This is not the first collaborative album from the duo (Drawn, Thole) – but it may very well be their most ‘experimental’.

Eau means ‘water’: the 30-minute composition paints a fractal aural picture of tiny waves moving on their own but also building larger waves together, using short fragments of Mariska‘s singing and rearranging them, or stacking them onto waves of musical tones, buzzes and crackles and lingering guitar sounds. ‘Like a babbling sonic stream of fractured audio debris. Or the equivalent of sunlight dancing on the ripples of a lake’s surface.’ 
Mariska does not only contribute her singing, by the way: she also plays guitar, kalimba and added field recordings.

The duos advise is to play this album on repeat, and ‘let the sounds hang in the room – let them co-exist with any other sound that’s there. Open a window if you wish’.
The structure and composition are quite unusual, ‘it functions more like an atmosphere that fills the space’. Mariska Baars voice is cut up to vocal punctuations that drift through the air in a way reminding me of Akira Rabelais’ reconstructed tape fragments on his Spellewauerynsherde masterpiece. The lo-fi stripped-down folk songs of her Soccer Committee releases (2005-2006) are long left behind. 

‘Never look back’ seems to be the motto that connects these two artists: always exploring new territories, experimenting beyond expectations (even though there’s the risk that that in itself becomes the expectation).

Silence And Sound

(Translated from French:) While regularly collaborating in the Piiptsjilling quartet, Mariska Baars aka Soccer Committee and ultra-prolific Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek, once again unite their talent on the very luminous 'eau', a 30-minute track that transports us through landscapes with diaphanous beauty. Softly, the duo conjugates feminine voices and incandescent streaks, pushing the listener to pause, just to take full advantage of this narration loaded with ghosts and spirits, temporality and ephemerality, depth and loss of the senses. The melodic shadows constantly caress heaps of magnetic dust, abstract poetry to infinite verses, liquid pause in fuzzy mode, where words and syllables roam the sweet banks of dreams about to vanish. Superb.

Musique Machine

Mariska Baars has been releasing wonderful sonic minimalism since 2005 under the moniker of Soccer Committee and so she is no light weight when it comes to bringing sonic atmosphere to her work. Rutger Zuydervelt aka Netherlands Machinefabriek also stands out as a prolific artist in the drone and minimalism genre, releasing a vast catalog of very capturing audio escapes. They have been collaborating for years, so this release is actually just the latest in an ongoing sound flirtation between these two amazing artists.

The album title is “eau” it is pronounced “oh” and is the French word meaning water ..which is what the album strives to emulate in sound.. creating an atmosphere with the flow of sound that pulsates like waves crashing in your ear.. a trickling sonic lake where you rest and let the real world fade away and you drift ..and it is very dreamy.. a beautiful continuous composition that takes the listener on a soothing and comfortable ride.

“Eau” is actually a meditative tool designed by Baars and Zuydervelt.. it comes with instructions...”Just let it play (on repeat…) and let the sounds hang in the room - let them co-excist with any other sound that’s there. Open a window if you wish! Or, experience the trip on headphones, let these soft tones, gentle voices, buzzes and crackles tickle the inside of your skull. “ and if you follow these instructions and let it fill the atmosphere your results will be very relaxing.. This is a great release.. and superb collaboration and I hope they continue to knock it out of the park with the next one too!

Vital Weekly

Oddly enough it seems as if Rutger Zuydervelt, machine operator at Machinefabriek is occupied with lots of other things these days and not so much with releasing new music; or, perhaps not all reaches these shores. Here he has a follow-up to the album 'Drawn', which Foxy Digitalis released in 2008, and which, so I believe, wasn't reviewed in these pages. That album saw Zuydervelt working with Mariska Baars, vocalist and guitar player of Soccer Committee and once described by me as 'Oren Ambarchi with vocals'. Together they are also part of the quartet Piiptsjilling, an on-going concern for many years. Now the two of them have new work, 'eau', which is 'water' in French and should be pronounced as "oh". It is thirty-minutes and ten seconds long and one long stream of sounds; the same sounds actually, but not repeating in a strict sense of the word. There are a bunch of looped voices, Baars' I assumed but in fact from both, topped with some eerie reverb and slowly there is a whole bunch of small sounds added. A bit of guitar here, a passage with e-bow there, some glitch sound, which you can't tell it's an accident or not, some crackles and everything wanders about. At one point the voices disappear and a thumb piano opens up, slowly, crackling with a contact microphone taped not so carefully and some more delay effects. All of these sounds are produced by both of them. Following this interlude, the voices return but now rest in a slightly busier sound field that doesn't lose it's calm, meandering feel. The end is like the beginning and it is, so it sounds to me at least, the only to do now is to play it again and have it on repeat for some time, preferably at a low to mid volume range and enjoy the subconscious stream of sounds.

Piano and Coffee

Re-joining as a duo for their first creative collaboration in just over a decade, Mariska Baars and Rutger Zuydervelt combine forces to breathe into life their atmospheric new release eau. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu, this track is one long-form soundscape that is quite minimal but packed full of detail. A surprising, stimulating listen, it sprawls over thirty minutes of flowing, layered, modulating timbres. Baars, best known for her 2007 album ‘sC,’ combines her minimalist, impressionistic songwriting with Zuydervelt’s musical talents, who has a number of releases to his name, the most recent being ‘With Voices.’ Together, their self-described “audio debris” comes together in pleasing ways that fully engage the senses.

Beginning with whirling, fragmented voices wailing in asymmetric, unmetered haze, this unfolding sound has a haunting, paradoxical sense of unfamiliar familiarity, redolent of a Björkian female-led chorus, but with a flavour all of its own. Like a tapestry, with sounds threaded through and adorned with such careful detail, there is a quiet sense of stasis, while subtle changes in surface detail gently carry us along. Often, the sonorities that ripple out are so elusive, blending between the spaces in ways that make them almost impossible to pinpoint, defying categorisation.

There is a cosmic sense of stillness and awe, as this soundscape straddles earth-bound and psychedelic sensibilities. It’s as if this goes beyond seeing, hearing, knowing and touches something deeper; an encounter with something unnameable. As sounds are woven through, sometimes just grazing the surface of consciousness, the gentle voices are offset with glassy tones and e-bowed strings that are wide and warm. Without even realising, everything has changed in a slow, seamless transition leading into scratchier, metallic sounds, with rustling and flickering.

Like light through stain glass catching the dust as it settles, there is a sense of the infinite in the delicacy of these sounds. Getting progressively more nebulous, there are few moments of gentle interruption, so subtle they almost go unnoticed, but serve to softly refocus, as attention is perfectly sustained. Despite no formal delineations of sonic boundaries, the composition and construction of this all feels very deliberate: within its singularity, a constant disintegration and decay, with finespun tension between breakdown and renewal. Its conclusion seems to come full circle to where we began, beckoning to listen on, again and again.

A rewarding listen when fully attentive and tuned in, this track leaves the listener wide-eyed with wonder, with a serene sense of being frozen in time, yet moving ever forward, like glacial ice. This release is a glorious slow-burner: these sounds truly stir something deep within, and when allowed to fully capture the imagination, feels akin to a mystical experience.

Subjectivisten (1)

Het laatste wapenfeit van Mariska Baars en Rutger Zuydervelt als duo gaat alweer terug naar 2009. Het is dan ook een aangename verrassing om de release Eau in brievenbus te vinden.


Eau is het Franse woord voor water, en de muziek doet ook wel erg aan water denken en dan vooral in de stromende variant van een riviertje. Langzaam slokt de hypnotiserende stem van Baars de aandacht op, alsof je naar de continue veranderende patronen in stromend water aan het kijken bent en een Sirene je langzaam het water in lokt. Dit wordt aangevuld met haar minimale gitaarspel, maar ook elektronische bewerkingen en drones door Zuydervelt.


In eerste instantie lijkt het wat voort te kabbelen, maar in de diepte in muziek gebeurt er juist heel erg veel. De zang blijft zich continue ontwikkelen waardoor nieuwe patronen in de muziek naar boven komen. En langzaam, haast onopgemerkt komen er steeds meer lagen in de muziek, die subtiel het geheel overnemen.

En dan voor je het weet zijn de 30 minuten die dit album duurt voorbij. Echter, door dat de muziek eindigt zoals deze begint, is het ook heel fijn om de repeat knop in te drukken en het geheel een tijdje op je in te laten werken.

Na zoveel jaren stilte van het duo is het erg fijn om weer eens zo’n werk als deze te horen, zeer veel doet terug denken aan hun kleine meesterwerkje “Thole” uit 2007, voor mij nog steeds een van de hoogtepunten uit het werk van Zuydervelt. Deze kan daar echter bij worden gezet. Hopelijk is het nu niet nogmaals 10 jaar wachten op de volgende samenwerking.

Subjectivisten (2)

Mijn eerste NNM dit jaar gaat over de cd With Voices van Machinefabriek. Op innovatieve wijze zet hij hierop stemmen van uiteenlopende nationale en internationale vocalisten in, die praten, lezen, zingen of woordeloze keelklanken produceren, hetgeen hij als instrumenten verwerkt in zijn collage-achtige muziek, dat een vlechtwerk van die stemgeluiden met ambient, noise, veldopnames en experimentele elektronische sounds is geworden. In feite zit de half uur durende composities met Baars hier daar wel in het verlengde van, zij het dat de aanpak zoals de titel al doet vermoeden meer waterig is. Zefabriceren met klimba, zither, veldopnames en elektronica skeletachtige ambient en drones, die zonder dat de vergelijking helemaal opgaat ergens het midden houdt tussen het bevreemdende van Hector Zazou, het mysterieus tijdloze van Akira Rabelais en het gloedvol verstilde van David Sylvian. De klanken voeren je moeiteloos mee naar een contemplatieve andere realiteit. En dan zijn er nog die prachtige vocale partijen van Baars, die soms een serene en haast Barokke indruk maken, die overigens ook bij Rabelais zou passen,maar op andere momenten dat betoverend magische hebben van de beginjaren van His Name Is Alive en Miranda Sex Garden. Er gaat een haast narcotiserende werking uit van deze prachtmuziek, die in een half uur ontzaglijk veel brengt. Een groots kleinood!

OOR

Rutger Zuydervelt doet met met één muzikant, Mariska Baars (soccer Committee, Piiptsjilling), die hij leerde kennen dankzij een recensie van haar eerste album in de OOR. Hun gezamelijke plaat heat ‘eau’ en de vergelijking met de zon die schijnt over een rimpelloos meer is snel gemaakt. Baars is een specialist in stille muziek en de woordeloze klanken van haar stem zijn dan ook nauwelijks herkenbaar tussen de voortkabbelende electronica gemixt. De langzaam verschuivende lange compositie is opgebouwd uit lagen electroinca, omgevingsgeluiden, abstracte stemmen, gongs en spaarzame gitaaraanslagen. Een oase van rust om aangenaam in te verdrinken.

Gonzo (Circus)

Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) behoeft geen introductie, en ook Mariska Baars kwam al regelmatig langs op deze pagina’s, als Soccer Committee en als lid van onder meer Piiptsjilling en L/M/R/W. Ook Zuydervelt deed mee in die twee projecten, en Baars en hij maakten eerder samen onder meer ‘Thole’ en ‘Drawn’. Die laatste is alweer uit 2008, maar blijkt bij herbeluistering mooi aan te sluiten op hun nieuwe samenwerking, ‘eau’. Wederom verzorgt Zuydervelt een ingehouden, dromerige backing van tonen die je soms eerder vermoedt dan hoort. Speelde elf jaar geleden de piano nog een belangrijke rol, op ‘eau’ is het de gitaar die de toon bepaalt. Voorzichtige finger-picking noten krijgen alle tijd al overlappend resonerend weg te sterven, waarna ze opgenomen worden in een zacht golvend bed van tonen. Daar overheen horen we Baars’ stem, elektronisch bewerkt en opgeknipt in kleine stukjes. Die stukjes lopen in verschillende loops langzaam door elkaar heen, waardoor Baars met meerdere versies van zichzelf zingt, soms bijna engelachtig.

Halverwege verdwijnen de stemmen naar de achtergrond en komen er verschillende typisch Zuydervelt-elementen tevoorschijn: geknisper, kleine elektroakoestische geluiden, iets dat klinkt als een haperend speeldoosje. Voor de laatste tien minuten keren Baars’ stemmen weer terug, en drijft ‘eau’ melancholiek naar zijn finale. Mooie, meditatieve toevoeging aan het oeuvre van Baars en de immer uitdijende lijst releases van Zuydervelt.

Opduvel

In de begeleidende tekst bij eau staat dat het niet echt een lied of een compositie is. Technisch gezien is het dat wel, maar het functioneert meer als een atmosfeer die de ruimte vult. Daar valt weinig op af te dingen. In een half uur glijdt de muziek in golven over je heen, in een gelijkmatige sfeer en zonder naar een bepaald punt toe te werken. Het stuk begint en het eindigt een half uur later.

Daarmee is echter niet alles gezegd, want onderweg is het stuk wel degelijk aan verandering onderhevig, zijn verschillende bewegingen hoorbaar en is allerminst sprake van een statisch geheel. Zoals iedere golf van water verschillend is, zo is ook de muziek niet steeds hetzelfde. De stem van Baars is elektronisch bewerkt en haar zang is opgeknipt in ultrakorte fragmenten, waardoor een haperend effect ontstaat. Daaronder klinkt de stem nogmaals, maar dan lange tonen zingend. Na een paar minuten worden de korte fragmenten spaarzamer, totdat ze verdwijnen. Ondertussen horen we Baars verschillende lijnen door elkaar zingen.

Een licht melancholieke sfeer ontstaat die wordt versterkt door subtiel ingebrachte elektronische elementen die aanvankelijk dienen als ondersteuning van de stemmen, niet als instrumenten op de voorgrond. Wel is het geluid van een gitaar te herkennen dat uit de golven van stemmen tevoorschijn komt en er weer in verdwijnt. Zuydervelts kenmerkende kraakgeluidjes vormen ook een onderdeel van de elektronische ondergrond, net als langere klanken, die nooit echt als een drone fungeren maar ook in golven bewegen.

Alles bij elkaar ontstaat een soundscape waar je als luisteraar rustig op mee kunt deinen. Er is geen haast en er is geen doel, er is alleen de muziek die je meevoert en die je, door zijn verschillende details en nuanceringen, bij de les houdt. Zo verdwijnen na ruim tien minuten de vertrouwde stemmen naar de achtergrond, om plaats te maken voor hoge lange tonen van Baars die nu de achtergrond vormen voor ritselende en knisperende geluiden, zachte percussieve elektronica en heldere gitaarklanken.

De golven zijn kalm, maar langzaam doemt in de diepte een zwaardere en donkerder klank op, waardoor de kalme muziek van een lichte dreiging wordt voorzien. De stemmen keren terug, de draad oppakkend alsof ze nooit weggeweest zijn. Toch is er wat veranderd, want het stuk heeft onmiskenbaar een ontwikkeling doorgemaakt. Oppervlakkig beluisterd mag het gelijkmatig overkomen, er is steeds iets aan de hand, soms als een zachte rimpeling in het water en soms als een duidelijk waarneembare stroom. In het laatste gedeelte komen de donkere klanken soms aan de oppervlakte drijven, niet als naderend onheil, maar voortkabbelend over de andere geluidsgolven.

Uiteindelijk beginnen de stemmen van Baars weer te haperen, waardoor het einde van het stuk goed aansluit op het begin. De neiging om direct op repeat te drukken, is groot. Naar eau valt met gemak een hele middag of avond te luisteren. Je kunt er geconcentreerd naar luisteren, maar het stuk leent zich er ook voor om het gedachteloos te ondergaan. De muziek klinkt bijna bescheiden, maar is rijk aan details en subliem van opzet.