Omval (32:21)

cd/dl/stream on Flag Day Recordings, July/August 2024

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Omval was made quickly, within a week, right after a gig (with serpent player Berlinde Deman) that left me really inspired. Back home, I reinstalled my live setup and tried to recreate the atmosphere of said concert. Of course it turned out completely different, but the recordings of these ‘hardware jams’ were very useful nonetheless, and form the main component of the collage that is Omval. I think the result has the organic quality of a performance, with a complexity that I could never achieve in a live set. (Rutger Zuydervelt, May 2024)

Tools and ingredients: Armagedrone synth, Audacity software, Boss GEB-7 Equalizer, Boss RV-6 Reverb, Boss DD-8 Delay, Buddha Machine, chimes, contact microphone, Drolo Stamme[n], E-bow, Fairfield Circuitry Randy’s Revenge, Fairfield Circuitry Shallow Water, Feedback Machine, field recordings, ‘Hoor, een koor’ cassette tape, internal feedback, Logic Pro software, loop tapes, music box, phone recordings, Phillips PM5106 LF generator, Serpent and fx (sampled from Berlinde Deman), Soma Enner Night Frog, Sony TCM-200 DV voice recorder, Soundcraft mixer, tc electronic Ditto X2 Looper, tuning forks, virtual instruments, zither, Zoom H4N recorder. 

Reviews

Vital Weekly

Following a concert by Zuydervelt with serpent player Berlinde Deman, he was all fired up to play some more music, and back home, he set up his gear and tried to recreate the evening’s atmosphere. With different results, these various jams were used to create the 32-minute collage, ‘ Omval’ (which means fall over, but I am unsure what it means to Zuydervelt). Go over to the Bandcamp page if you want to know what he uses here; instrument-wise, it’s quite a lot, and some of this is hocus pocus to me. The result is an excellent piece of something as ‘typical Machiefabriek’ music; highly atmospheric, going from massive drone-like meanderings to minimal sounds, and, as always, he takes his time to let things develop. There are three distinct sections here, each building from a handful of sounds, going full force in terms of drone and atmospherics, and doing that for a while. When things wind down, it’s time to launch the next section.