qd46 Machinefabriek - Lijnverkenning - out now!

quiet details
Feb 25
4 min read

Hi friends - hope all good :)

For the next interpretation of quiet details, I have the pleasure of welcoming a true musical experimentalist, Rutger Zuydervelt, here as Machinefabriek.

Out now on digital and limited CD with long-form edition, six panel digipack and fine art print. Digital half price until 6th March.

Listening Party tomorrow Thursday 26th February 19:00 UK time - hope you can be there - free to join and all welcome x

Hailing from the Netherlands, Rutger has been active as Machinefabriek for over twenty years, releasing on highly regarded labels such as Western Vinyl, Type, Important, Home Normal, 12K, Entr’acte, Miasmah, Consouling Sounds, Eilean and Edition Wandelweiser. This, alongside many collaborations, music for film and dance, installations and live performances, has given him a place as one of the most admired artists working today.

Known for his ability to bring together various strands of musical exploration - from electro-acoustic, field recording, ambience, drone, sound art and minimalism - he has created something completely unique in the quiet details series

Lijnverkenning is an album of sparse and powerful textural beauty. Machinefabriek’s innate comprehension of the potential of sound to affect us in profound and unknowable ways.

This is an album where the personality of the machines dictated the direction of music - carefully and deftly guided by Rutger’s intuition and musicality.

There’s an exquisite subtlety throughout, layers of sound implying so much and the interplay creating something incredibly moving.

As Rutger says:

Of course I said yes when quiet details asked me to join their roster. I was playing Scanner’s Forces, Reactions, Deflections quite a bit at the time, and it inspired me to create my own take on the quiet details idea. I started working with cassette tapes and created a whole bunch of short, quite melodic compositions, but eventually decided they didn’t fit the label’s aesthetic, and definitely didn’t work in the long-form format that qt used for its CDs.

So I started anew, focusing on longer durations and moving toward a more free-form and intuitive direction. Taking time, letting my machines softly hum. In the process of creating the music, I think I found a strange form of intimacy within the sounds — as if eavesdropping on the ghosts inside the machines I was using.

The tracks here were mostly made by combining various layers of minimalistic improvisations with field recordings, oscillators, effect pedals, etc. I even hesitate to call these pieces “compositions,” because to me they feel more like entities that follow their own logic, rather than clearly defined and constructed songs.

Stemcassette is a different story. That track came to life after I used a short vocal sample taken from a tape I found in a second-hand memo recorder I had bought. It was filled with home recordings of rehearsals by an opera singer. A short, pitched-down snippet was used in the piece Lijnverkenning 3, but I couldn’t shake the idea of doing more with the sample. So I created the short Stemcassette from it, and felt it worked well as a mid-album “breather.”

Lijnverkenning means “line exploration.” It’s an expression I once saw marked on a public bus, presumably indicating a test of a new route. It’s a multifaceted word, with many connotations that also relate to the music. I hope listeners of this album will feel like explorers — Lijnverkenners — too.

Huge thanks to Rutger for this stunning addition to the series.

The artwork was made as always influenced by the music and idea behind the album - originating from a photo from Rutger which was then captured with analogue photography and processed here at quiet details studios.

As usual, the album is presented on the physical edition, a custom six-panel digipack with a separate fine art print too.

The CD also has a special long-form continuous mix of the album, created by the artist and representing the music in its purest form - highly recommended.

Credits:

Music by Machinefabriek

Mastered by Alex at quiet details studios

Artwork by quiet details in collaboration with Rutger Zuydervelt

Design by quiet details

Also out today is the much-anticipated second run of the wonderful qd40 Scanner - Forces, Reactions, Deflections

Happy to make this available again!