I have a confession to make, and it's a big one... Hold on to your chairs or whatever you're sitting on... Ready? I own and or know hardly any music by Machinefabriek. So, there it is. The secret is out. I don't know why, I don't know how, because let's face it, somebody with such a high output, frequent live appearances, gazillion collaborations, etc. You would think our paths would have crossed at some point, but... Nope. And while listening to this soon-to-be-released album '+', I don't know why because there are some mighty fine sounds to be found on this.
'+' is a 52-track album with 52 collaborations between Rutger and others. To copy-paste the list is useless - just go to Bandcamp and read them all there - but to pick out a few: soccer Committee, Dirk Serries, Gareth Davis, Fani Konstantinidou, Leafcutter John and Christine Ott. Names are frequently seen in the field of experimental music and sounds.
The concept of the album is as simple as it is complex. Each artist was asked to provide a 1-minute sound of any kind, That was the only limitation, and there were no further guidelines as to what the sound should be or contain. So with the above names as examples, you can imagine the variety of sounds that were sent in. From drum loops and ambience to machine sounds and field recordings; A cornucopia. The reason for creating the short tracks is the simple part. New dad Rutger needed short tracks to work on between caring for the baby. The difficult part is to be original 52 times and make sure all different tracks can be found on 'the same album', and this is something that actually surprised me a lot because, even with the enormous dynamics in the input of sound sources, Rutger managed to create an album with extreme uniformity.
One test is left for me, but I'm saving that for another moment. Will the uniformity remain if you put this album on 'random shuffle'. Or was the order of the tracks carefully chosen to create a flow where the dynamics were as they are now. Because if so, this is not one album, but this is many albums at once, and another dimension has been created. Well done dad!
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