Boomkat Album of the Week 13/11/09
“Enjoying a quiet year by his standards, Rutger Zuydervelt finds a new sparring partner on this album: Australian guitarist Tim Catlin. It would seem that this collaboration came about largely by accident, Zuydervelt stumbling upon Catlin’s work whilst researching prepared guitar techniques. Once the two musicians established contact, Catlin set about a number of initial recordings that were then sent the way of Zuydervelt for overdubs, final editing and sequencing. The final product differs markedly from the main thread of Machinefabriek’s catalogue, detaching from its conventionally process-heavy sonic language, and instead leaving the instrumental source very much at the heart of each composition. The shorter track times also means that Zuydervelt doesn’t fall into the kind of structural conformities that characterises his longer pieces, and these tracks feel free of the pressures of narrative sculpting, left instead to get on with the business of… well, just sounding lovely. The music is at its most successful when avoiding drone-style material, and pieces such as ‘Strain’, ‘Arpeggio’, ‘Ghostbox’ and ‘Flutter’ all do well to avoid what could easily have turned out to be a torrent of steely sustains, but the strongest works are probably ‘Skip’, ‘Glisten 1′ and ‘Glisten 2′, which exude a huge amount of warmth whilst retaining the strongly physical qualities of the guitar strings. Highly recommended.”
Glisten is the first collaboration between Melbourne guitarist and sound artist Tim Catlin and prolific Dutch producer Rutger Zuydervelt. Apparently Catlin recorded the pieces at home in Australia and then sent them off to Zuydervelt for more processing and overdubs, and it’s resulted in an album that is a really interesting fusion, quite different than either have previously produced. That said on certain pieces like the opener Strain or even the later Glisten 1 you can hear Catlin’s stately drones as the bed of these ambient works. Catlin prepares his guitar with all manner of imaginative implements, often playing with a e-bow or small fan, then processes these sounds. The other night improvising live at the Make It Up Club he was rubbing a giant comb across the body of the guitar, making it sound like frogs. However there’s nothing as disordered on display here, where he’s creating these gorgeous experimental drones, closer to the work on his previous Radio Ghosts (23Five). Though he also plucks and plays notes in a picking style, offering a quite diverse range of techniques. What sounds and textures Zuydervelt is bringing to the work is a little less defined or identifiable, though there are these moments of processed electronics that seem suspiciously like his handiwork. Due to its subtlety and lack of bluster (aside from the final third of Haul in which the sound builds into white noise) the peace of Glisten serves to lower the heart rate and also train the ears to operate on a micro level, to appreciate even the smallest gesture. It’s an incredibly still work of understated beauty, the layers of sound coming across in slow gentle carefully controlled waves, demonstrating the experimental can also be both elegant and restrained.
As obviously appealing as the machinefabriek/Broderick-line-up may be, it is possibly „Glisten“, which shows Zuydervelt’s aptitude at arranging most clearly. For this, another co-operative work, after all, he was initially sent no more than a couple of Guitar-recordings revolving around various instrumental techniques by Australian artist Tim Catlin. Remarkably, there doesn’t seem to have been any clear-cut separation between editing the material and shaping the album here: All nine pieces are of stringent minimalism, focusing with mantric sharpness on a single idea and never following it for longer than its natural conclusion. At the same time, it is this almost obsessive concentration which binds these outwardly unconnected scenes into a silent vortex of frightful gravitational power. Like a stumbling sleepwalker driven by shamanic visions, the album progresses from one neon-lit sound episode to the next and with each step, the intensity of the work increases to a point where madness and utter excitement can no longer be separated. In a way, none of these sequences ever really goes anywhere, a sensation underlined by a quartet of shorter tracks taking the album from its middle to final installment „Glisten 2“. Instead, the music rests in the moment in a succession of surreal scenes. The eery, unreal feeling conveyed by the majority of the material only serves to emphasise the occasional moments of pure and undilluted beauty seldomly consisting of more than a few glassy Guitar-arpeggios and a deep, sonorous Bass-swell or a warmly radiating field of harmonics. At a mere 35 minutes this is a concise effort, but that takes nothing away from its haunting and unsettling impact and its addictive qualities – which, in itself, must be considered a compliment of the highest order in relation to an album of such determinedly uncompromising intensity.
Vital Weekly 706
It was through the 23Five release of ‘Radio Ghosts’ by Tim Catlin that Rutger Zuydervelt learned about his mechanically prepared guitars. This led to this somewhat one way collaboration: Caitlin sent some of his prepared guitar sounds to Rutger who then added some extra sounds and ‘overdubs’ and finished it off as a release. There are nine pieces to be found here, all of them not too long and each seems to find a place of its own. Both Catlin and Zuydervelt have a liking for the more ambient kind of music and all things guitar, so it naturally falls in that particular kind of era. Perhaps its the extended techniques applied by Catlin that make this into a rather varied album of textured mood music. In ‘Haul’ things suddenly swell above the average level of ambient and marks a distinct point of difference of the album. Throughout however elegance prevails here. Its not that distinctively new and different Machinefabriek record that some people may want, but just another fine excursion in the land of six strings – well twelve here. (FdW)
Rutger Zuydervelt, the Dutch (over)productive musician better known as Machinefabriek; for a while I didn’t really follow his new releases but now I got the cd Glisten that he made with Australian guitar player Tim Catlin. Machinefabriek is most known for his drone based ambient music usually with guitar as main ingredient, while Tim Catlin is known for his prepared guitar pieces. Because of this the approach the two musicians took is not completely unexpected. Tim Catlin recorded tracks at home of his prepared guitars and customized and abused effects, but also some of more traditional picking style parts were included. Zuydervelt on his part worked with these recordings by adding extra sounds, doing overdubs and all the other magic he usually does to create his things. The result is presented on Glisten as 9 tracks.
For this work you do not have to expect the usual drone noodles, on the contrary Catlin provided some melodic pieces which bring a lively feeling to the music. Though, on the other hand we also find abstract pieces where the focus is more on sound crafting than song writing. Still, though even while there are these different pieces you can recognize the finger print of Zuydervelt. It might not be the drone based works, but clearly the structures and sound colour does not differ much from his other work. Personally I think this is a shame, not because it is bad (because it isn’t) but it would have been nice to see a bigger influence of Tim Catlin’s own sound. Overall Glisten is a nice release and if you missed out on a lot of the other releases Machinefabriek was involved with it sure is a nice addition to the collection, though if you do have dozens of his releases this is not really an needed addition.