Preview of the album 'Luchtwezen'
SØVN Records, July 15 2020, cd/dl/stream
https://sovnrecords.bandcamp.com/album/luchtwezen
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Constructed by Rutger Zuydervelt, Rotterdam, February – April 2020
Rutger Zuydervelt: church organ (Oude Kerk Charlois), electronics
Berlinde Deman: serpent and vocals (recorded at home, Ghent)
Mastered by Ian Hawgood
Many thanks to Lies Klaus, Gilbert van Drunen (Koffie & Ambacht),
Jaap van Gils, Stepping Stone, and SØVN records 
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Rutger Zuydervelt, a.k.a. Machinefabriek , needs no presentation to the ambient and drone audiences. (Hyper)active since the early 2000s, he epitomizes a minimalistic, electro-acoustic approach to these genres bringing together real world and synthetic oscillations. Berlinde Deman is a tuba player, and amongst many other projects member of the unconventional jazz big band Flat Earth Society.

In Luchtwezen, the two are brought together by a common veneration of the physical experience of the creation of sound. Both musicians each exploit on this record an unusual instrument: Rutger plays the Hess church organ of Oude Kerk Charlois, in south Rotterdam (together with some electronics); Berlinde sings, and plays the serpent, an ancient wind instrument, made out of wood and shaped like a snake. The meeting of the two should have taken place, as a matter of fact, in the Oude Kerk Charlois itself, during a live concert organized by Koffie & Ambacht. However, the quick rise to power of Covid-19 forced the duo to turn this get-together (as all musical get togethers during our quarantines) into a virtual one: a studio recording, that you can hear as Luchtwezen .

And yet, by just listening to the record, you may be fooled into thinking that this was a live recording - as we have all thought, because of their intensity, that some quarantine Zoom calls were not happening over a screen, but rather out there, in the real world. The flow is natural, the sound space unitary. The clicks of the organ keys are just right there in front of us. After the first brooding half, we all feel the mysterious, oriental breath flowing from the serpent in the spaces between us. And then, a simple melody sang by the organ reminds us of the feeling of excitement of going to a live concert - where you know that a serpent will dance to the sound of the organ's pipes.

Machinefabriek with Berlinde Deman – Luchtwezen (preview)

Welsh musician and composer. If you like my stuff, please like, repost / share. And follow for more tunes

I was trained in tradition, yet I stepped beyond its walls. Sound is my language, not to decorate but to liberate. Composer, performer, and listener — one fire, three sparks, inseparable.

I write and compose to uncover what is hidden: the truth buried beneath power, the dignity of the ordinary, the current of awareness that flows through all.

I belong to no authority, only to sound, to truth, to the silence from which all begins. My work is not mastery, but remembrance — a manifesto in every note, every word, every breath.

I am a composer of the 21st century: a studio artist. The studio is my forge, my battlefield, my sanctuary. Machines hum like choirs, circuits burn like torches, cables twist like roots in the earth. Tradition breaks open in this fire — the score turns to light, the instrument becomes the world itself.

To be a studio artist is to seize sound at its rawest, to sculpt electricity and breath as one, to summon the invisible power that belongs to all. Here music is not bound by walls, not enslaved by profit, not tamed by form. It is free, untouchable, unending — a living flame for the century that is ours.

My 33 1/3 series book about the Aphex Twin album <i>Selected Ambient Works Volume II</i> was published in 2014. The book was one of the top 5 bestselling titles for the calendar year, and in 2015 was ranked by Pitchfork as one of the "33 best" of the 100-plus books in the 33 1/3 series. It has subsequently been translated into Japanese (2019) and Spanish (2018)

Since 2012 I have moderated the Disquiet Junto group, which began on SoundCloud. More at disquiet.com/junto. 

I've written for Nature, Pitchfork, The Wire, Down Beat, Boing Boing, NewMusicBox, Red Bull Music Academy, Art Practical, the website of The Atlantic, and many other publications. 

I've exhibited sound art at galleries in Los Angeles (Crewest), Manhattan (apex art), and Dubai (DUTAC), and I had a audio-visual installation at the San Jose Museum of Art as part of its 45th anniversary.

And since 1996 I've run the website Disquiet.com about the intersection of sound, art, and technology.

A musical narrative visible to the minds eye.