Hi again. Here’s my second long Substack mailing for all things Machinefabriek related (and more). I have an exciting new pre-order to announce, and I thought it would be nice to write a about the process of a project I’m working on. Enjoy the read.

Painting a Picture / Picture a Painting – pre-order

After some delays with the vinyl production, I can finally anounce this album with the great Giovanni Di Domenico, released on Moving Furniture Records.

Giovanni and I first met an an improv session in Rotterdam, in 2019. The second time was in 2022, when he joined Hydra Ensemble on stage. We decided that it might be a good idea to work on some music together.

Painting a Picture / Picture a painting is an album of two long-form pieces, swapping the working method for each – one takes Giovanni’s recordings and has me processing and adding to it, while the other one started with me creating its foundation (with manipulated sounds of the first piece), and Giovanni building upon it. This resulted in two meandering tracks that are clearly linked, like two sides of the same coin.

Shout out to Christiaan Kuitwaard, who made the painting, and was willing to let us use it for the cover. I’m very glad with the result…

Painting a Picture / Picture a painting can now be pre-ordered at Moving Furniture’s Bandcamp page, and there’s a t-shirt (with a design based on the album cover) available too!

Preview and/or pre-order Painting a Picture / Picture a Painting

(Ver)pulver – 7” lathe

I received some copies of my (Ver)pulver 7” lathe, released by Champion Version. They’ve sold out from the label, but here’s a new chance to purchase it. I’ve got six copies for sale, so you might have to act quick. Otherwise the digital version is of course still streamable and downloadable.

Order the (Ver)verpulver lathe cut or download

Sol Sketches – free download

Nowadays I regularly put albums on Bandcamp on name your price, to make it downloadable for free. Obviously I’ve released so much music that my discography might feel quite impenetrable, and I’m hoping to create an easy ‘entry’ this way.
This time I’m highlighting Sol Sketches. It’s one of the first film scores I did, in this case for a documentary on Sol LeWitt, directed by Chris Teerink. It’s an amazing film, so I’m so glad I had this opportunity.

The music is created by editing piano improvisations I recorded in a library (while looking at Sol LeWitt books), with some sublte electronics added here and there. I won’t ever call myself a pianist, and the playing as well as the editing is all quite simple and crude, but I do think it ‘works’. As score, but also as stand-alone music. But you can judge that for yourself, right here.

p.s. tracks 22–32 were previously released seperatly, as Sol Sketches Supplement. I’ve now added these tracks to the Sol Sketches release, for completenes…

Embodied Freedoms

Embodied Freedoms is a project from (dance production house) Korzo in The Hague. May 5 is the day The Netherlands was liberated in the Second World War, and to celebrate 80 years of freedom, four choreographers were commissioned to create two-minute dance films, together with director Ciska Meister. One of the dancers/choreographers is Roshanak Morrowatian, with whom I worked many times before, but the other names (Esmeée Begemann, Vladislav Detiuchenko, Junadry Leocaracia) were new to me. It was a great project, with four wildly different films as a result.

The Embodied Freedoms films will première at Filmhuis Den Haag, on May 5,
and will be screening during Korzo’s CaDance festival, May 16–25.
They will also be spread on the socials etc, so keep an eye out…

The Wonder of it All – process

I’m lucky enough to earn a living creating music. Not that this was ever planned, but it’s how things snowballed, and I concider myself super lucky. And it means that most of the time I have multiple musical project going on, for films, dance performances, art project, etcetera. As a returning thread in my Substack posts I thought that it might be nice to pick out a projects each time, and talk about it, to give folks some insights of what I’m busy with. This time: choreographer Daniel Linehan’s The Wonder of it All.

Brussels based Daniel Linehan aproached me in October 2023. He had been listening to my music and thought it might be a good fit for his next project. We setup a zoom meeting, which went well, and decided to work together. He also invited me to come see his show Kiss the One We Are, to get a better idea of his choreographical language.

I was happily surprised by Kiss the One We Are. Not having seen any of his works before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t see a highly technical and tightly synced choreography… instead I saw a group of people clearly enjoying themselves on stage, exploring the space, and finding each other (and themselves) along the way. It felt very human. A part of me wanted to get up and join the dancers, but also when seated the joy they were radiating was really infectious.

Seeing Kiss the One… was a perfect start for The Wonder Of It All. That title alone already sparked many ideas, but in combination with what I saw, the ideas came easily. Being all about discovery, and (obviously) wonder, it instantly brought me back to the mid nineties, when I discovered so much great electronic music. Think all things Warp, Rephlex, Planet Mu, etc. Music that still resonates with me nowadays. That feeling of revelation was something we agreed could work very well for The Wonder. So I took these influences and ran with it.

The first phase for me was to create music that Daniel and his dancers could use to rehearse with. A starting point. So I created about 15 pieces of music, exploring different kind of beats/rhythms and atmospheres. Then I went to Hiatus (Daniel’s dance company) in Brussels to visit a rehearsal, and to see which of these tracks they found the most effective.

(Note: a few of these sketches -not used in the final score- can be found in reworked form on my Wrevel EP.)

From then on, things went very fast. It was still very early in the process (the première of the piece will be in October this year!), but I decided to see if I could start working on a full 50-minute music track, using the few ‘succesful’ earlier sketches as anchor points. This was very much informed by the fact that Daniel really wanted the performance to feel like one continues movement. Where other dance projects I worked on would come to life by sequencing various scenes (mostly in quite a late stage), The Wonder needed to be one organic flowing entity. So while there wasn’t much structure in the choreograpy yet, I decided to create this long-form score purely on musical terms.

(For the nerds: I created the whole thing in Logic, using only build-in virtual instruments, no samples or other sound sources. This was my way of keeping things – relativily – uncluttered, in sound as well as in my working process.)

Somehow that first composition worked super well with the dance and the ideas Daniel had for it. He seemed quite happy with the sound, arc, and atmospheres, and the choreography was pretty much build around the music.

The next time I saw the piece was when Daniel and co presented it as a ‘work in progress’ during a residency at Danse Charleroi, Brussels, mid March. It was the first time that I saw it on an actual stage, with lighting (by Ofer Smilansky) and scenography (by Ugo Woatzi). A proper theatre experience, and – while still in the works – it was amazing. Dance, music, light, and scenography already came together so nicely and naturally… I can’t wait to visit Kortrijk next week, where the next showing will be.

So, with the first real show still being months away, it feels weird that the music is done already. Normally I’d work on a score until a month (or sometimes days) before the first performance, so I almost feel guilty of being lazy. But I’ll enjoy the luxury of it.

Keep an eye out for the première of The Wonder of it All, in STUK (Leuven, BE) in October. And for the soundtrack release :-)

Music (I think) you should hear

(Click on the titles for the bandcamp links)

Nick Storring – Mirante
I’ve been a fan of Nick Storring’s music for some time, so it’s great news that he has a new album out. He calls it his ‘Brazilian’ record. The music on Mirante is hard to pin down. I guess it’s simply ‘Nick Storring music’, with hints of ambient, minimal music, and Latin percussion. At times it reminded me of Oren Ambarchi’s Simian Angel album, but much more restless – the compositions never stay at one place for long, and there’s a few surprise along the way. I didn’t expect to hear a few segments of maximalist carnival percussion, for example. An extraordinary trip, this album. Beautiful, adventurous and unique music.

Erik Klinga – Elusive Shimmer
Alex Zethson Ensemble – Some of Them Were Never Unprepared
Two albums from the great Thanatosis label.
Erik Klinka was new name to me, discoved purely by browsing the label’s Bandcamp page. A was attracted by the cover photo, and pressed play. Glad I did. It’s an extremely beautiful synth album. Very layered and immersive, not that far removed from Carlos Giffoni’s amazing Dream Walker from last year.
Accidentally (with a CD trade) I got hands on another album on the same label a week later. Very different from Klinga’s album, but just as compelling. This time it’s an acoustic ensemble piece, with seven players. It begings with an almost annoyingly autistic staccato repetition, but it draws you in an unfolds to something almost GY!BE-like. It’s a short album, but I had (and will have) it on repeat many, many times.

Kaleiding in Utrecht tomorrow

Very short notice, but tomorrow (19 April) this super nice circus/dance performance by Lily&Janick (and scored by yours truly) has two shows in Utrecht at the Cascades Circus Festival. If you haven’t got any plans yet, and live close-by, go see it!
Info/tickets here

That’s it for now. If you made it to here: respect! And thank you.
Best, Rutger