Vital Weekly (NL)

Noted before: following his fly start career with a vast output of 3″CDR releases, leading to ‘proper’ releases, 2008 will be the year in which Machinefabriek’s Rutger Zuydervelt expands to working with others. Steinbruchel, Freiband and Jan Kleefstra paved the way, now it’s time for Stephen Vitiello. He ordered some CDs from Rutger and one thing lead to another. But it was not a matter of simply sending each other some sound files over the mail: in stead they mailed eachother boxes of objects to create music with. The titles of the pieces tell us what was in there: bells, book, tin foil, buttons, crackle box, thumb piano, egg cutter, rice, plastic bag and so forth. It’s not easy to recognize these sounds in the music presented here. The treatments are wide and extensive. There are two solo piece by Rutger, two by Stephen and one collaborative, started by Rutger, finished by Stephen. I haven’t kept up with Vitiello’s work, so it’s a bit hard to say wether his pieces are like his other music, but this is a great collaboration. Very delicate sound processing going on here, subtle crackling of sound, the best of ambient glitch music. Machinefabriek has found a sound of his own, but that he did for more than a year ago, and now it’s time to deepen that sound. This is certainly a highlight in his career.