£9.99 from Cargo Records

Description: ‘Lichtung’ is a collaborative project centered around an audio-visual installation. Sound artists Steve Roden and Rutger Zuydervelt (a.k.a. Machinefabriek) composed the audio, while the video element was provided by the German visual artist Sabine Bürger.The installations exhibition was part of a series organized by Galerie Vayhinger revolving around the German concept of ‘heimat’ - the area in which someone was born or had their early formative experiences. Considering the artists’ far-flung locations it was decided that the gallery’s locale should provide them with a ‘temporary heimat’. The Mindelsee lake situated just a few hundred yards away from the gallery became the natural focus of the installation. During their stay, Sabine and Rutger recorded the video and audio footage that became the foundation which Steve Roden responded to with material inspired by his surroundings in the US. It resulted in an immersive four-channel audio-visual presentation, in a gallery space also showing additional visual works by each of the artists, and the floor covered with dried leaves. The CD edition of ‘Lichtung’ is comprised of edits from the original ‘Lichtung’ installation music, translating the audio-visual material of the original into a pure sonic experience. It’s complemented by an edit of a live performance that Rutger gave at the opening of the exhibition, using pre-recorded sounds provided by Steve Roden as well as leaves, twigs and water gathered in the area.

Track Listing: 1. Leaves 2. Ice Strings 3. Birds Plucks Stones 4. Wind 5. Ice Bow 6. Snow Bellow 7. Floor Radio 8. Some Things Within 9. Vayhinger

Catalogue: ESR201201

Release Date: 23 April 2012

Format: CD / Download

Ambient ▼ The very first release on a brand new label called Eat, Sleep, Repeat  brings together two remarkable men from the electronic/improv scene: Steve Roden and Machinefabriek (Rutger Zuydervelt). ‘Lichtung’ is the soundtrack created for an audio-visual installation with visuals by Sabine Bürger, inspired by the Mindelsee lake in Germany. This CD album  does not feature the video part of the installation, but thebeautiful images from the inlay booklet  are a good impression of how beautiful this installation must have been. The original installation soundtrack was a four-channel version which was downmixed to stereo for this album. Which gives me the opportunity to repeat that I definitely would like to find more music like this released in full surround format! (Note: a limited edition of Lichtung was released on DVD by Galerie Vayhinger , but I’m not sure if this DVD version also featured the 4-channel surround soundtrack). Apart from that: the stereo format is impressive enough.  Rutger recorded the environmental sounds near the Mindelsee, to which sounds Steve reacted with recordings from his own surroundings in the US. The environmental sounds are the main ingredients of this album, but this is not just an ‘environmental sound recording’ album. All recorded sounds are cleverly arranged in detail, some instruments were added (with a cello performance by Aaron Martin on one track), resulting in exciting compositions without any dull moment. In addition to the eight tracks from the installation, a live performance recording from the opening performance by Machinefabriek is added (appropriately called “Vayhinger” ). In this performance, Rutger used “pre-recorded sounds provided by Steve as well as leaves, twigs and water gathered in the area.” ‘Lichtung’ will be released on “Record Store Day” – April, 21. A somewhat cynical statement, since obviously not many Record Stores will stock albums like this at all. If they do: honour them and buy it from their shop. If they don’t…well, their loss…find it online.

Attn ▼ Inevitably, Lichtung has to undergo comparison with its original installation context. Let’s get it out of the way first. Initially devised as a four-channel audio/visual presentation and completed by a floor covered with leaves, the audio aspect of this work is just that – an aspect – and therefore the listener is stripped of much of the sensory experience involved in the final product: feeling the brittle crunch of dry leaves, observing the images that bring definition to the sonic abstraction. But equally, it’s good to remember that Steve Roden and Machinefabriek (aka Rutger Zuydervelt) are two proven talents in audio evocation; their work presents sound in such intense detail that the imagery projected onto the imagination can almost be as vivid as the imagery projected into any physical space, and they toy with enigma and familiarity in equal part. This is Lichtung with the lights off – a “feel your way” journey with a singular point of sensory contact, and while I unfortunately wasn’t able to view the installation itself, I feel confident in considering the audio to be its own distinct experience rather than a compromise of its intended setting. Structurally, this Lichtung edit is neatly arranged. It drifts seamlessly between the two artists, blurring locational boundaries so that the listener is deep within Machinefabriek territory long after they realise they’d even departed from Roden’s soundscapes (and vice versa). The autumnal crunch of Zuydervelt’s “Leaves” floats gracefully into the path of Roden’s “Ice Strings” – the latter of which sounds like the oceanic bubbles of disturbance surrounding a glacier in motion – while Roden’s “Birds Plucks Stones” and Zuydervelt’s “Wind” find their point of transition in a mutual sense of desolate wintery chill. And while Lichtung is impressive for the way in handles its own motion, it’s also a delight during the times it settles, at which points those intricate details can be best observed. The aforementioned “Birds Plucks Stones” is Roden’s own highlight, mingling staccato birdsong chirps (that ping between each ear like a tennis match) with an eerie metallic creak on loop, bringing to mind the ghostly rotations of a disused children’s roundabout. Meanwhile, Machinefabriek excels most prominently during “Floor Radio”; high-frequency drones linger like dust particles turned into audio, while thumps and clatters echo like a ball bounced and rolled across aged wooden floorboards. As expected, the album collates engrossing audio from both parties, and is immersive enough to eradicate the shadow of Lichtung’s installation roots.

Des cendres à la cave (in French) ▼ Alternant des compositions du musicien et plasticien californien Steve Roden et de son homologue néerlandais Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek, Lichtung ne choisit pas la solution de facilité pour marquer les débuts du label londonien Eat, Sleep, Repeat, qui publiera également en CD ce même 23 avril le quatrième album des Anglais Minus Pilots dont on vous reparlera sûrement (en attendant, un avant-goût par là). Ces 9 pièces font en effet partie de la bande-son d’une installation audiovisuelle signée par l’Allemande Sabine Bürger, un exercice dont sont particulièrement friands ces deux stakhanovistes de l’improvisation et du sound design portés sur les enregistrements de terrain (les fameux field recordings). Ainsi, Machinefabriek livrait récemment via Bancamp le très abstrait 15/15, ballet évolutif de fréquences synthétiques évanescentes spécialement étudié pour le système Soundpiece, soit 32 haut-parleurs installés sous le square Schouwburgplein de Rotterdam, mais tout aussi fascinant sur disque. Quant à Steve Roden, il vient de sortir Berlin Fields sur le jeune mais prometteur 3Leaves, label du Hongrois Ákos Garai spécialisé dans les rapports entre musique et environnement : un carnet de voyage couché sur enregistreur portable ou téléphone et documentant ses interactions sagement pesées avec les univers sonores de Paris, Berlin ou Helsinki, usant d’objets trouvés ou d’éléments naturels comme autant d’instruments de fortune à exploiter dans un rapport quasi mystique avec les différents lieux visités (aperçu ici). Enfin, à ceux qui préféreraient démarrer par un album plus accessible voire mélodique, une collaboration avec le vétéran Steve Peters vient également de voir le jour via 12k. Disponible depuis février, Not A Leaf Remains As It Was déroule sur quatre morceaux fleuves lancinants et néanmoins reposants ses méditations acoustiques improvisées autour de phonèmes tirés aléatoirement de poèmes japonais et récités à l’oreille par les deux musiciens. Pour vous faire une idée du résultat, le site du label de Taylor Deupree vous en propose deux extraits, et pour en savoir davantage, heureux hasard du calendrier, il vous suffit d’aller faire un tour chez nos confrères de Chroniques Électroniques qui en publiaient justement la review il y a quelques jours. Quant au Lichtung qui nous occupe ici, il est d’une approche nettement moins évidente. En adéquation avec l’installation qu’il accompagne, inscrite dans une série évoluant autour du concept allemand de “heimat” – le lieu où l’on est né, où l’on a vécu ses premières expériences formatrices, qui a marqué notre identité en somme – la musique des deux soundscapers est aussi nébuleuse et fragmentée que nos souvenirs peuvent l’être, confondant espace et temps au fil d’instrumentaux emboîtés dont la cohérence fait fi des techniques particulières à chacun des deux musiciens, davantage dans l’impressionniste concret pour Roden ou dans l’agrégat abstrait pour Zuydervelt. Mêlant bribes de mélodies acoustiques et échantillonnages assemblés avec un respect évident du matériau d’origine, ces évocations imprécises semblent errer au gré des récollections de leurs auteurs et de leurs sensations indécises, culminant sur la mélancolie caverneuse d’Ice Bow dont les grouillements mouvants signés Machinefabriek sont transcendés par le violoncelle dramatique d’Aaron Martin, collaborateur de Dag Rosenqvist (Jasper TX) au sein de From The Mouth Of The Sun. Toutefois, des très zen et engourdis Ice Strings et Snow Bellsnow (Roden) au radiant Floor Radio tout en drones solaires et percussions chaotiques (Machinefabriek) en passant par le bien-nommé Wind particulièrement spleenétique et entêtant (Zuydervelt également), l’album compte bien d’autre sommets, jamais ostentatoires mais toujours parfaitement à leur place pour rendre compte de cette régression fœtale empreinte d’une sagesse ancestrale que le duo expérimente ici sur près de 45 minutes. C’est au lac Mindelsee, situé à quelques centaines de mètres du lieu d’exposition, que Sabine Bürger a tourné ses vidéos, c’est donc également là que Machinefabriek a constitué sa sonothèque faite de bric et de broc. Pour autant, rien d’indissociable entre les deux médias qui nous ferait ressentir un quelconque manque à l’écoute du seul CD hormis peut-être celui du surround dont bénéficie la galerie, Steve Roden lui même ne s’étant d’ailleurs jamais rendu sur place, répondant aux compositions largement improvisées de son correspondant par des enregistrements réalisés dans son propre environnement aux abords de Los Angeles. Lichtung se termine ainsi non pas sur une collaboration au sens strict mais bien sur une réinterprétation live par Zuydervelt, à l’occasion du vernissage, de sons fournis par Roden agrémentés de ses propres field recordings de bruits naturels tels que des craquements de brindilles, le bruissement des feuilles ou l’écoulement de l’eau. Suintant le mystère à l’image de son titre, Vayhinger est également la pièce la plus inquiétante de l’album, laissant entendre par ses basses fréquences bourdonnantes et ses étranges imprécations en canon que creuser dans la roche des souvenirs les plus profondément enfouis n’est pas toujours recommandé pour l’équilibre de l’esprit…

Fluid Radio ▼ What do we remember of those few days spent near this lake, in this village, by this mountain or in this house? After coming back to our ‘normal’ way of life, memories slowly erode, colours fade away, time collapses into singular frames until only an essence of those places remain, an essence often condensed into a few images and sounds. What we saw, what happened there, what we said or how we felt, everything is slowly transformed by the work of time to become more and more abstract. Years later, remembering a place we once visited will trigger that essence, those images, those sounds, as they all resonate inside us, but because of this abstraction they won’t be bound to reality as much as we imagine. Upon returning to those places, the feeling is always unsettling as things appear so different from what we seemed to remember. With some distance, a place will always be the product of our own interpretation, filtered by our emotions, our awareness and our sensibility, an interpretation that always departs from the place itself. In a way, a place is always dual, remembered and forgotten, physical and psychological, visceral and emotional. It’s the very concept of place that collaborative project Lichtung proposed to explore in the form of an audio-visual installation organized in a small German village located near Konstanz in November 2010. At the time, Rutger Zuydervelt and German visual artist Sabine Bürger were on site for a week to capture audio and video recordings of their immediate surroundings, around the village and the nearby small Mindelsee lake, to create the foundation of the installation to which Steve Roden responded with material inspired by his own local area in the US. This body of work was then arranged as a four-channel audio-visual presentation in a gallery space from which a DVD was released. The present CD is a collection of eight edits (equally divided between Zuydervelt and Roden) from the original Lichtung installation, plus a collaborative track recorded by the artists at the opening of the exhibition. Even if field recordings are prominent, they only contribute to half of the story throughout the record. They function as signifiers of those ‘eroded memories’, often identifiable and rooted to sound typically heard around woods and solitary surroundings – the wind, the sound of leaves, some birds, a river. But what could be an overused cliche is here thoroughly explored by Zuydervelt and Roden, who never resort to use those environmental sound samples as cheap post/sound-cards. In fact, everything is treated with uttermost care and delicacy, and often very light but precise processing techniques give those field recordings the necessary distance to depart from the real and embrace imaginary territories. Take opener Leaves for instance, where the sound of someone walking on leaves is quite recognisable but throughout the track the necessary sound manipulations give those sounds eerie resonances that really conjure up a disquieting atmosphere. The processing work used by both artist doesn’t just act as a filter but give also an incredible tactility and sensibility to the tracks. In Snow Bellsnow, the field recording is so altered it’s not identifiable anymore, but in the process it has acquired such a vivid texture that it’s even more imbued with human fragility. Or in Birds Plucks Stones, Roden layers and processes the sparse sounds of birds, wind and metal fence to make a strangely abstract piece that is very removed from the tangibility of its elemental components but at the same time couldn’t evoke any better the feelings that one could have in a woodland at dusk. The whole album creates a very strong impression in the way the field recordings interact with the melodic and harmonic elements that accompanies them throughout. By creating the right interplay between music and environmental sounds, Zuydervelt and Roden make the story complete, a story always at the liminal point between the remembered and the forgotten. There’s always an ambiguity about what’s being said, what’s being shown, what’s being felt and what’s being imagined. Middle track Ice Bow embodies to the perfection this ambiguity and never settles for tangible memories but is suffused with emotional turmoil. If the field recordings give a certain impression of the place (a river, some birds and maybe some human activity), the drones and cello motifs underpinning the track cast a darken light on the atmosphere and detach it from reality while at the same time staying anchored to the essence of the place. In ‘Floor Radio’, someone is walking on a creaking wooden floor, and there’s a slight artificial reverberation that gives the recording a delicate yet unreal quality. A droning cluster is playing throughout but mixed in such a way that it put the emphasis on the field recordings alone and make it very filmic – the music being only here as a sort of soundtrack. In the end, it’s more the feeling of a place than the place itself that is evoked in a very simple and powerful way – a place not real anymore and seen through the veil of an imaginary film. The album develops with remarkable coherence, each track flowing into the next, Rutger Zuydervelt and Steve Roden clearly moving in their own respective ways but with such grace and harmony that their different contributions cast a beautiful balance of light and shadow and make the record a truly engulfing experience. In the end, the places evoked in Lichtung remain elusive at best, never fully revealed by the numerous field recordings that inhabit the album. The music is always there, floating nearby, trying to capture threads of fragility and remnants of memories but never crystallising into more tangible forms. By deliberately blurring the surface of music with treated environmental sounds, and attaching tactile emotions to abstract images, Zuydervelt and Roden have shown that places are always more than what they appear to be. They’ve shown that in their duality, places are often both real and imaginary.

maeror3 (in Russian) ▼ В 2010 году Стив Роден и Рудгер Зюйдервельт приняли участие в создании инсталляции Сабрин Бюргер, для которой они сочинили музыкальное сопровождение, использовав звуки, записанные недалеко от здания галереи Вейхингер, возле небольшого озера. Видео с выставки вместе с саундтреком вышло на DVD-r в том же году, но, спустя некоторое время авторы решили снова вернуться к этому материалу, подвергли его новым преобразованиям, дополнили партиями акустических инструментов и объединили их в свой совместный альбом «Lichtung». Роден, к моему большому сожалению, выпускающий новые работы не так часто, как хотелось бы, и Зюйдервельт, работающий, действительно, как фабричный цех, без остановок и перерывов на сон, подготовили по четыре сольных трека плюс один совместный на основе исходных звуков. Стив привычно аккуратен и все также питает сильные чувства к фарфоровым чашкам и металлическим чашам повместительнее, ветряным колокольчикам, кубикам льда, добывая с их помощью звонкие созвучия, робко нарушающие тишину или вклинивающиеся в бурлящий поток органического шума. Его музыка грустна, лирична и представляет собой хороший саундтрек для угасающих осенних дней, когда первый снег уже стал частым гостем на холодной земле, но природа пока не спешит впасть в зимний сон. В акустический минимализм предметов и вещей добавлены звуки природы, среди которых преобладает журчание воды, шум резко налетающего ветра, шорох листьев, крики улетающих птиц, жалобным голосам которых вторит минорная скрипка и задумчивая арфа (или просто пара натянутых струн, имитирующих этот инструмент). У Рудгера подход к созданию музыки немного другой, но также не лишенный аккуратности – полевые записи он связывает между собой в продолжительные петли, отводя одним шумам роль потрескивающего ритма, а другие доводит до выхолощенного неподвижного гула, который, однако, может и так изогнуться, обвиться вокруг слушателя, что вышибает чуть ли не слезу. На улице немцу то ли скучно, то ли холодно, и он быстро переходит к исследованию более теплых помещений, закрываясь в здании той самой галереи и кропотливо исследуя ее уголки, выискивая точки наилучшего отражения эха, записывая и разбирая на слоги голоса выступающих, щелкая выключателями, оставляя все это своему коллеге для дальнейшей переработки («Vayhinger»). Или же просто сидит на полу и слушает «пустые» радиоволны («Floor Radio»), пока Роден очищает снег с порога, раскалывая лопатой тонкий наст («Snow Bellow»). Итог этих стараний – именно красивая и именно музыка, напоминающая о расходящихся по воде кругах, в которых преломляются лучи остывающего осеннего солнца, и о чем-то более важном и более личном, разлитом в чистом воздухе поздней осени.

Norman ▼ I don’t find ambient music/sound art all that easy to write about at the best of times (it’s peaceful, not much happens, there’s soothing tones and field recordings, I get it already), and it’s even more obtuse when you’re listening to sounds which have been created for art installations which you don’t get to experience alongside them. What I can tell you, though, is that this CD has four tracks by Roden and four by ‘Fabriek and then Zuydervelt throws in a live one at the end where he uses both his own and Roden’s sounds. Judging by the press release and the lovely photos of water in the booklet, it’s a location-inspired piece centring around a lake next to the gallery where the original installation was placed, so there’s plenty of splashy, trickly, drippy noises, along with ambient rumbles and gently swelling strings in various parts. All very tasteful stuff, and as the CD progresses the pieces become increasingly musical as layers of gliding string drones join the gurgles and splitches. Totally relaxing, peaceful vibes, but with that unpredictable edge that the natural environment always throws into the mix. The live performance at the end builds uneasily out of silence with clicks and rumbles and hisses and pulsing drones gradually being layered into a quite captivating swelling soundscape of rattles and whooshes and groans, which then subsides into a low rumble with chimes and soft mid melodies. If this ambient sound design type business is your cup of tea, this CD could be your teabag.

Vital Weekly ▼ ‘Lichtung’ may sound like a familiar title (not just the German label Licht Ung) in the vast catalogue of works by Rutger Zuydervelt’s Machinefabriek, and indeed such a thing was reviewed before, in Vital Weekly 756, but then it had the form of a DVD-R. Now we just have the music. The original work was an audio-visual installation, “a collaborative effort of Rutger Zuydervelt and Steve Roden, both responsible for the music an Sabina Burger, who did the visual component for this work. The later shows reflection of trees in water, or rain drops falling in water. The music is a duet between Roden and Zuydervelt and seems to be combining the best of both ends: the acoustic sounds of Roden (chimes, bells, cups) and Zuydervelt’s careful electronic manipulation thereof. The music and film go together really well, I’d say. Poetic, silent and light. An excellent three way combination”, I wrote back then. The new ‘version’ of ‘Lichtung’ is not the piece as such but rather various edits of the sound material used in the installation. Both Roden and Machinefabriek have four pieces here and the ninth piece is an edit of the concert they played at the opening of this exhibition. Its quite interesting to see what each of them brings to the table. Machinefabriek’s slightly processed electronic sounds versus Roden’s acoustic approach to the sound material of water, leaves and twigs, but in ‘Ice Strings’ perhaps also with some electronic sounds. In his pieces its less easy to hear what is going on/being done. The overall atmosphere is ‘winter’ and ‘cold’, with sounds that seem to be derived from ‘cold’ matter, ice, snow and such like. It makes altogether a fine addition to the previous version of ‘Lichtung’, this time entirely an auditive experience.