ANNE BAKKER, RENE AQUARIUS, RUTGER ZUYDERVELT – HALLUCINE
Rutger ‘Machinefabriek‘ Zuydervelt loves to try out new ways of creating music. He has worked on innumerable different projects and collaborated with many different artists. Among them also Anne Bakker (violin, viola, vocals, harmonica, kazoo, saw) and Rene Aquarius (cymbals, field recordings).
But in this case, it wasn’t even a true collaboration in the beginning: “Hallucine was never meant to exist.” The original recordings were created for separate (unmentioned) projects, but Zuydervelt found that mixing and editing various fragments into a collage led to interesting results. With that as a starting point, it became somewhat more like a ‘true’ collaboration: “the three musicians refined the composition with subtle overdubs and detailed editing”.
So the end result is partly a deconstructed remix created by Rutger Zuydervelt, but also the result of the three musicians working together on the final composition.
The 33-minute Hallucine is, by nature of its origin, a piece built from many different fragments: a sonic journey with many unexpected turns and views.
It is not a composition with a traditional structure, which is no real surprise knowing the work of Zuydervelt – it is a mix-like collage of atmospheres that can best be experienced without prior expectations.
“In Hallucine, the division between found sound and (acoustic and electronic) instrumentation is blurred into a spectral hallucination.”
JON DOE ONE – SOL INVICTUS
Jon Doe One is the alias of Belgian composer and double bass player Hannes d’Hoine. His portfolio includes work with many different people and formations (you may know him as a member of Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung). Apart from that, he has composed music for dance, film, theatre, and other performances.
As Jon Doe One he previously released two titles on Entr’acte. Sol Invictus is released on the Dutch Esc.Rec label.
The liner notes tell the tale of d’Hoine struggling with his art, suspecting that “the bleakness of his compositions (on Horror Vacui) may have unleased a catastrophy on a global scale. Had his music infected others, or was the plague merely a mirror to his own deleterious tendencies?”
Sol Invictus (named after the Roman Sun God) is his return to beauty – “an invocation of the lighter regions of his mind” – created with the help of Hanne De Backer (bass clarinet, baritone sax), Berlinde Deman (serpent).
Light, as well as Darkness, is in the eye/ear of the beholder of course: I can’t compare Sol Invictus to Horror Vacui myself, but underneath the beauty of this music I still feel an undeniable darker undercurrent.
(Stijn Grupping built a special installation with reflections of light for the performances of Sol Invictus.)