Tag: machine

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Banabila & Machinefabriek


banabila+machinefabriek

First: check my last.fm profile so you know that I’m not entirely ‘unbiased’ when reviewing this release. 

Michel Banabila and Machinefabriek are firmly at the top of my all-time favourite artists chart (well, to be exact: counting of ‘all-time’ started at 2005 when I “went digital” in listening music). 

Both have been extensively featured on this weblog (just do a search on their names to dig deeper) – even if that covers only a small part of their output.
Considering their complete discography, it seems their output is quite different in style – yet their work also has some overlapping areas, especially when it comes to “gritty” electronics. 

Knowing they both live in Rotterdam, it was clear that they should meet sometimes. I’ve been waiting for that to happen, but I had no idea if their collaboration would work and what the result might sound like. 

So imagine my surprise when, without any introduction or announcement, their collaborative album “Banabila & Machinefabriek”  was announced recently.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Machinefabriek – Secret Photographs


Secret Photographs

Actually, I did send a mail to Machinefabriek thanking him for sending me this album, but also explaining him that I would pass on mentioning it – simply because I do not want to fill this weblog with alternating reviews of the same artists over and over again. 
(And there’s quite a lot of Machinefabriek on ambientblog already – just do a search to find out).

But I forgot Rutger Zuydervelt is one of the very few extremely prolific artists that manage to find an interesting angle for almost every new release.
Secret Photographs is no exception to that rule. It somehow crept up on me, I kept returning to it because the album seemed to reveal new details with every listen.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Robert Henke – Layering Buddha

Robert Henke - Layering Buddha

It seems there’s an ongoing outbreak of Buddha Machine–inspired releases…

Only a few days ago I reported about the ‘Buddha Jukebox’, containing all sorts of remixes based on the original Buddha Machine samples. One day later I stumble across this Robert ‘Monolake’ Henke release. (One track of his CD is also featured on the Jukebox Buddha: check the sample track below).

Compared to the Jukebox Buddha, there’s quite a different feel. Whereas the Jukebox Buddha explores all possible surfaces of the Buddha Machine, Henke dives deep into the soul of it. He has magnified the sounds, enhanced the unheard artifacts and created a layered soundspace that has ZEN written all over it.

It’s astonishingly beautiful (and not unlike his last year’s ‘Signal to Noise’ release).

Conceptually it’s lightyears away from the original FM3 Buddha machine, which was deliberately lo-fi and poor sounding.
But that really doesn’t matter at all. The Buddha Machine now has its own spin off of peaceful sounding drone recordings – would FM3 ever have imagined that their lo-fi anti-Ipod machine would ultimately lead to a whole new sub-genre??

Note:
The  original Buddha Machine sounds and the CD spinoffs will be featured in the FOLIO show early 2007.