This record has a quality of something special, of something indefinably GOOD about it; in fact so good I think I can get away with calling it brilliant. One thing’s for certain, I can’t get enough of it at the moment.
This record has a quality of something special, of something indefinably GOOD about it; in fact so good I think I can get away with calling it brilliant. One thing’s for certain, I can’t get enough of it at the moment.
http://www.lumberton-trading.com/main.html http://machinefabriek.bandcamp.com/album/travelog
What a marvellous LP this is. And yes, this is Machinefabriek so we all know we are not going to be short changed, that’s for sure; but really, the sumptuousness of the music on this release is just something else. And this collaboration with sound freak and Head, Michel Banabila, just adds extra glitter to the mix. Let me tell you now, this record operates in a wildly successful manner; it’s a brilliant listen, and at times (as with Antennas and Rain Painting) radiantly beautiful; it works both as a series of intense vignettes and as widescreen soundtracks. It’s really down to how your headspace wants to interpret it.
Right from the opening clatter of Spin and Puke, Travelog is just so intense, so concentrated and so multidimensional, despite its quiet nature. Things really get it on half way through; Runner is such a tightly coiled ball of energy, one where the synths grate and strain competitively, as if to get some release. You can feel the friction as the sonic surfaces brush against the other. And Debris bowls another monstrously thick sound towards the listener; akin to the sounds of a generator that has suddenly become sentient, (or maybe sound tracking the last dying moments of a chest freezer), it’s gripping, weird, funny stuff; there’s no way the listener can break contact.
We have daftness and dementia aplenty. The title track is an unsteady, Moebius/Plank-style wobble home from some pub, (replete with a pretty refrain), Narita is a lovely reflective track counterbalanced with some funny squiggles, squeaks, growls and whooshes, whereas Dinsdag plods about in a melancholy fashion. It is a track about Tuesday after all, we get it’s going to be a bit maudlin. But it’s so good, so rich in conjuring up thoughts and feelings that you can’t help but get sucked in. So substitute my “bit maudlin” remark, that’s just too mauve. No, Dinsdag reeks of pointless melancholia; it’s akin to Marvin the depressed robot plodding about a deserted airport located somewhere in deep space. It’s been hanging about for aeons.
So, yes, I like it. This record has a quality of something special, of something indefinably GOOD about it; in fact so good I think I can get away with calling it brilliant. One thing’s for certain, I can’t get enough of it at the moment.