Aaron Martin & Machinefabriek: Cello Recycling / Cello Drowning
Type

Cello Recycling / Cello Drowning, a twenty-two minute collaboration between Machinefabriek (Rutger Zuydervelt) and cellist Aaron Martin, began life as an art gallery commission wherein Zuydervelt transformed Martin's improvisations into a slowly unfurling ambient drone of crackle, pops, and extended bowed tones (“Cello Recycling”). At one moment, the cello serenely floats overtop the quiet base; at the next, the instrument is submerged within a billowing, ever-expanding mass of symphonic haze. During the second half, Martin at first ‘drowns' the original in a bath of water before augmenting it with the industrial churn of factory machinery and then merging everything into a hazy mass in the closing minutes. Martin and Zuydervelt's dramatic soundscaping provides a natural complement to the Stars of the Lid's recent And Their Refinement of the Decline.

August 2007