SUBTERRANEANACT & MACHINEFABRIEK – Persistent Objects

Opa Loka

I really enjoy listening to non-exactly-influenced improvisation when it sounds emaciated, contaminated and honest. Such is the case of Persistent Objects, the result of a 90-minute meeting between Henk Bakker’s processed bass clarinet and the inauspicious intemperance caused by Rutger Zuydervelt’s manifold apparatuses. The music’s highest virtue is represented by its uncomplimentary circumspection; no sound appears undesired, even the most subsidiary. The lyrical side of Bakker’s phrasing interacts with phantom blasphemies emanated by Zuydervelt’s tapes, originating abstract configurations smudged by analogue detritus. Fluttering acoustic substances double and triple themselves inside decayed sanctuaries whose space is delineated by flanging echoes and disorienting drones. The overall sonority is perceived as threatening and sympathetic at one and the same time, each constituent properly anarchic yet respectful of a sometimes vivacious, sometimes barely breathing wholeness. A record that will nourish your cells with the right doses of sweet toxins.

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