Machinefabriek is the alias of Rutger Zuydervelt. His music combines elements of ambient, noise, minimalism, drone, field recordings and electro-acoustic experiments. The music can be heard as an attempt to create sonic environments for the listener to dwell in. Finding tension in texture, tone and timing, the result can be very minimalistic at first glance, but reveals its depth upon closer listening. The devil is in the details.
Zuydervelt was born in 1978 in Apeldoorn (The Netherlands) and now resides in Rotterdam. He started recording as Machinefabriek in 2004. After a series of self released cd-rs, his official debut Marijn was issued in 2006, with great critical acclaim. Since than, a solid stream of music was released on labels such as Type, Important, 12K, Entr'acte, Miasmah, Consouling Sounds, Staalplaat and Edition Wandelweiser. He performed all over the globe, from Canada to Israel and from Russia to Japan.
Zuydervelt collaborated (on record and/or live) with numerous artists, such as Steinbrüchel, Jaap Blonk, Aaron Martin, Peter Broderick, Frans de Waard, Gonçalo Almeida, Steve Roden, Gareth Davis, Stephen Vitiello, Michel Banabila, Dirk Serries and Dead Neanderthals, amongst many others.
Experimental film makers like Makino Takashi, Mike Hoolboom, and the late Paul Clipson had films scored by Rutger Zuydervelt. He also composed soundtracks for various documentaries, such as Sol LeWitt (Chris Teerink, 2014), The Red Soul (Jessica Gorter, 2017), Het Voorval; Armando en de Mythe (Roelof Jan Minneboo, Sjors Swierstra, 2018) and the VPRO series Sahara (Bram Vermeulen, 2018).
Besides films, Zuydervelt also composes music for dance pieces, like Alix Eynaudi & Kris Verdonck's (EXIT), Alexander Whitley (The Measures Taken and Beheld), and Marta Alstadsæter & Kim-Jomi Fischer (As Much As It Is Worth and Engel). He also worked on multiple pieces by Spanish/Dutch choreographer Iván Pérez, the most recent being BECOMING, which features Zuydervelt performing the music live on stage.
Then there's Zuydervelt's installation work, in which the dialogue with the environment plays an important role. He did projects for Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NAi (Dutch Architecture Institute), the new Armando Museum MOA, Sounds Like Audio Art in Saskatoon (Canada), the Into the Great Wide Open Festival, Netwerk in Aalst (Belgium) and children's museum Villa Zebra in Rotterdam.
There's a first time for everything, and in 2016 Zuydervelt started working on his first video game score, for the hugely successful American sci-fi adventure Astroneer, launched as beta-version in December that year, with the full version out in February 2019.
Aliases
- De Elektronika Winkel
- Flex
- Rutger Zuydervelt
- Marijn
