Zoharum
The twenty miniatures on Short Scenes barely push beyond three minutes in length, but each fits neatly into a cohesive whole that makes the album work as both abstract background music and an engaging delight to become lost in. Anne Bakker‘s violin moves deftly from mellow and swooping to staccato andexpressive, never wavering, always present and possessed of a delicate nuance. Rutger Zuyderveldt has reconstructed and edited Bakker’s improvisations as if they were for a soundtrack (one that never materialised), and there is a definite feeling that these pieces could accompany visual storytelling well.
Each vignette unfolds with the violin front and centre, and the observable
Machinefabriek elements remain largely textural or mixed deep town. A couple of the scenes bring what sounds like samples made into percussion into the foreground, but these punctuate the album’s progress, never dominating, their presence
brief and to the point, adding moments of movement and a hint of drama. In fact, that pretty much describes each track, but it is the way that they are ordered together across the album that makes them shine, a collection that is decidedly the sum of its parts and one which rewards detailed appreciation.
So while the
scattered vocal snippets and booming tocsin rhythm of “Scenes 8” and “13” or the rumbling grind of “Scene 7” that resolves into a languorously drawn-out violin drone might possibly provide a peaks of obvious intensity, it is by no means the only reason to become enchanted by this record. Zuyderveldt leaves a fragmented “OK” to end “Scene 13”, and
Short Scenes is decidedly much more than merely that. Short and sweetly done is a neat summation for a CD that demonstrates once again that restriction and limitation in source materials and methodology can become everything.
-Linus Tossio-
The twenty miniatures on Short Scenes barely push beyond three minutes in length, but each fits neatly into a cohesive whole that makes the album work as both abstract background music and an engaging delight to become lost in. Anne Bakker‘s violin moves deftly from mellow and swooping to staccato andexpressive, never wavering, always present and possessed of a delicate nuance. Rutger Zuyderveldt has reconstructed and edited Bakker’s improvisations as if they were for a soundtrack (one that never materialised), and there is a definite feeling that these pieces could accompany visual storytelling well.
