“What’d he look like?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t lift his head up. He could’ve been… just anybody.”
A disembodied voice, a tape snippet, inquires, on Maastunnel, the A Side to this auspicious pairing of these two giants of drone. ‘Maastunnel/Mt. Mitake’ came about after Machinefabriek & Celer played a show together in Tokyo in 2010, and was released to coincide with an upcoming European tour, so we will most likely hear more from these combined heads.
Both Machinefabriek & Celer are hyper-prolific, nigh-on legendary in the ambient/drone/field recordings microcosm, so what happens when they get together? That’s why i started with that quote, it is a fine example of the egolessness of both artist’s work, an almost slavish devotion to the ‘sound’, the ‘work’. Tasteful in the extreme, you can hear the individual spirit of each, the squeaky field recordings that are Machinefabriek’s hallmark, the drifting, cloud-like melodies Celer is known for. The overall effect achieved, is a sonic world, an auditory hallucination, with Machinefabriek creating the space for Celer to score, events unfolding, humans interacting with the inanimate.
‘Maastunnel’ is the more pastoral of the two, which is funny as its named after a tunnel, but its tinkling, splashing water give a sense of the outdoors. ‘Mt. Mitake’, named after the mountain to the west of Tokyo, is a more sci-fi affair, think Vangelis, think Klaus Schulze – dreamy, futuristic, floating. The pair make for more colorful drones and inner-visions than the monochromatic blur often found in the more industrial cadre of this style.
‘Maastunnel/Mt. Mitake’ is an exercise in restraint, in good taste. They show respect for one another, the music, and the listener. The whole shebang clocks in at a scant ten-minutes, which means you will spend a lot of time hitting play, or flipping over this little gem. Poring over its intricacies. Makes for pleasant company in the morning, if you want to keep that dreamy vibe going. I’m looking forward to hearing more from these two.