Machinefabriek - Sol Sketches 1-21

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release
Soundclips

4...according to our Ant on Wed 03 Aug, 2011.

This is the CD version of Sketches for the soundtrack of a documentary about late American artist Sol LeWitt, which was written and directed by Chris Teerink. The audio has also been released as a quadruple 7" set. Rutger Zuydervelt became so inspired by the artist's images that he had recorded a whole load of audio even before any of the film had been shot. I've not seen the film but will definitely seek it out as I imagine that these sounds really accompany the footage well. Kind of understated at times, quite subtle but still worthy of listening to in their own right, despite it being a document for the ideas behind the final selection for the score. The piano is very prominent with occasional, subtle fizzing electronics, clearly inspired by the Alva Noto and Ryuchi Sakamoto collaborations. Twenty one sketches in all, the most affecting of which for me was number twenty. Comes with Machinefabriek eraser. Well, in the UK we call them rubbers but our US friends might get confused and think they're getting a penis hat.

To play these clips you need to either update your browser (Norman Records recommends Google Chrome) or update your Flash plugin.

Film director Chris Teerink asked me to make the soundtrack for a documentary he would be making about American artist Sol LeWitt. This was in 2009. Chris and I agreed that the music and the images should both be equally important in his film. We didn't want the score to overpower the images, but neither did we want it to become solely background 'muzak'. I searched for a certain openness in the sound, while at the same time keeping a directness to it. Musical references for me were the piano pieces of Morton Feldman (a friend of LeWitt), alva noto's collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Enrico Wuttke’s music project Flim.

I must admit that I was relatively new to LeWitt's work. Searching for more information and images, my admiration for his art grew and grew. I found it extremely inspiring, and I became so (over) enthusiastic that within a week or two, I’d recorded more than one and a half hours of music before any footage had been shot.

These Sol Sketches can be seen as meditations on LeWitt's work. With some books of his work opened in front of me, I started improvising on the piano. This resulted in a few hours of raw material, which were then chopped up and edited into shorter pieces. I made about 40 of 'em, from which I’ve selected 21 for this release.

The yet untitled documentary is still a work in progress, but the most recent footage I've seen looks amazing. I can hardly wait to see the film on the big screen, perhaps at the beginning of 2012. Some of the Sol Sketches may appear in the movie, probably in revised form. Others might not be used at all, and maybe additional music will be composed. But these early versions of the soundtrack felt too good not to document.

Be the first to review this record. Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!