Water has always been the most musical of elements — and Rutger Zuydervelt, the Dutch composer who records as Machinefabriek, has spent a career proving it. His latest release, Bodies of Water (music for a performance by Iván Pérez / Dance Theatre Heidelberg), arrives alongside a companion piece, Fog / Drops, and together they form one of the most immersive water-based recordings of a year already rich with them. The performance divides into three sections — liquid, ice, and gas — and the music follows that arc from ambience into the electronic. Natural ocean sounds filter through as both backdrop and instrument, while the dancers demonstrate incredible flow through set designs that imitate the sea. The relationship between humans and water is the investigation; the music, especially in its most turbulent stages, gets the body moving, a reminder that we are mostly water reacting to water. Bodies of Water by Rutger Zuydervelt The two albums reward back-to-back listening. Bodies of Water stays largely in the ambient phase for most of its runtime, shifting only when it arrives at “Gas.” The organ of opening piece “Dark Waters” sounds like the prelude to a church service, invoking Genesis 1:2 — the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters. “Submerge” contains some of the set’s most hydrophonic sounds, drone swallowing melody, leaving a vast and mysterious void. In “Utopian Seas,” water flows and boats rock, hulls caked with barnacles and salt, every high-pitched creak a siren with hand outstretched. “Crushing Waves” dives deeper, into the heart of the sea where sound is muffled and light is muted — reminiscent of Machinefabriek’s earlier, more shrouded works, where danger lurks around every corner. Then “Gas” arrives as the album’s peak: a powerful pulse emerging from a gaseous drone, moving front and center, drums entering at the three-minute mark, bass tones and synthesizer raising the water table meter by meter. The companion Fog / Drops balances the occasion with a strong electronic pulse. Two twenty-minute pieces that didn’t make the final cut appear here as a sister album. “Fog” begins with wind blowing across the sea, patient and expectant, rhythms unveiled only at 5:23. “Drops” uses piano notes to imitate droplets that accelerate and accumulate, attracting clocklike chimes before a percussive transition builds in intensity until its eventual dissolution. Fog / Drops by Rutger Zuydervelt Both releases are available now on Bandcamp.
