Stuutjes by Berlinde Deman & Rutger Zuydervelt

https://machinefabriek.bandcamp.com/album/stuutjes

Genre: Experimental

Rating: 5/5

released on bandcamp April 1, 2022

All I’m going to do is gush. I think sometimes people who take it on to themselves to review serious music like this feel embarrassed or think it’s childish to gush but when you’re confronted with greatness at the this level it’s a duty to pay your respects. Otherwise, what’s the point of scouring release after release if when you strike pure gold you don’t appreciate the moment.

There’s a story about John Muir crying next to a colleague while overlooking a mountain range. His friend asked him to keep it together and he replied that he was reacting correctly in accordance to what was before them. Sometimes in art you find something like that. This is one of those.

I think it’s rooted in Don Cherry. This ability to create so much beauty with so little sound. Like on Mu. This music is stark and highly economical and lonely and sad. This is a song that always plays inside us as we are always alone, stuck in our anatomy. This music speaks to that which is you which doesn’t and cannot connect.

It also has a very wooden quality. Some music is very liquid and some is earthy but this is wooden. If you’ve heard of Kobo Abe’s story The Stick or if not, it’s a good thing to read. This is like the non-verbal audio interpretation of that.

“I don’t know if it happened during the fall or if it happened the moment I touched the ground but either way I realized I had become a stick -average size, curveless, not thick nor thin, about one meter long. I heard the voice that cried ‘Dad!’ again. The multitude left an empty circle around me. I continued moving forward, whirling ceaselessly, until a surface glanced me off. I bumped into a tree and ended up on a ditch between the pavement and the street, unable to move.”

As far as I know I’m one of the first people to call this a work of profound brilliance. It is.