Machinist BlackBlock HK008 cdr (200 ex.) 2008

Reviews:

Zeno van der Broek, the musician behind the Machinist project, envisions a pretty bleak future for both mankind and the world on this, his third CD. The three lengthy tracks showcased here paint a monochrome picture of a world totally devoid of human life; the light of humanity has long been extinguished, and in its place are massed ranks of machines – machines whose only purpose seems to be that they have no purpose. They run day and night, going about their unthinking way, endlessly enacting the same ritualisms day in, day out, and doing so without the slightest notion that it is both fruitless and unobserved.
The vision confronting us is a bleak prospect indeed; emptiness, desolation, ruination and ultimately soulless. Van der Broek piles on the lengthy deeply rumbling, dark, and densely-packed drones, stacking one upon the other, creating and constructing a black, weighty, monolithic mass of heaviness and brooding malevolence. The air is thick with treacly fogs and choking smogs, physical miasmas stifling any life that has dared to carry on the legacy of earth and nature. Landscapes have been denuded and eroded; where once were vast cities, themselves choked with the hustle and bustle of commerce, traffic and life, nothing remains but toothless and eyeless ruins, or level plains of compacted rubble, forever archaeologising whatever was left of the creature called homo sapiens. It is in such devastated arenas, spectatorless, that the machines have their stomping ground.
Van der Broek certainly possesses an innate ability to conjure up the overarching twilit vistas where the sun, pale and wan even on a good day, attempts to force its light through that fog and smog; inevitably, though, it only succeeds in snatching miniscule patches carelessly torn in the compacted swirling fabric enveloping the world through which to project its little packets of photonic energy. It’s a place where even Gaia herself would feel depressed. However, it would be fair to say that throughout the three pieces on here I caught only glimpses of those machines; the predominant aesthetic here, for me at least, is the sinister blackness left in the wake of humanity’s abject failures. That’s not to say that this is no good; van der Broek’s encapsulation of the oppressively filthy rot and decay concomitant on our disappearance is well envisioned and captured, but like I say I am not entirely sure if I felt anything of the machine element emerging out of this – the word machine implies, to me, a sense of rhythm as well as noise and although there was certainly plenty of noise rhythm was noticeable by its absence, and this meant that I didn’t quite make that connection with ‘machine’.
However that is only a very minor criticism indeed. Seen in the round, this can be judged to be a mostly successful album I would say; if you’re looking for heavy oppressive dank atmospheres, where the air itself is a physical medium thick enough to suffocate and kill, this is definitely an artefact to be acquired – the sound will sit on your shoulders and drag you down, pulling you into the hadean depths, humankind’s ultimate destination it would seem. This left me shivering, thinking of the mournful possibility of our ultimate demise; it also brought home a realisation that it would be terrible indeed if the world’s endgame were to be played out solely by machines and robots. Of course, the saddest aspect of all is the fact that we will have sown the seeds of our own destruction.

Simon Marshall-Jones, Heathen Harvest

The name Machinist may suggest something industrial, mechanical, something alien (as in 'not human') perhaps, and the three long pieces by Zeno van den Broek, the man behind Machinist is alike that, yet it has a certain quality that makes it very human. Machinist is inspired by the art of Richard Serra and Anselm Kiefer, the beauty of decay, rust, earth, brown and grey.
In the opening piece Machinist plays a very dark ambient tune which is along the lines of Lustmord, in a very cinematographic way. The desolated and empty industrial park at night with strong suspense. Soundsources are hard to trace down. The second piece seems to be drums and guitars and is quite a rock like piece, not at all like the first or the third piece. More Skullflower inspired drones than anything ambient industrial. 'Blackblock' ends with a piece that is a combination of the two previous ones. Slow rumbling percussive bang on a can against a darkened wall of alien machines trying to conquer the world. The rhythm here is the most mechanical.
Quite a strong release, and the length of the pieces might be considered long, but this music needs that kind of development, and Machinist makes all the right moves only a human make to create some interesting shapes and moves. Very nice indeed. The right noise!

Frans de Waard, Vital Weelky 613

Someone really needs to sit down and coin a term for a unit of drone. Something to pin down those formless blocks of slow moving chrome waves, once the votes been taken and we’re all happy it can be spread across the DIY industry like Warner’s did with that Prince sigil. And when this day comes, it’ll make reviewing material like “Black Block” a hell of a lot easier.
Machinist tags his material as industrial drone, but beyond bagging his CDs with a hyperbolic PR backstory of a future gone wrong there’s little to distinguish it from non-industrial drone; to the rest of the world, it’s just more droning. At the end of the three tracks “Blackbook” ends up being a slow release of very little indeed, a bit of blasted percussion here and there or the synthetic tones occasionally using a peppering of wind-blown scuzz to roughen the sound up.
There’s no personal touch or even the tiniest dab of flair to the melody or construction here, predicting the generic transitions between layers becomes all too banal; this could be any one of a thousand faceless indolent droners. By simply filling the space they’re offering with slabs of hum, Machinist is treading water in an ocean of similar sounding fish, and as everyone knows there are always more fish. 2/10

Scott McKeating, Foxy Digitalis