The Machinist is the guitar-drone project of Dutch musician Zeno van den Broek, Of What Once Was his fourth album. Comprising two long tracks totalling 55 minutes, van den Broek leads us from amorphous hum through to more referential sounds, the guitar emerging, like a staggering zombie, from the dark mist.
“Mono tone in D”, inspired by Yves Klein’s “Monotone Symphony”, is the more single-minded of the two, and better for it, a slow unravelling of bassy Oren Ambarchi slabs, digital Snd squiggles and pockets of reverberant field recording, possibly sourced from inside a warehouse. The title piece follows a similar arc, plotting Deathprod drone, dripping water and distorted guitar grit over a linear tangent, from calm through charged violence and into resolution. Thankfully van den Broek avoids the obvious dark ambient traps and EMO wallowing to create instead highly charged electro-acoustic cinema for the ear.
Joshua Meggitt
