CD – MFR Contemporary Series

‘Man-machine, semi human being, man-machine, superhuman being’. Kraftwerk imagined our cybernetic age in 1978 and the relationships we can perceive between the human and the algorithmic are influenced by such sci-fi premonitions. They cannot be analysed, therefore, impartially, in light of our current knowledge. Because the future – as Alvin Toffler well understood in that same era – has arrived too early and in the wrong order. If even today it is surprising to talk about (human) musicians and artificial performers, it is nevertheless to an imaginary retrofuture that we are referring, even if today those same visions have materialized in forms very different from what was imagined. In Relatum, Zeno van den Broek explores this liminal space where human and machine are no longer opposing entities but collaborators in a sonic dialogue that transcends binary categorisations. The initial stretch of “MA(N|CHINE)” features an electronic generative that dominates the sound space with cold autonomy, where the algorithms breathe in their own circuit logic without any organic intervention. It is in the second movement that the dichotomy becomes a dialogue: the four percussionists of HIIIT interact with the electronic apparatus and the modulations on the bass and on the timbre scans give life to a game of reflections and sound deformations that would otherwise be unexpected. The third act opens with a synchronisation between the performers that gradually dissolves into a series of increasingly complex intersections, until it grants humans improvisational spaces, while the automated systems take on an environmental support function. “From Voice to Pulse”, the second composition of the album, brings experimentation back to one of the most archaic forms of expression: the encounter between voice and percussion. Gagi Petrovic offers his vocality – elaborate but unmistakably human – to a rhythmic counterpoint generated by percussion machines designed by van den Broek himself. The entire project was recorded and mixed by Frank Wienk, a producer interested in translation of organic sounds into algorithmic synthesis, while the mastering bears the signature of Jos Smolders, a sound artist whose research on timbre has spanned decades of electroacoustic experimentation. In short, in its balanced refinement, this project imposes itself as a non-didactic reflection on the relationship between man and machine – no longer opposing entities but complementary polarities of the same creative process in continuous evolution.

 

Zeno van den Broek, HIIIT, Gagi Petrovic & Machines – Relatum