Colour Tones
Nowadays I regularly put albums on Bandcamp as a free (if you wish*) download. Obviously I’ve released so much music that my discography might feel quite impenetrable, and I’m hoping to create an easy entry this way.
* it's actually 'name-your-price' - this way it stays in peoples Bandcamp collections etc... but paying zero cash is 100% okay!
This time: Colour Tones, released in 2012, by the Swedish Fang Bomb label.
Graphic design agency Lesley Moore asked me to participate in their project Colour Tales, about Latvian writer Imants Ziedonis. Ziedonis wrote the children’s book Krāsainās pasakas (Coloured Tales, 1973), a collection of short stories with each a colour as its main character. Five of these stories were ‘translated’ by Lesley Moore into 3-dimenional ‘paper sculptures’, presented in a pop-up book. All of this without the use of any colour.
Amsterdam gallery WM Gallery hosted the projectin April 2011. During the exhibition, visitors could leaf through the pop-up books, while listening to music I composed for each colour. Each ‘listening station’ excisted of a desk with the book, and a record player, with the music on a one-sided white vinyl record. As with the visual component, the audio also tries to encapsulate the characteristics described in the book. And, if I may say so, it does so succesfully. The tracks are short and concise, with a child-like simplicity.
I’m still grateful that Fang Bomb was willing to release the album on CD, with an extra 12-minute track created specifically for that version. To top it off, the mastering was done by Guiseppe Ielasi.
I’d say the high point of the project came in October 2012, when were invited to present the project at the amazing Skanu Mežs festival in Riga, Latvia. Very apropiate of course! And it was amazing, performing the pieces in an old cimema, in front of a HUGE screen, which was simply filled with one solid colour for each track. Unfortunatly I can’t find any photos from the event, so you'll have to take my word for it…
Just a reminder: my album with Giovanni Di Domenico has just been released. Check it out here! And I stocked extra CD copies from my albums Dwaal/Wold+, Weerkaatsing (with Orphax) and Smelter (as DNMF, with Dead Neanderthals.
Thanks for reading! Rutger
Rutger Zuydervelt / Machinefabriek
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Graphic design portfolio