Anne Bakker | René Aquarius | Rutger Zuydervelt - Hallucine

A Closer Listen

Hallucine is the Dutch word for hallucination.  As the press release states, this album “was never meant to exist.”  The fact that it does exists means it occupies a liminal territory between real and unreal, planned and unplanned.  Raw matter – pre-recorded detritus from Anne Bakker and René Aquarius – was given order and form by Rutger Zuydervelt, buoyed by his own material.  Separate projects became one.  While we originally thought the length was unintentional, we now believe the number 33:33 symbolizes both creation and the holy trinity of creators.  Even in the early going one can hear thunder, waves, primordial sound awaiting a sculpting hand.

These are in fact beautiful fragments, the sort one might pick up on the beach were they visible to the naked eye: a snippet of voice, a passage of violin, a saw, a loop.  When the kazoo appears, it does so with the requisite playfulness.  The drones may be dark, but how dark can a kazoo ever be?  In the same manner, syllables refuse to form into words, content in their onomatopoeic form.  But ever so gently and subtly, Zuydervelt wrests the collection into what he calls a “spectral hallucination.”    A ghostly whistle at the ten-minute mark solidifies the association, folded into the album’s darkest, thickest morass.  But by mid-piece, all is silent.

Now the composition rises again with new intention.  While still abstract, the piece allows for lengthier segments of strings, fragments turned into melody, still akin to a hallucine.  These attract a host of birds, who happily feast on the innards of discarded compositions.  There’s no feeding frenzy, merely a calm buffet to break up the autumn migration.  If anything, the agitation belongs to the humans who stumble around in the twentieth minute, unable to locate their glasses.

The composition arrives as a tabula rasa for its listeners.  As no template exists, no declaration of theme or intent, one is free to project.  This album was never meant to exist, and yet it does, like shattered, multicolored glass glued to a wall, not discarded, but displayed.  (Richard Allen)

Mon Oct 18 00:01:41 GMT 2021