Icarus

Machinefabriek did a live (improvised) session in our studio in Gent.
Rutger Zuydervelt was born on 28 July 1978 in Apeldoorn (The Netherlands), but now resides in Rotterdam. He started working as Machinefabriek in 2004. The name (meaning 'machine factory') was on the façade of a building Rutger passed everytime he went shopping for groceries. Except for a few piano and guitar lessons when he was young, Rutger didn't study music. Instead, he graduated as a graphic designer.

Machinefabriek's music combines elements of ambient, noise, minimalism, drone and field recordings. His pieces unfold as 'films without image', with a sharp ear for detail. After releasing a series of self released CD-Rs, the official debut, 'Marijn', was issued by Lampse in 2006. Since then a solid stream of singles and albums was released on labels like Type, 12K, Spekk, Dekorder, Digitalis, Experimedia and Staalplaat.

Liesa is only five years old when she first plays the violin.
The combination of a classical training along with a strong urge to experiment results in music that combines avant-garde, soundscapes en rock music.
Liesa Van Der Aa just released her first album. It was recorded and mixed in the studio of Einstürzende Neubauten in Berlin, together with Boris Wilsdorf as producer, engineer and co-producer with the Neubauten. Just about everything you can hear on the album was composed and played by Liesa. Her main instrument, the violin, is used as a percussion instrument, trumpet, orchestra, bass guitar, or just to produce pure noise. That way, Liesa and Boris built an empire of sound. An ode to a lost revolution and love. The marching of troops is never far away. On a couple of tracks you can hear guest musicians contributing to the album: a Berlin child choir, the musicians of belgian band DAAU, or trumpet player Jon Birdsong.

Rafael Anton Irisarri is an American composer, multi-instrumentalist, curator, producer and interdisciplinary artist. He is predominantly associated with post-minimalist, drone and ambient music and has been exploring textural electronics for over half a decade.
Irisarri's recorded output captures an essential vision of floating tones, deep pulsing bass and textured Gaussian curves. His use of ostinato phrases taps into minimalist ideals, whilst his use of atmospheric layers of reverb suggests a more cinematic quality. In all, Irisarri's compositions are deeply emotive and epic to the point of being symphonic. His work is widely published in over a dozen labels around the globe, including respected labels like Touch, Room40, Ghostly International, Miasmah.

Rafael played at Icarus Night @ DOK, Gent on 1/4/2012 and did an excellent live session in our studio at Urgent.Fm.

Dj set by Orange in Icarus, well known for his former Orange Eyeland parties in Gent.

Icarus Live Session #12: Chris Brokaw + The Catamites (Stephen O' Malley-Chris Brokaw)
Chris Brokaw recorded a splendid live session in our studio in Gent.
The Catamites did an excellent show at our Icarus Night at DOK on 12/2/2012.
Here you can find both sessions and an interview.

The Catamites:

The Catamites prove it only takes two to shred your eardrums to
pieces. Soundterrorist Stephen O'Malley is a role model of the
(sludge) metal scene thanks to his work with Sunn O))) and
Khanate. Chris Brokaw was the fantastic drummer of slowcore
band Codeine and guitarist of indie rock legend Come. With this
fresh collaboration these two gentlemen know how to brew a
strange though well balanced recipe of intense drones and
bittersweet pounding. Earplugs recommended.

(°1974, Rosmalen, The Netherlands) is a composer working in the field of audio art.
After completing studies in classical saxophone, Venrooy attended the European Dance Development Center (Arnhem) as a composer in residence, where she began employing electronic and digital techniques in pieces aimed at choreography and stage performance. Gradually her music evolved into an independent means of expression and she continued her work with electronica at the IPEM (Institute for Psycho-acoustics and Electronic Music) in Ghent, Belgium where she still resides. At this time she started utilizing film editing paradigms as a foundation for her personal composition methods.
Her works range from purely electronic composed music to improvised combinations of electronica with traditional instrumentation such as piano, guqin, pipa and satsuma-biwa. She has created site-specific works as well as multimedia performances and installations. Much of her music has been released at Entr'acte.

Best of 2011, pt2.

Best Of 2011 pt 1.

Pauwel De Buck is a soundartist living and working in Ghent, Belgium. His soundworks have been presented in installations as well as in performances.

He utilizes location recordings of the urban environment to combine them with analogue electronic sounds. The end result is as much time
based as it is sculptural and spatial. The work traverse between concrete sound environments and abstract sonic spaces.
Pauwel De Buck participated in residencies, performed his work in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and the USA. Made installations, soundtracks for various purposes. His sound works are released at the London Based Entr'acte label. Here you can listen to his session in our studio.

ECHO BEATTY is a duo of rambling souls. Armed with an old organ, a vibraphonette, a set of hair combs, guitars, metal springs, a loop station and a drum; they roam the sonic plains searching for rapture. She sings her soul out and he enfolds her in atmospheric sound tapestry. ECHO BEATTY evokes disturbing beauty that can sound vast and forbidding as well as soft and vulnerable in the same moment. Dreamy and intriguing. Short after their session in our radioshow they moved to Montreal.

Nils Frahm, born in 1982, had an early introduction to music. During his childhood he was taught to play piano by Nahum Brodski – a student of the last scholar of Tschaikowski. It was through this that Nils began to immerse himself in the styles of the classical pianists before him as well as contemporary composers. Today Nils Frahm works as a composer and producer in Berlin. In early 2008 he founded Durton Studio, where he has worked with likeminded musicians.

Icarus got permission to do an interview and to record two sets, one at Piano Anders in Hasselt, the other was an intimate living room concert in Gent, both in 2011. We weren't allowed to put his set that he did later that year in our studio (Icarus Live Session#8), 6 November 2011, online.

This international ensemble first got going back in 2000 with the aim of composing contemporary soundtracks to existing silent films and animations. Naturally, the project has evolved over the years, gaining French vocalist Charlotte Cegarra, guitarist, Eelco Bosman, British trombonist Hilary Jeffery, Chrome Hoof’s violinist Sadie Anderson and Swiss cellist Nina Hitz, amongst others. While not traditionally jazz, the sound is undoubtedly dark, touching on achingly slow drone rumbles, triphop, noise, ambient textures and creating a subtle balance between analogue and digital technologies.Icarus got permission to do an interview and to record their set at Once Upon A Festival 2011, Laarne.

Dutch Lutenist Jozef Van Wissem is renowned for his experimental approach to Renaissance and Baroque forms of lute music. By cutting-and-pasting classical pieces, constructing palindromic melodies, or adding electronics and processed field recordings, he manages to seamlessly bridge the musical languages of 17th and 21st centuries. If this approach seems coldly academic on paper, the results are anything but: his music is uncluttered and direct, with a viscerally hypnotic and emotional impact. He has collaborated with James Blackshaw, Keiji Haino and Jim Jarmusch among others.. Van Wissem studied lute in New york with Pat O'Brien and released a classical lute CD " A Rose By Any Other Name" consisting of anonymous lute pieces. He lectures on 'the liberation of the lute' ( At Harvard, Mills College amongst others) and was commissioned by London's National Gallery to compose a sound piece to Hans Holbein's painting "The Ambassadors". He played some unreleased tracks in our Icarus studio.

Kreng started as a strictly sample-based project, working with sounds from various sources: free-jazz, first generation electronics, improv, classical modernism, vintage ethnomusical fieldrecordings, etc... The project mutated into a cinematic, theatrical device that has been used by various film and theater directors. Kreng scored more that 20 theatre- & danceproductions, most of them produced by the Belgian theatre-company Abattoir Fermé. The debut album, titled ' L'Autopsie Phenomenale De Dieu' was released on the excellent Miasmah label (artistic co-ordination by Erik Skodvin, aka Svarte Greiner / Deaf Center).
The sequel, the blackly monikered ‘Grimoire’ simply re-enforces Caudron’s shadowy legacy with a similarly dank concoction of cracked strings, creaking percussion and half-heard dialogue. Thankfully however Caudron has refined his craft in every way, from the artfully restrained layering of samples to the deliriously magickal atmosphere he manages to conjure up.

Love Like Birds is het geesteskind van Elke De Mey, een 24-jarige uit het Gentse die gezegend is met een warme, dromerige stem. Het geeft haar slaapkamerfolk vanzelf al een aantrekkelijk intimistisch karakter. Reeds enkele tijd speelt ze als Love Like Birds voor ieder die een luisterend oor heeft en met een snel groeiend aantal liefhebbers werd het tijd voor een eerste worp: een titelloze debuut-EP in eigen beheer opgenomen en uitgebracht in een (voorlopig) gelimiteerde oplage van vijfhonderd handgenummerde exemplaren. Op haar EP kleedt Elke haar donker eerlijke, heerlijke naïeve liedjes af en toe aan met subtiele arrangementen, verzorgd door het producerduo Jinte Deprez (Balthazar) en Gertjan Van Hellemont (Douglas Firs, The Bony King of Nowhere). Ze speelde voor Icarus een sessie in de Urgent Studio.