Oahu is the Hawaiian island, where one of the numerous types of guitar was founded - the so called lapsteel guitar. The name of this guitar came from the way musicians play on it: guitar is held in the lap and while playing strings are pressed by the steel bar. This very instrument was used for recording the first of the three tracks form this release called in honor of this island. This short improvisation of Martin Luiten became the base or maybe 'sound raw material' for two masters of experimental music from Netherlands. They used this acoustic record for the basic part of this album - two 20-minutes tracks. The final mix of the first part belongs to Frans de Waard who represents his project Freiband. By the way, this project was formed due to the idea of remaking records made by other musicians to create something new, differing from the original version. Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefabriek) worked with the second track, last years he demonstrated well his skills in mixing experimental trends of electronic music with the sounding of live instruments and field records. Undoubtedly, the cooperation of two such unique musicians couldn't give anything banal in the result. Oahu perfectly lives up all our expectations deepening into the layers of dense musical fog with deep dark drones and glitch effects similar to clicks and crackles and with familiar in some places melancholical running over guitar strings. But Oahu isn't a collage and not just a set of sound experiments, if it were, well, everything would be too simple. The work with the material's composition makes the listener happy and surprises him. This material demonstrates not prompt sketches, but integral, perfect sound canvas of full value. They are worth listening.- Low Point
- Machinefabriek
- Frans de Waard