staff review (8/10) :

Regular collaborators Michel Banabila and Rutger Zuydervelt are back at it as Banabila & Machinefabriek with ‘Macrocosms’, the pairs fourth collaboration, no less. Beautifully presented in a matte digipak with photography by Michel and graphic design by Rutger.
It’s worth noting that the CD edition varies from the digital release, in that the individual tracks have been melted into a continuous mix for a journey interrupted by brief pauses of silence.
Across the disc, the lines between the real/organic and synthetic are blurred, utilising a seemingly endless vibrant palette of recognisable elements i.e “real” instruments and processed, electronic sounds and field recordings. The overall experience is something like glimpsing into worlds within worlds, within the world - Microcosms and Macrocosms. Something that’s always held an endless fascination for me. Take a dog for example, within that creature is a whole universe of smaller ecosystems, and other minute livings things like bacteria. Is our own planet just a single cell in a larger organism in an infinite universe? My head explodes just pondering these things. It seems the artists have similar thoughts and through sound conjure visions of these large and small scale worlds. It makes for pleasurable and thought provoking listening, at times recalling Jon Hassell and Brian Eno’s ‘Fourth World’ ambient. There’s an immense of amount of intricately detailed sound throughout the disc - like zooming into insect realms, then further into the very fabric of matter; cells, molecules and atoms. While larger sounds evoke images of weather systems and the cosmos. A wonderfully vibrant, organic sonic world that exists as a fusion of reality and imagination. (Anthony)

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