DNMF are back! Machinefabriek’s Rutger Zuydervelt and the two lads from avant-everything experimentalists Dead Neanderthals have made a second record. Their first, eponymous release (also via the plucky underground label Moving Furniture) was a two-headed monster of drone and noise that can be blamed for most of the recent earthquakes in Groningen. The new one, Smelter, is an absolute teeth-rattler. It’s a gimlet-eyed mix of romantic Froese-eque soundscapes, crashing percussion and what may as well be a recording of new motorways being constructed; T-Dream or Modest Mussorgsky as sludge metal.
Take heed: these soundscapes are simply enormous. The title is well chosen, too; as there is a physicality to this record that generates serious heat. It’s as if the grind of the instruments stokes the glare of an imaginary blast furnace, melting all sonic components into an ambiguous glutinous whole. Not a record for small spaces.
