MACHINE

Installation

Together with guest composer Eblis Alvarez and featured musicians Joachim Badenhorst and Nora Fischer, Touki Delphine explores the distorted balance of humans and nature using a machine created by humans to produce thousands of plants per hour – each in their identical plastic pot – as their vehicle.

MACHINE is an auditory and visual work of art. A concert giving a voice to an unlikely suspect. An introduction, meditation, requiem, and dance party all in one.

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Touki Delphine and guest band members are on stage in musical conversation with the agricultural potting machine JAVO Standaard 2.0, programmed into an instrument. The concert is inspired by the work of explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who discovered the concept of climate and explored connections between man and nature. In the JAVO machine, Touki Delphine finds this connection in a new way: a machine that once reproduced nature, now as a fellow musician on stage.

We wanted to work with Alvarez for MACHINE not only because we think his musical approach is genius, but because we had a strong feeling that he could convey the absurdism of the human/nature/technology relationship well in music and words. We feel strongly that our intuitions were proved correct. – Touki Delphine

The machine and its relation to nature became the basis for the music, both in sound and subject matter. There was much inspiration to be found in the polyrhythmic cacophony of squeaking conveyor belts, hissing air hoses, and clattering metal gears. It sounds like order, chaos, people, nature, and above all like the unparalleled Javo Standard. The story of the machine itself – a mechanical beast created by humans to mass produce plants – fueled the lyrical content of the compositions. The result of putting this absurd story and distorted human-nature-technology balance into music and words is an eclectic mix of musical styles and approaches, and a truly unique ensemble and sound. 

“Touki Delphine purchased a classic potting machine: the Javo Standard 2.0. They have placed this centrally on the stage and programmed it, so that it can serve as a full-fledged percussion machine. The Javo puffs and clicks and rattles during the concert. Touki Delphine joins in, performing a varied mix of choppy jazz, space pop and metallic synths… Beautiful, how Fischer sings a touching elegy to a dying machine halfway through the concert.”

– The Volkskrant

“At center stage the machine is the pacemaker. The device propels the musicians (without exception multi-instrumentalists) to great heights. A leading role is reserved for the two guests: the excellent Belgian saxophonist and clarinetist Joachim Badenhorst and the captivating Nora Fischer.”

– Provinciale Zeeuwse Courant