Igloo Magazine, Philippe Blanche

Orphax crafts immersive, concept-driven electronic soundscapes where microtonal drones and sculpted frequencies converge into a hypnotic, liminal listening experience.

Sculpting time through tone

Netherlands-based electronic artist Sietse van Erve (alias Orphax) has made a name for himself in the world of advanced experimental music through a morphological approach to sound sources that borders on acousmatic research and ambient-inflected microtonalism. Always foregrounding a strong conceptual inclination, his soundscapes offer an expressive and immersive experience for listeners attuned to the most adventurous electronic music of recent years.

Among Orphax’s recent publications is the aural experience Movement, created in collaboration with pianist and sound designer Kenneth Kirscher. Speaking of collaborative efforts, one should also note the intriguing and experimental Weerkaasting, produced in creative partnership with Machinefabriek. Built around longitudinal microsound waves and subtle harmonic shifts, it evokes a dreamlike state through hypnotic motion and delicate detail.

Orphax maps microtonal inner space ::

Continuation represents a new mind journey shaped by droning tones, concentric electronic waves, and discreet textures that invite the listener into an engaging and spiritually entrancing musical experience. The work is hermetic, oblique, and abstract, demanding sustained attention for full immersion. It delivers music of infinite timbral variation, leading the listener into liminal states. Its psychoacoustic qualities recall the sonic minimal mysticism of pioneering sound artists such as Catherine Hennix, La Monte Young, Paul Panhuysen, and Ellen Fullman, as well as the powerful spectral investigations into timbre initiated by Giacinto Scelsi and others.

The music is divided into four chapters, each shaped as an expanded sound sculpture grounded in microfrequencies, feedback, and sustained effects. Working in a semi-improvised mode, the compositions allow for subtle shifts and incidental motifs to emerge organically.

All in all, Continuation is an enveloping, engaging, and sentient drone-ambient release—a vortex of sinuous frequencies and sonic energies that seem to reach astral dimensions. It is a minimalist electronic immersion highly recommended for lovers of hypnotic vibratory sounds and long-form tonal sculptures, impactful on both mind and body.

---

Recent Music Heroes

(translation by Lingvanex)

At the end of this month, the two-track taies of Orphax, or Sietse van Erve, who presents it in customs (who, in addition to creating music, is also the boss of Moving Furniture Records, one of the leading experimental record companies in the Netherlands) will be officially released, which, as the name of the album suggests, flirts with something lasting (or even endless). Two extremely long compositions, the total length of which reaches 44 minutes. These taies could last even more, as personally it seems to last much less, which indicates that the taies are eventful and reject temporality. The title of the article can also be interpreted as a reference to a cultural tradition that inevitably prepared this one as well. The Dutchman’s music is undoubtedly wonderful and precisely dosed, as in addition to modulations, transitions and the acquisition of a new shape, the timbre is also lush – I would even say that it is really appetizing (as if an overripe pear or a plum dripping with sweet juice on a tree). I’ve never always enjoyed the timbres of all MFR drone music albums before, especially those that have operated on anemic post-industrial sounding colors, but this time it’s hard to take the headphones off my head. French thinker Jacques Ellul’s taies “Tehnoloogiline ühiskond” [“La Technique ou l’Enjeu du siècle“] (1954) – which is effective already because the book cover is decorated with a tape recorder – resonates with Orphax’s work, as the request to be new and intense, but analytical (while not losing an emotional feeling) — to capture the spirit of the era, to play with the sounds and instruments that define the era, shines from here. The cathedral organ oscillates, goes straight, somewhere other sounds join it; it cannot be ruled out at all that some slightly rusty organ whistle could have produced such a sound even in the Middle Ages. Also in terms of time, it is continuous and uninterrupted in the sky, which can even scare the listener, as he can enter it out of time, i.e. out of time (one of the most surprising sayings I’ve ever heard when a 4-year-old daughter said completely unexpectedly that she doesn’t believe we exist!). If I called it sacred music (especially the final part of another composition), hardly anyone could have any objections. I would even ask further: how is Arvo Pärt’s music more solemn than this? 9.5 (9.0-9.5)

---

A Closer Listen (substack)

“Whatever your thoughts are, as soon as it is out there…it becomes theirs”—on Continuation, Amsterdam’s Orphax embraces that surrender, his harmonic drones and textures finding life in small errors and unpolished edges. The trained drummer and Moving Furniture label owner presents his first studio album since 2019, capturing a rougher sound closer to his live performances.

---

Felthat Reviews

Sietse van Erve has been active as Orphax for quite a while and I have always welcomed listening to his new materials.

This one, which is released by Moving Furniture records is  a set of four tracks – a first album after a bit of a break. And a one that sounds probably less polished and rougher mix since it is an assembly of something that Sietse sees more as a part of his live sets.

It’s a drone, minimalism put into a cluster of reverberating four tracks that have this pulse and meticulous approach when it comes to pacing the narrative and  subsequential adding different elements.

It has an emotional feel that can’t leave you indifferent – sometimes the pathos of it digs really deep with its noble ornaments and precision that leaves no wrong note in any of the layers.

Great and introspective enough to meditate on this one for quite a while