TRPTK: State-of-the-Art Recordings by an Eclectic Label
Peter Burwasser
The number three has special meaning in musical history. The first notated meter in music history, for example, was three beats to a measure, indicated by a full circle. It seems esthetically appropriate, then, that the Dutch high-end label TRPTK, which was founded in 2014, started as a band of three (thus, “TRPTK”—sound it out) consisting of an audio engineer, Brendon Heinst, as well as his friends Luuk Meijssen and Nicky Regelink, both of whom have moved on. The current team is also a triptych, with Heinst still at the helm, and now joined by Moscow-born Maya Fridman (who is also his wife), and Ben van Leliveld. Ben was the longtime owner of Listening Matters, a high-end-audio boutique in the Netherlands, as well as Acoustic Matters, a consultancy firm for audiophile acoustics, and Maya is a cellist and composer whose work appears on several TRPTK releases.
The label’s discography includes music from the worlds of classical music, electronica, jazz, world music, folk music, early music, and more. The classical titles mainly feature excellent young performers playing either 20th-century classical music, works by living composers, standard repertoire, or often a compelling mixture of any or all of these categories. Although the catalogue does specifically categorize the music, the borders between genres are often fluid. Much of the jazz and folk material, for example, is enhanced by a sense of discipline and technical polish that suggests an academic training. Similarly, there is early music playing that includes a lively sense of harmonic embellishment and even improvisation.
As Heinst describes the philosophy, “We mainly look for what artists we want to work with rather than what repertoire we’d like to record. Most of the artists we work with are young musicians in the contemporary classical scene, but also some folks doing more early music and classical stuff as well as jazz. For example, our dear label manager, Kristia Michael, is very active in both early music, medieval and onwards, as well as avant-garde contemporary music. Maya herself comes from a more classical background but has since been going into 20th and especially 21st-century music, as well as more electronics-based avant-garde pop she composes herself. Also, our editor, Hans Erblich comes from a family of contemporary music artists. Myself, I actually never listened much to classical music before starting my studies for audio engineering, to be honest. I played guitars in some bands, mostly progressive metal. One of our other engineers, Antal van Nie, also used to be a guitarist, but is now very much into experimental music. Oh, and have I mentioned Maya is a huge fan of progressive rock and metal too? So you see, all of us come from different backgrounds, but none of us have this rigid, conservative outlook on music.”
This general description of TRPTK’s artistic philosophy is, however, not necessarily unique in an age when eclecticism in art is more valued than ever. What really makes the label stand out from the pack is a fanatical devotion to state-of-the-art recording techniques, many of which are unique to the label. Although TRPTK has produced a handful of vinyl releases, and maintains a healthy catalogue of CDs and SACDs, the heart of their output is hi resolution digital files. Each of their files are available in high resolution (88/24, 176/24, 352/24, 352/32) and either stereo or surround sound.
Heinst employs a system he calls Optimised Omnidirectional Array, or OOA for short. There are three basic elements to OOA (yes, it seems that the TRPTK team like to do things in groups of three); maximizing the accuracy of the timbre of the source, portraying the location in space as precisely as possible, and localizing the sounds. That last component is a somewhat more complex notion than timbre and location.
Heinst puts it this way: “For prehistoric man in a forest, it’s less important information how much low and midrange tone a bear or lion has, and much more important, I would say vital, the information about where it is, how far away from you it is. This is all to say that we’re incredibly sensitive to timing information.”
Yet the concepts of temporal response and localization seem similar, which Heinst concedes. “Temporal response can be part of localization, yes absolutely. In recording, one can make use of two different phenomena to create a stereo image; intensity-based stereophony, and time-difference-based stereophony. The former can only be done with unidirectional or bidirectional microphones, which have inherent issues, so I personally prefer omnidirectional microphones, leaving me the only option of using time-difference-based stereophony. That’s one side of the story. The other side of temporal response is how transients are being translated. Let’s say you have someone hitting a drum with a mallet. Now, ideally you would want not just the timbre of the drum translated perfectly, but also the envelope, so the attack/ transient of the sound as well as the decay of it to be translated perfectly. In other terms, the way the amplitude of the recorded sound develops over time.”
Heinst and his team are especially concerned, obsessed, really, with microphone placement to achieve the ideal OOA experience. They have studied classic recording techniques, such as those used by the Decca label, and have closely emulated the minimalist practices of Morten Lindberg from the vaunted 2L label. “We always try to use only one main array of microphones and try to use as little close mics or reverb mics as absolutely possible. Ninety percent of our albums are made with just the main microphone array, and only if there’s an inherent imbalance in the original source will we use close mics. So why do so many—almost all—of my colleagues use more than one main array? Simply put, they think that by mixing very close and very distant signals together, they can create an artificial ‘perfect’ signal. But this just doesn’t work. Imagine taking a shower with two shower heads on either side of your body, one freezing cold and one boiling hot. Are you then experiencing the perfect shower? No, one side of your body is getting frozen solid while the other side is burning you alive.”
The fruits of these engineering innovations are found in the unique and fascinating TRPTK catalogue. It could be pianist Nicolas van Poucke playing the elegant music of the early baroque Dutch master Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck in the Royal Concertgebouw, with the listener placed near the front of the opulent space. Then there is an album titled Kurkuma, featuring the music of Irene Sorozábal, a Spanish musician based in Amsterdam who has a background in historical music performance. Her own music, as heard on this delightful release, joyfully evades characterization, mixing Renaissance-inspired polyphony, jazzy rhythms, and folk music. One of the TRPTK leaders, Maya Fridman, can be heard as composer, singer, and cellist on her beautifully moody The Power of Indifference, borrowing an ancient term from Stoic philosophy, underlying the progrock vibe of the songs. Or, time travel back to the 16th Century with the BLOCK 4 recorder quartet, with Beneath a Pale Moon, peppered with some ironically irreverent contemporary work thrown in as if to demonstrate that music need not be slotted into distinct brackets. As long as it sounds really good, that is.