Mattin
Exquisite Corpse
w.m.o/r 40, azd08, OZKDS 017,
LP

Download: flacs

"What makes this record an exquisite corpse? Margarida, Kevin and Loy were given the lyrics to these ten "songs" only two days before the recording, and each of them recorded separately - consecutively - without hearing or even seeing each other. They were only given one chance to record their parts for each song, so what you hear on this record consists entirely of first takes. This way, as with all improvisation, there was no way back: the moment is what matters and if you record it, it's there forever. I hate telling people what to play, just as I hate other people telling me what to play, so each of the musicians on this record played whatever the fuck he or she wanted to. Contrary to the usual way rock 'n' roll records are recorded (first drums, then bass, then guitar and finally voice) I started by recording the voice; then Kevin recorded his guitar and piano without hearing me; then Margarida recorded her bass, again without hearing anything of what Kevin and I had done previously; and finally Loy added his drums without reference to any of the other musicians' tracks. The only thing that we had in common was the lyrics, which functioned as a graphic score or, if you like, as a way of setting a mood for each song. Oh, yes, and we all had to conform to the stereotypical duration of a rock song - three minutes - which also happens to be the ideal length for one side of a vinyl without losing any volume. Once the tracks were recorded, I simply laid them on top of each other on the laptop, and did a very direct mix without moving or taking anything away... so as to let the exquisite corpse vomit the new wine!"

Matthieu Saladin
(Déserts)
w.m.o/r 39
CDr

When is there noise? Where is noise? Who makes noise?

Déserts by Egard Varèse was first performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, on December 2, 1954. This concert has gone down in history as one of the greatest scandals in XX^th century avant-garde music, as the audience rioted during the performance. Socio-historical context surely played a role, as France was still under the Fourth Republic, marked by its policy of “cultural democratization”. This concert was part of the National Orchestra’s “Tuesdays” (in fact, as it was to be broadcast live, it took place exceptionally on a Thursday), which were free and as a result attracted a wide audience not necessarily used to musical experimentation such as this. The concert was conducted by Hermann Scherchen, assisted for the occasion by Pierre Henry, who was in charge of the electro-acoustic device. It presented pieces from the classical repertoire – Mozart’s Grand Overture in B flat and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pathétique”) – and a work that confronted acoustic and “organized” sounds in an innovative way.

During the performance, people reacted noisily, and at the same time, another “music” emerged in counterpoint, improvised, developing in a more or less undecided – if not indeterminate – way, and at irregular intervals. Listening to the recording, the protests literally compete with Varèse’s music, developing a new and particularly complex musical form, a succession and intertwining of murmurs, muted mutterings, and sudden and untimely waves of boisterous disapproval. But behind the rejection, one can maybe also discover, in this other music, the intrinsic link between noise and democracy.

This disc presents this other sonic manifestation, the one performed by the audience. In a certain way, I have followed the logic of retrenchment that underpins Varèse’s initial work. Edgard Varèse’s Déserts is a mixed composition, structured in four instrumental movements, to which three electronic interpolations are added, which interrupt the instrumental development. During these interpolations, the orchestral sound fades away to give way to the recorded sounds. In (Déserts), I have simply extended this process, erasing Varèse’s piece to let a new type of recorded “interpolation” appear: the anonymous noise of the audience.

A group of diverse people calls a meeting, setting a place and a time. They meet. Each one brings the things they think are necessary. The “opening-up” to action is big. They disuss and reach agreements. They have to manage that shared time in the search for freedom. They select a place, make it theirs, precariously theirs. What is the potential of that meeting, of that time lived in common? They have to make decisions and try to create a collective space, not exempt from disapprovals. Apart from the physical space they might find (that could not be found), first there is a social space that has to be built up to very basic levels. Many of the problems come directly from that. How long can they endure? What will they be able to do? How much of the potential of the action lies in their own capacity for meeting together and dealing with uncertainty? What would be left if they didn’t do anything except be in an abnormal situation? How many different situations can the general situation contain? What is it that will give the right levels of intensity?

Esther Ferrer
Concierto zaj para 30 ó 60 voces
in collaboration with CAC Brétigny
Design by Vier5
w.m.o/r 37
CD + poster

Download: coming soon

Craig Dworkin & Jarrod Fowler

Rhythmic Fact

w.m.o/r 36
CD-R+?

________ ____ __ __ _________ __-_ ____ _____ ____ ___ ____ ____ _____ ___ ______ ___ _____ __ __-______ _______ ________.  _______ __ ___ ____'_ _______ __ _ ____ __ _____ _______ ____ ___________ _______ ___ ________ ___________ __ ___ ___ ___ _________.  _________, ___ ___________ __ ____ _____ ________ ___ ____ ________ __ ___ ____ _______ ______ ______'_ ___-_________ ______.  _._._/_ __________, ____________ ___ __________ __ _________ ____ _ ____: ____ __ ___ ______ ___/__ ___ ___ ______ __________.

I have a postulate.

I listen.

I believe I have no ideas for making music ; but that by listening, I turn myself into a receptacle for the real.

Yet everything escapes me, since my capacities are not those of a container.

So I listen, before anything else.

Then I act in response to what I hear.

In a way, I superimpose sounds onto what I consider as my listening to the real, which is imperfect because it comes from all sides.

Everything I attempt thus also escapes me, as surplus form and residue of what I hear.

I never wait for anything.

Again, in order to break the latent, silent quasi-mysticism, which would be the symptom of my listening, I try to restore to the real what it refuses me: sounds which I activate as so many variables acting upon the thickness of the negative.

I thereby refuse to put in place a music-as-cut into the real.

I want to remain in relation to the real and I say no to any ‘as’.

In doing so, I say no to music, but this ‘no’ is the unilateral relation which I attempt to stabilize in and through sound, but in accordance with the real, as negative and foreclosed ; what I attempt to superimpose onto the latter acts as so many unknowns which would at once escape the whole even as they constitute it, beneath but also above all things.

I effectively pit the similar against the same, knowing all the while that it is the presupposition of my failure that compels this hypothetical repetition.

Keith Rowe: guitar

Seymour Wright: alto saxophone

3D: three views of guitar and saxophone on a November evening at the Dance Centre in Derby, 2002

1

David Reid’s view (central, edge of stage): Sony ECM-999PR

to a Sony PD150 video camera.

2

Chris Trent’s view (right, front row): a pair of Oktava MK-012s to a Tascam DA-P1 DAT machine.

3

Jeff Cloke’s view (extreme left, three rows back): Sony stereo ECM-MS907 on adjacent seat to a Sharp MD-MT80H(S) minidisc recorder.

JUNKO & MATTIN
PINKNOISE

WHITENOISE

It's rare to come across someone expressing equal admiration for artists as wildly different as Radu Malfatti and William Bennett, but Basque laptopper Mattin namechecked both on his recent excellent TwoThousandAnd outing Gora. While we wait for a collaborative venture with Whitehouse, here's Whitenoise, two twenty-minute pieces sourced from improvised sessions in Amann Studios in Vienna. Mattin recalls that trombonist Malfatti provided several suggestions as to how to proceed: "in the first we were to make one sound each at a time, in the second piece I would be constant – but we broke the rules!" Malfatti has often invoked the use of silence as a structural element in his work, but whereas in the previous recordings it enabled listeners to focus outwards onto their sonic environment, here it's as if all extraneous sound is being sucked into the music. "Gripping" and "scary" are hardly adjectives one associates with his ultra-sparse work (best exemplified by his 1997 Timescraper release die temperatur der bedeutung), but Whitenoise is both. Compared to the comfortable digital puffs and wisps of much contemporary laptoppery, Mattin's subtly changing backdrop of filtered noise underpinning the second track sounds amazingly organic – imagine clamping your ear to one end of a long tube and listening to waves breaking on a distant shore, or a gentle wind blowing through a vast pine forest. And whereas Futatsu, Malfatti's collaboration with Taku Sugimoto, was more a question of when the next sound would appear than what it might be, Whitenoise contains some genuine surprises: not only do several tones and timbres reappear, but Mattin's unsettling use of extreme registers and ominous feedback hums give the impression the whole thing's ready to blow. However, apart from a vicious scree of noise five minutes from the end, the musicians manage to keep the lid on it. In setting the fragile close-miked trombone glissandi in the context of subtle computer feedback, Mattin has done what none of Malfatti's collaborators since the early 1990s has managed, namely respect the trombonist's current preoccupations while subtly reactivating the fiery emotional nature of his pre-1993 work. As a result, Whitenoise is not only Mattin's most impressive outing to date, but also arguably Malfatti's most significant release since die temperatur. Dan Warburton (The Wire)

Mattin/Rosy Parlane/Xabier Erkizia
Mendietan
w.m.o/r 05
CD DELETED
Download: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

BI RAK
Ipurtagiri
w.m.o/r 04
CDR DELETED
Download: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

This cdr, the 4th to appear on the w.m.o/r label, presents a series of confrontations/dialogues between the improvising duo of Mattin (computer feedback) and Dennis Dubovtsev (soprano sax). Over the course of eight concise fragments, the two voices remain direct and distinct, rejecting the format's current sway towards ambiguity and microscopism in favour of a contrast and clarity of intent. The overwhelming impression is duel, embracing both conflict (in passages which are sharp and argumentative, tense and menacing), and critique (where the intensity of dialogue explodes, into abrupt finality or flashes of mimicry), and in the process produces a working model for electro-accoustic improvising duos which, in its lack of regard for caution or preciousness, obliterates the usual constraints of such a partnership. Joel Stern.

Mattin
higu
w.m.o/r 03
CDR DELETED
Download:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

higu is Mattin’s second studio project working by himself.
This work is marked by its intensity, playing with difference textures, it lets you go through the almost ten minutes of serious executed noise with a sense of anxiety. higu is divided in 8 tracks that by it shortness you get the feeling of the artist being persecute by a fear of falling in to repetition. You as a listener, are not let down, by the unexpected changes. Once you follow a pattern and try to wrap it you are hit with a different narrative. This work gains its power by volume. 

      

Mattin/Rosy Parlane/Eddie Prévost
Sakada
w.m.o/r 02
CD DELETED
Download: 1, 2, 3, 4

Sakada bears witness to a single encounter between electronic musician Mattin and percussionists Rosy Parlane (Parmentier/Sigma Editions, Thela, Pit Viper) and Eddie Prévost (AMM and too much else to name). The former uses his machine to nurture a swarm of singularly malign hisses, gurgles and overtones. Occasionally these swell up to become truly invasive before suddenly recoiling; at other times they loiter darkly in an awkward middle distance.
Much of the music's depth and elusiveness comes from the way individual sounds are sharply differentiated yet entangled tightly. Percussion rarely interrupts liquid feedback with punctual impact: rather, it generates a second, third, fourth writhing body of sustained sound. Objects chime or are scraped or rung as often as hit, allowing distinct conjunctions to emerge and persist before falling away. This sure conjuring of time from noisy fury gives Sakada a rare sensual and expressive coherence, and demands repeated, careful listening. Matthew Hyland

Mattin
Tinnitus
w.m.o/r 01
CDR DELETED
Download: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

Exersize in minuscule movement of frequencies and grain which forze a listener into an unconfortable participation/ concentration/ contemplation of density and emptiness, stillness and momentum.
Joel Stern.

Mattin
Betsain
w.m.o/r 00
CDR DELETED
Download: 1,2

1 susaldu (live at public life, london 30.1.01)
2 susara ( live at new inn, london 6.2.01)