Mattin & Taku Unami
released with hibari music (Japan)
h.m.o/r 01 cd
Shyrio No Computer
drawings by Tomoya Izumi
These
two
musicians question the whole aesthetic of contemporary digital
music: The desire to upgrade software and hardware, program
virtuosity,
and
strive for a better quality of sound... They play with the marginality
of
the music, transgressing the cliches of digital gigs. Take Unami
playing
with the surface of a speaker which vibrates inaudibly with
computer-generated frequencies. Or Mattin's use of self-generated
feedback...
They have come up with the concept of 'zombie computer music': An
attempt to
"kill our computer sound as much as possible". They seek to break open
the
grave of digital music and re-animate the corpse. But rather than give
it a
healthy and hygenic new life, they wish for it to have characteristics
of
the living dead: A sound that is "endlessly committing suicide in the
world
of digital ferocity."
Mattin,
Xabier
Erkizia & Taku. Arteleku, Donosti 8th october
2004
picture by Oier
Reviews:
Consider one of the best cds of
the year of 2004 by
Otomo Yoshihide, Toshiya Tsunoda
& Yosio Otani.
The Wire
Issue 258, August 2005
Haused in a cover featuring drawings that recall outsider artist Henry Darger, Shiryo No Computer produce a blast of fetid air from a rusted machine that has suddenly been reactivated. Featuring Mattin on computer feedback and Tomoya Izumi on computer and objects, their self-titled opus shifts from near silence, fretful scuffling and scratching about in the dust, to a full on blast of ventilator fan rumble that jerks into action when you least expect it. Although the bulk of ideas collected here sound somewhat dated when stacked up against the mountain of electronic glitch examples already available, Shiryo No Computer reveal a cunning element of surprise that puts them near the top of the heap. Edwin Pouncey
Improvised Music from Japan
When Taku Unami
produced Mattin's Japan tour of February '04, they recorded a duo album
that includes, on the one hand, several minutes' silence and, on the
other, frequent violent explosions comparable to the harshest noise
music. Unami once mentioned the pioneering Japanese noise unit
Hijokaidan as a major musical influece. "If love is colder than death
as Fassbinder says, Zombies are warmer than life," writes Unami in his
liner notes, which are actually an objection to the general prejudice
that "inhuman" computer music is colder than live music-an objection he
underlines by likening himself to a zombie, as illustrated on the cover.
============
VITAL WEEKLY
============
number 449
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week 47
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For those who do not known: Mattin plays computer feedback. Assuming
everybody knows what feedback is, computer feedback is the feedback
created by connecting the in and output of a computer together.
Sometimes the music of Mattin can be really soft and bass like, but in
a solo concert it can be really loud. Unami plays computer and objects
and he had a CDR on Mattin's label before (see Vital Weekly 407).
Unami's solo music was blend of silence and silence. Whenever in duo
with somebody, Mattin seems to adjust his playing. Even when there are
some heavy type outbursts on this release, the majority of the pieces
hoover carefully along the lines of silence and the rumble of
electro-acoustic objects. Quite an intense listening experience, which
worked out well.
Touching Extremes Jan 2005
(Italy)
MATTIN/TAKU
UNAMI - Shiryo
no computer (Hibari/w.m.o./r.)
Both men look around with circumspection, precursive of
their openness to incidental factors; Mattin and Unami unbalance our
conventional scrutiny of taciturn habits with a well equipped depot of
muted signals and blistering feedback. Their thick-skinned coolness
between petrifying silence and scattered flotsam of spare mechanical
gadgetry has the same look of an old neon lamp that's losing its grip:
flashing or just slightly flickering, nevertheless it still hypnotizes,
giving an aura of decaying straightness to the impurity of a deserted
street. In this uncultivated economy of means, the sheer postural
noises of our body and the wind that rumbles under the roof become
ambassadors for the slow death of routine sonic itineraries. Massimo
Ricci
Paris Transatlantic (Jan. 2005)
Autsaider issue 5
(Ukrania)
The nine tracks
of this album, 7 min. 6 sec. each, are part of a studio computer
improvisation, and one is supposed to take them as a solid 64-minute
composition. Mattin toys with computer feedback, audio-out connected to
audio-in, while Unami manipulates digital sounds, but does his job so
quietly that one can hardly hear anything except for some sonic
vibration. Prolonged periods of nearly complete silence are interrupted
with explosions of noise and feedback after which everything settles
down below the level of hearable. And then silence goes away.
Roman Pishchalov
Дев’ять композицій цього альбому є частинами одної студійної комп’ютерної імпровізації. Всі вони дорівнюють 7 хв. 6 сек. Слухати їх слід як одну велику 64-хвилинну композицію. Маттін грається з комп’ютерним фідбеком (аудіо-вихід комп’ютеру приєднано до входу), а Унамі маніпулює диґитальними звуками, але робить це настільки тихо, що практично нічого, крім якоїсь акустичної вібрації, не чутно. Тривалі періоди тиші перериваються вибухами шуму, фону, потім все знову стихає до рівня на межі чутного людським вухом. А потім зникає і тиша.
Роман Піщалов
As listed playing computer feedback Mattin tricked me
into thinking my PC was freeked when this recording of nine
untitled tracks (each 7:06 in length) began. Taku Unami is
controlling the objects and computer as Shiryo, this duo
plays silently. Not until approximately six minutes in do
you start to hear the barely snoring-like rustle of
something akin to a whicker broom gesturing right and left.
No Computer obviously uses said medium to conduct a course
in silence. Tomoya Izumi’s headless characters make for
playful cover art and act a catalyst for my attention until
suddenly there is a sinus-cavity impeding squeal, like a
vacuum cleaner come unglued in a thumbtack factory. As
unsettling as silence can be, there is something pretty
durable about the micro-goings-on here, like a primer in
patience and attention
No-Medium by Craig Dworkin (2013)
Haco may have taken her inspiration from Basque artist Mattin,
who has been playing the computer in that manner for years,
and Taku Unami may well be doing the same thing on his disc Intransigent
towards the Detectives of Capital (w.m.o/r 2004), though to be honest
I can't really hear what's going on over the noise of my own computer.
On Shyrio (the Shinto term for the spirit of the dead acting on the living),
Mattin and Unami facilitate the studio improvisation between a
speaker cone and the computer feedback that drives it, self-generated with the input
and the output ports of the same machine are connected in
one of Mattin's trademark perverse loops.
The result is like the placid ruble of electric brooks, barely audible inside
a slumbering laptop dreaming of Arcadian runnels. Twigs snap now and then,
there's a rustle in the leaves just beyond the field of vision, from somewhere
a panting picks up, too late the dreamer and the nightmare inextricably meld,
prey and pursuer merge, the pacific pastoral shatters, awakened by outburst of
autophagic choke and failed squelch, the electric
ouroboros gagging in an outraged roar and leaving you shacking with
the unshakeable dream of an inhuman silence we can never attain.
Compare with the earlier Mattin und Unami duet Attention (h.m.o/r, 1997),
on which they turn up the volume on what it means to listen to a CD
in the first place.