The Sound Projector (London)
Mattin / Rosy Parlane
Agur
GREECE ABSURD #26 CD-R (2003)
A 20-minute live recording from this duo, taken from the 'Oligarch Shit
Transfusion' in Autumn 2002, if that means anything to anyone...I'm
surprised at how compelling this little sliver is, considering there's
barely anything happening. Working within an extremely limited range of
actions and sounds, so limited as to be as constricted as an inmate in a
straitjacket,
the duo are doing heaven knows what - it may not even be realised with
electronics. But it probably is. They start out (as many players of
same ilk
do) quiet and imperceptible. Click-click-click. Whine-whine-whine. The
air
is charged with tension from the get-go. The audience must have sensed
something interesting was gonna happen - either a fist-fight or a
budgerigar
exhibition - and put down their glasses of lemonade for a better
listen. You
can hear animal instincts at large - ears pricked up, hairs rising along
back of spine. They must have been transfixed by the curious, circular
movements of Mattin and Parlane on stage, because you can't hear a pin
drop
the minute the first electronic whine is unleashed into the air. Midway
point, and I hear something like large elastic bands being stretched and
heated over a Bunsen burner; they howl in agony like large hornets. The
pair
finish up with an engaging cluster of activities and thumpy-bonking
noises
that suggests their computers or machines or whatever are actually just
big
cardboard boxes, and, like playful children, they just climbed inside
them
and pretend to be robots on stage. What a winner. Ever since he first
took
the world by storm around the mid 1990s, young Antipodean Cossack Rosy
Parlane (who had the very first issue on the famous Sigma label in
1997) has
been refining his mode of electronic simpleton music to - this. Mattin
by
contrast is a vicious no-nonsense Basque, living in London, who in
between
bouts of knife-throwing has brought his laptop into collaborative
situations
with Parlane and Eddie Prévost at Richard Sanderson's Baggage
Reclaim venue.
Another Absurd (of Greece) record - in a slim package that's barely
noticeable with inserts printed on clear plastic whose lettering you
need a
powerful microscope to discern. How I love the 21st century.
ED PINSENT 10-2003
PO Box 63752, 15203 Vrilissia, Attiki, Greece
absurd@otenet.gr
www.anet.gr/absurd
Ampersand
(Australia)
Mattin and Rosy Parlane offer a single piece recorded live last year on
a 3" disk – so about 20 minutes long, but with an active flow that
suggests a longer piece. There are no details here, but the last disk
saw Mattin on computer and RP on percussion, and that seems to be the
set-up, though not very obvious percussion. A very high sine tone with
pops and clicks at times and some breaks is accompanied by rumbling
percussion at times to open the session. There are shifts in direction
which flow on from the on-going parts but give some idea of the
variation. Here a stretched scraping enters and a hiss cycle. There are
plosives and the hiss increases, and this section plays with the
plosives/hiss/scrape sounds. A ringing bell sound with clicks and cord
crackles and humms joins, again mixing around; reverbed humming with a
high sine and more loose cable crackles and blurting. Then an extended
section of spaced out (in time) burrs and crackles, the burr pulsing a
slow rhythm and some white noise builds. It sticks and then a short
period of percussive sounds and little noises. A high soft sine pulses
and some low rumbling that waver and continue, deep throbs, quite a
warm sound, crickles and percussive noises. Then a note that sounds
like a bowed violin (do we have to retrospectively reassess the
sounds?), and percussion that sounds more drummy. A drilling buzz,
feedback hum and more drills, builds with drones and scraplings, with
other noises, but the main build to a buzzy noisey climax that drops to
a tone and percussion for the last few seconds.
Actually quite a delicate piece, lightly combining divergent sounds in
a satisfying work of about the right length.
============
VITAL WEEKLY
============
number 372
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week 21
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MATTIN/ROSY PARLANE - AGUR (3\\\"CDR by Absurd)
Two boys - two laptops. Mattin (from Barcelona) and Rosy Parlane
(from Down Under) both reside in London these days where they are
actively involved in the lively improvisation scene by organising
their own concerts. Of course the two meet each other during a
concert, like on October 26th 2002 at the Oligarch Shit Transfusion
(I mean what\\\'s in a name). Armed, as said with two laptops, they work
their way through a strange set. High beeps and soft crackles mingle
together until after some fifteen minutes, they reach a climax and
some sort of rhythm has occured. I wouldn\\\'t say necessarily a good
set or concert, but one that is highly typical of the laptopscene:
experimental and improvised, not always \\\'there\\\' and sometimes a hit
and miss. But it\\\'s good to see the action being documented. (FdW)
Address: http://www.anet.gr/absurd
Paris Transatlantic
Also based in London, laptoppers Mattin and Rosy Parlane contribute
a more austere affair whose pristine ultra-high pings and whines
occasionally recall the crystalline precision of Richard Chartier and
Taylor Deupree (though things get decidedly more crunchy after a few
minutes). Shame they couldn't have come up with the kind of beautiful
packaging that characterises the 12k label: the unadorned 3" CDR (with
brand name highly visible) comes in its boring blue mini jewel box,
with (minimal) track info on a tiny sheet of transparent plastic which
invariably falls out and gets lost. Though that just might be my promo
copy.DW
ezine
(Athens)
..mattin /
rossy parlane:: agur A live recording, some
high, thin frequencies moving in the realms of the in-audible which
slowly become louder and other like mic=amplified sounds enter the
scene, some abrupt changes in the volume and the “action” of the music,
which never gets really loud. maybe live would keep my attention, but
in the form of cd it left me quite unimpressed and uninterested
|--mini cdr | www.matin.org
released by absurd