Attention

Mattin / Taku Unami
Attention
h.m.o/r 3 (w.m.o/r co-released with hibari music)
CD 10 euros post included

When you listen to a CD of improvised music, where is really the improvisation taking place ?
Many would say that improvisation happens only among the musicians while recording the CD.
The musicians spontaneously create a musical piece in the moment of playing,
that the audience is supposed to then simply enjoy and appreciate through the recording
- especially if they have paid for the CD. This way of thinking favors clearcut boundaries between producers and consumers.

''Attention'' questions the fictitious divisions that exist in hearing recorded improvisation:
isn't the listening experience also an act of improvisation?

While hearing the CD that you have put in your CD player, you cannot isolate the sounds coming from the CD from those coming out of the CD player, or the computer, or the washing machine or the street. The improvisation is happening in the head of the listener, it is impossible to take a CD as a finite statement that can be constantly replicated through a perfect listening experience.

Something as simple and important as choosing the volume of how to listen to the recording is a very strong decision that determines the sound and the meaning of the work. Other aspects determined by your economic possibilities also affect your listening experience, such as the quality of your stereo, or whether you have download the piece or bought it.

''Attention'' is an attempt at addressing the listener directly, making him/her engage in a process of self-reflection. It suggests that any listening experience is mediated both by the context and the choices made by the listener, which alter the meaning of the work and become part of the creative process, even if people at the top of the music production chain – musicians and producers - might say it is not.

Mattin and Taku Unami - Attention

“So, if you have done things properly, we all have been here for an hour. How much do you usually get paid per hour?” - Mattin

This recording is an invitation to think. In that respect, it distinguishes itself from the majority of releases on the market, even within the admittedly marginal sub-genre(s) where improvised music, experimental electronics, noise, and conceptual art intersect.

Already, though, some listeners have succumbed to the temptation to dismiss this CD in a facile manner as merely a juvenile prank, a cheap exercise in intellectual one-upsmanship, or a confession of creative bankruptcy. Even the relatively benevolent review by Brian Olewnick at Bagatellen seems to reduce the disc to the status of mere snotty polemic, a pointed jab at the obsessive (and self-obsessed) subculture of musical fandom.

Once upon a time, certain protagonists of improvised music sought to engage critically with questions of music making, the social field in which improvised music is embedded, audience participation, and the dissolution of the performer/audience dichotomy. As Felix Klopotek writes in an entry on AMM in his book how they do it: Free Jazz, Improvisation, und Niemandsmusik:

“Compositional praxis, musical praxis in general, should abolish and transcend itself. The premises that determine what one understands to be a composition, what one understands to be a performative praxis, should be thwarted to the extent that it is possible to understand musical praxis as a genuinely social praxis.”

AMM now has a secure place in the canon of post-serialist new music, as well as the post-jazz improvisational avant-garde. And the recent elevation of Keith Rowe by his financial patron Jon Abbey to the status of “virtuoso” (a notion which seems to contradict the original intent of such music) serves notice that music with once revolutionary ambitions is now as sanctified and permissable as anything on offer from Deutsche Grammophone or any big city symphony orchestra. The use of gastronomic adjectives by fans of this music (such as “tasty” or “sumptuous”) is also a rather discouraging sign.

So we as listeners can be thankful to Mattin and Taku Unami for prodding us to question our own role as listeners. One could, if one wanted, experience this disc purely at the level of an exercise in listening, and indeed, there’s enough initial evidence to support such an approach (O-Ton Mattin: “turn up the volume” - “I said turn up the volume”). However, it becomes quite clear with the progression of the disc that questions of one’s role as passive spectator, as audience, should be called into question, and indeed, the invitations to reflection transmitted by Mattin (“what are you thinking about?”) even suggest that the listener make his/her own thought processes an integral part of the proceedings, even if such temptation is later (paradoxically) foiled (“stop thinking; just listen to us.”)

These critical questions/remarks concerning the listener as consumer ( “how much did you pay for this” - “this stereo is not good enough for this music” - “you should work harder and get a better stereo”) are most fruitful when they become reflections upon the central role of the economy of labor time which constitutes all of us in our essential being as subjects in the world. Indeed, these considerations of the economy of labor time (“you paid for it” - “and if you haven’t, you’re giving us your time” - “listen properly, otherwise it just becomes a waste of time”) are a testament to the fundamental integrity which underlies this effort.

And on that note, and as a thank you to Mattin and Taku Unami, I offer the following from the Grundrisse:

“Labour time as the measure of value posits wealth itself as founded on poverty, and disposable time as existing in and because of the antithesis to surplus labour time; or, the positing of an individual’s entire time as labour time, and his degradation therefore to mere worker, subsumption under labour.”

Mattin (voix) et Taku Unami (guitare). Octobre 2007. 'Attention', malgré l'instrumentation, il ne s'agit pas de chansons au coin du feu la fleur entre les dents. Mais d'ailleurs de quoi s'agit-il exactement ? Improvisation ? Provocation ? Interrogation ? Amateurs du genre (que ces deux-là se développent), vous allez jouir sévère. Dessin d'pochette de Tomoya Izumi. Une coproduction w.m.o/r et Hibari music.

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                                           VITAL WEEKLY
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                                           number   600
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                                           week      45
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MATTIN & TAKU UNAMI - ATTENTION (CD by w.m.o/r/Hibari Music)
File under 'practical jokes' this one. Taku Unami plays a guitar, but produces not many sounds throughout the entire seventy-three minutes. A note here, silence, a note there. Ok. That's one the right channel. On the left channel
there is Mattin rambling about this music, and that you should play it at the best possible installation, and asking if you are still there. 'Go Buy This CD' is also a statement, followed by lengthy silence, as all of his remarks
are one liners, statements, but hardly do make a coherent text. We all had a good laugh and then played some music. (FdW)

OK, then. On the one hand, we have Unami playing spare, mostly pure-toned guitar notes, doling them out one at a time in a loose, fairly desultory manner, switching later to fuzzed sounds. On the other, we have Mattin, talking. His first words, several minutes in, are “Turn up the volume.” I didn’t comply. He continues, “I said, ‘Turn up the volume!’” and then proceeds to berate me for not having a good enough stereo system. I chuckle. It becomes swiftly apparent that Mattin has been browsing the sort of fora you’re reading now, collecting the kinds of dopey arguments and discussions that ensue about equipment, listening habits, proper volume, seriousness of listening, environment, etc. and is, rather playfully but not without some sneering, tossing it back into our faces. For about 74 minutes. Goodness knows there’s a wealth of material to be thus lampooned and it’s amusing as far as it goes even if the occasional pinprick irritates by penetrating closer to the bone than one would like. Do I ever need to return to it again? Not likely (though Unami’s playing has a minimal amount of charm). But, like an elbow to the ribs, it makes its point and we can move on. One can, of course, insist on listening to it as pure sound, ignoring its intent. Not easy, but it does give the listener a malicious sense of satisfaction…

n.b. I’m not quite sure if it’s intentional or not, but the typography on the disc itself might be intended as a sly take-off on that found adorning given Lovely Music Ltd. release.

Negative Potential

Mattin and Taku Unami - Attention