Time Out (New York,Nov 2003)

Practically unknown only a few years ao, Mattin burst upon the scene with a
plethora of projects that demonstrated a suprisingly broad stylistic range. A recent solo disc,
Gora (Two ThousandAnd) ,opens with deceptively gentle metalic glisses before exploding into a
series of feedback maelstroms not far removed from the work of merzbow or Kevin Drumm. Mattin's
work with the London-based emsemble Sakada, as well as numerous MP3s available online
(begin your search with www.mattin.org) reveal that he is also a patient listener and sensitive
collaborator.

p.63Mattin
Gora
By Julian Cowley
Basque computer musician Mattin has demonstrated refined listening skills and responsiveness in the group Sakada with AMM percussionist Eddie Prévost. Gora collects three live recordings for solo performances using computer feedback from his 2002 European tour. Densely textured electronic blast erupt, rise to confrontational levels of volume and intensity, lull into rumpling plateaus, drop into silence or sizzle at near silence, rise again wildly. Mattin’s interventions in the squall of this self-generating sound source are like a descent into a maelstrom, as if plunging into the turbulent gush of white noise is the only way to steady and steer it. A fourth track was recorded at Spicy Music Festival, London in 2001 with French electro acoustic improviser Julien Ottavi and Rosy Parlane, formely a Sakada member, who has since returned to New Zealand. Mattin’s swirling feedback storms occupy the heart of the piece along with vivid galloping clicks, shortwave encryptions and hovering samples of pitched and allusive sounds. The London audience’s applause is more decisive than that in Nijmegen, heard on the first track. Mattin would surely be gratified by the less assured Dutch response. Alone and in company, sonic turbulence is his chosen means to unsettle and to be himself unsettled.

VITAL WEEKLY
============
number 383 week 32 (Netherlands)

Wed, 6 Aug 2003
MATTIN - GORA (CDR by Two Thousand And)

Of a different nature is the work of Mattin. Up until recentely he
lived in London where he organised improvised music evenings, mostly
with himself on the bill too. This release has four live recordings
from his 2002 tour. One of the shows featured here at Extrapool, I
saw and I do remember a full blast of computer feedback. Short (with
it's nine minutes here, I think the entire show is on the disc) and
unbelievable loud. I have no idea how Mattin generates his sound, but
somehow the connects the soundinput to the output of his computer and
treates the self generating sounds. Good thing that one can control
the volume at home more then in a concert situation. High end sounds,
deep howls: this is certainly no pleasent music, but nevertheless
essential. Here the length of the disc is just enough (34 minutes).
The final piece is a live collaboration with Rosy Parlane and Julien
Ottavi. Ottavi's guitar playing stands firm among the powerbook
mayhem of Parlane and Mattin and forms a moment of fresh air on this
CD - contemplation among the fury. (FdW)
Address: http://www.twothousandand.com

Transatlantic (Paris). November 2003

http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/monthly2003/11nov_text.html

Gora brings together four live recordings of Bilbao's Mattin recorded respectively in Nijmegen, Hamburg, Berlin and London (this latter also features Rosy Parlane and Julien Ottavi). "Computer feedback" is Mattin's speciality, and he seems to delight in putting himself (and his equipment) in situations of extreme danger, listing influences as wildly diverse as Whitehouse and Malfatti (!). Hard to believe that common ground might exist between those two, but Mattin finds it. In "Ni" he teases delicate sonorities out of the computer until it spits out a thunderous drone, seemingly in self-defence; by the four minute mark the poor suffering machine explodes altogether into a barrage of noise worthy of the Japanese grandmasters. Similarly, "Zu" goes hell for leather until it stops short in its tracks at 5'20". Not for long. "Eta" (not sure if this has anything to do with the artist's Basque origins, so I probably shouldn't read too much into that title) plays with the same extremes of contrast, but is faster moving. To what extent Mattin is in total control of proceedings isn't clear - that's the beauty of feedback, folks - but the results are not only exciting but starkly beautiful. Even the nasty bits. —DW

The Best Albums of the 2000s: #100-51 (August 2011)

73. Mattin | Gora
(TwoThousandAnd, 2003)
Mattin at his most raw: chunky blocks of noise, generated by his careful sculpting of feedback, erupt from his laptop’s built-in microphone and tinny speaker output. The album makes a virtue of its lo-tech appropriation of high-tech gear, exploiting the sense of blown-out speaker danger that comes from Mattin’s minimal set-up. The contrasting dynamics leap sporadically from a feathery hint at the edges of hearing to a suffocating black hole that seems to suck in all sound to its unreachable core.

Ampersand (Australia)

http://ampersandetc.virtualave.net/ampersand.html

A Mattin release was in the first batch that Joel
Stern sent me quite awhile ago that hitched &etc and the 2000+ scene, and
he recently had a 3"Absurd piece with Rosy Parlane (also 2003_h with
back links). 'Ni' recorded> in Nijmegen opens quietly as Mattin turns on machines creating a softly
varying humm with feedback shimmers over, joined bya percussive banging and
some whirly electro it suddenly increases in volume.The humm and burring
electro tones, tzinghiss and burrs and a loud whitenoise overpapering. This
keeps coming at you, varying a little, the deep toneaudible and a rising
tone, then eases to a still loud crackle hiss, ends,applause.

In Hamburg he created 'Zu' where a soft buzz crackleslowly builds to a
loudness with a deeper tone in, the crackle movesabout the sound space and
there is an electro wind. It all rises and falls,though still a full-on
hissing storm, eventually easing to a venting andbuzzcrackle, blowy
feedback easing down to silence, then reerupting towarbling feedback then
held tone and very loud pulsing, withdrawing again seemingly gone for a
couple of minutes before a final buzzing noise pulseend.

'Eta' (Berlin) begins with shocking crackles
subsequently pulsing fuzzesthen a held tone, scrawling, high pitch melody tone
into white-noiseassault, then a 'gentler' hiss with a buzz in and a deep warm throb, to
washing crackle little clicks silence. Rosy Parlaneand Julien Ottavi joined
Mattin in London; 'Haiek' is the most restrainedpiece, sounds settling in,
perhaps the audience, though they seem recorded and
'played with'. A warm vibrating tone (keys?) and little loops, pulses and
a percussive part thatsounds like semi-random firecrackers. This is
spacious, bursts of feedback,little things happening, a roulling noise and hiss
build, swirling possibly keyboards (Keith Emerson and Nice), computer bobbles
eases back to firecrackers that emerge again, slows right backbefore a final brief burst.

I will admit to enjoying this more than I expectedas well as being
cathartic noise it is also exceptionally well managed noise. Probably not
one for the party but an excellent example of whatimprov can be do with
unusual tools.

(And as pointed out by Vital, at home you can moderate the auralassault with your volume control).

Broken Face (Sweeden)

"Gora"
Here's a record that consists of nothing but computer feedback, but
although it all comes from one source, the outcome covers a lot of
different experimental ground.  There's a whole range of frequencies
brought into London-based computer artist Mattin's feedback, so it's not
surprising that he manages to go back and forth from the minimal side of
things to some piercing shrieks and then back again to the almost
inaudible.  Mattin has apparently worked a lot with Eddie Prévost and
Rosy Parlane, which makes sense given his ability to blend computer
glitch with clicks, drones and clattering waves into sonic results that
are as much an aural sandstorm as they are a melting iceberg.  Gora is
in a personal way influenced by minimalism and radical avant-garde and
generates some pretty extreme results, some restful and some quite
maddening.  I'm not sure how often I'll return to it, but it's an
interesting listen.



The Sound Projector (UK)

Mattin

Gora

UNITED KINGDOM TWOTHOUSANDAND 2++7 CD (2003)

Four live tracks of computer feedback here on this consumer purchasable

which will occupy about 30 minutes of your recreational time. In return, you

get reasonably entertaining electronic noise for your dollar, although the

performances (or perhaps the way it's edited) come in fits and starts...too

many pauses, false starts, longish embarrassing gaps, which means the punchy

impact of the work isn't really sustained for long enough. But this may be

the whole point, defying our expectations for the reassuring continuum of

sound and leaving us to deal with the void. There are indeed a few passages

of pretty good stormy and bellowing computer noise (which, even though

performed in uncontrolled live setting, still has that 'clean' surface which

marks it as wholly digital in origin); they say that musicians have truly

'arrived' when they can do noise well. (Nobody says that, really.) The

remainder of Gora is pretty ordinary sequence-y electronica sludge, which

just dribbles out of Mattin's laptop like so much stale carrot juice, to be

sucked up by docile bunnies with big straws in their mouths. Taken from four

different live festivals in 2001 and 2002 in Europe and London; the last cut

features guest jamming from Rosy Parlane and Julien Ottavi. Fair.

ED PINSENT 11-2003

4 Old Castle Street, London E1 7NT, UK

www.twothousandand.com

discography
w.m.o/record label
desetxea net label
www.mattin.org