Mattin
hmcdr-16
1 Reirse Para Verte Ilorar (2:02)
2 Nation of Sensations (2:29)
3 Bilbao (2:20)
4 Anticipar (2:01)
5 Entre Residuos de Sida (2:32)
6 Aguantranto (2:01)
7 Tu Etica Apesta (1:39)
8 Como Angel Exterminador (3:03)
9 Dulce Passion Muerta (2:08)
10 Encuadro Alargo (3:34)
11 Volver a Creer (2:01)
12 Nos Entenderiamos (2:22)
13 Matame Bien (2:30)
14 Soy Alguien (2:37)
15 Let Me Your Leg Baby (2:39)
16 Entre el Bello y el Dolor (2:24)
17 Stooges Idiotas (2:02)
18 Losebasurea (2:22)
19 Simpatia (3:48)
20 Tu Huesos se Corren (1:11)
21 Me Encontraste (3:03)
22 Cancionesturbia (9:19)
All songs written and played by Mattin
Recorded in mono with the microphone incorporated in a Pismo
portable computer
Mastered by Taku Unami
Drawing by Tomoya Izumi
copyright free
Released in September 2005
The
Wire
Issue 266 April 2006
By Clive Bell
Computer mavericks Mattin and Taku Unami have collaborated and toured
together several times over the last few years. Their 2004 duo release,
Shirio no Computer (Dead Spirit's Computer) played with the idea of
zombies reanimating the corpse of digital music, only to help it to
commit suicide again. The album is a rapt yet austere mix of delicate
rattling, feedback manipulation and utter silence. Both artist approach
computer music with ambivalence-simultaneous contempt and affection.
Similar ambivalence surfaces on Mattin's solo Song Book, released by
Unami's Hibari label. According to the sleeve, Mattin has recorded
himself with the mono microphone of a Pismo. Surely you have to be in
love with computers to even know that Pismo is the nickname of the
Apple G3 Firewire Powerbook. And how perverse is to record 22 songs
through the Pismo's abysmal mono mic? it's the laptop equivalent of a
hissy cassette demo, a prolonged sneer at high fidelity
recording.
Much about the cheerfully unlistenable release smacks on the conceptual
artwork. Known as a provocative computer minimalist and political
artist, Mattin reinvents himself here as a shambolic singer-sonwriter
with Spanish lyrics (Mattin is Basque) and acoustic guitar. He sounds
distracted, disenchanted and far from taking himself seriously. The
guitar is never in tune, the rhythms are incoherent, the songs
half-written. We glimpse other possible selves from parallel Mattin
universes: the melancholy balladeer of "Matame Bien", stumbling across
melody as if sleepwalking; or the embryonic grunge of "Simpatia", easy
to imagine in a electric group version. Two songs explore an old
harmonium, while "Let Me Your Leg Baby" is an outburst of surreal
energy, a garbled parody of an uptempo English Drunk.
Bagatellen
Mattin’s “song book” might be even more unexpected. An artist
with a
reputation for investigating the extremes of noise, both quiet and
ultra-loud, releases a set of 22 songs, energetically and (happily)
“unprofessionally” sung and furiously strummed out, for the most part,
on acoustic guitar. Roughly recorded (“mono with the incorporated
microphone of a pismo portable computer”), with significant background
hiss and hum (which sounds excellent, I must say) as well as the
occasionally audible, abrupt on/off switch clicks recalling the spoken
word pieces from “Trout Mask Replica”, “song book” has homespun charms
aplenty. Aside from a few in English, the songs are belted out in
Spanish and one makes the initial unavoidable comparison with Arto
Lindsay’s Brazilian cantos and, in a sense, with Eugene Chadbourne’s
anarcho-Americana. But if there’s irony to be found here, and I’m not
certain there is, it’s of a different sort than that employed by those
two. I could be totally wrong, but I get a feeling of real commitment
here, of a kind of punk updating of Spanish song-form and I find it
generally quite effective and affecting. Knowing as little as I do
about that genre—which is to say, nothing—it’s entirely possible that
Mattin could be snickering behind the scenes, but I don’t hear it. Two
of the tracks use a harmonium or reed organ of some kind (it actually
sounds very much like a Chromolodeon!), creating a nice break in the
guitar/voice onslaught. If anything, there’s something of a sameness
that creeps in after so many tracks, though not an unpleasant one. A
different world from, for example, his new project with Dion Workman,
“S3”, but one I found to be a kick to listen to.
http://www.hibarimusic.com
Posted by Brian
Olewnick on January 1, 2006
07:49 AM
Ukrania
MATTIN
Song Book
CD, Hibari Music, 2005
Цей альбом має здивувати тих, хто знає Маттіна тільки як комп’ютерного
імпровізатора, оскільки на ньому немає ніяких комп’ютерів, а є тільки
пісні під гітару у стилі, який умовно можна було б охарактеризувати як
???Лу Рід грає свої улюблені пісні Єґора Лєтова”. Брудно зіграні на
акустичній гітарі пісні менестреля-аутсайдера. Така характеристика, між
іншим, близька до того, як говорить про цю свою роботу сам музикант:
???Я б описав “Song Book” як збірку найпримітивніших номерів у дусі Лу
Ріда, на які я тільки здатний. Я маю на увазі, що Лу Рід свого часу
записав кілька поганих платівок, але я впевнений, що мені вдалося
записати платівку набагато гіршу”.
Маттін грає погано, але робить це цілком свідомо. Ніяких
претензій, ніяких амбіцій більших за амбіції ???хлопця з сусіднього
двору” або навіть ???хлопця, якого ніколи ніхто не слухає, бо той не
вміє грати”. Співає він ще гірше. Всі пісні записані на внутрішній
мікрофон комп’ютера і представлені публіці без будь-якого наступного
редагування. Звідси трохи глухуватий звук, перевантаження по низьких
частотах і ледь чутний писк. Іноді здається, що спів доноситься із
сусідньої кімнати. На деяких піснях замість гітари з’являється щось
типу органу.
Це пародія на поп-музику авторів-виконавців
(поетів-пісенників), на їхнє жонглювання настроями за допомогою масок
ліричності, пафосу або драйвового героїзму. Маттін одна за одною
приміряє на себе ці маски: то відчайдушно лупить по струнах, то – там
де це передбачено сценарієм поп-п’єси – грає ???душевним” перебором.
Він знущається з нас? Ні. Він знущається з нашого захоплення попом, в
якому артикуляція виконавця спроможна будь-якій нісенітниці – і
музичній, і поетичній – надати вигляду одкровення. Знущається з нашого
захоплення нісенітницями.
Autsaider issue 7.
MATTIN
Song Book
CD, Hibari Music, 2005
This album shall surprise those who know Mattin solely as a laptop
improviser as it has no computers, but only songs sang to the guitar
whereof style could be provisionally described as “Lou Reed playing his
favorite songs by Yegor Lyetov,” crudely played songs of an outsider
minstrel. By the way this description falls close to what the artist
himself says about his work: “I describe Song Book as me doing the
cheapest Lou Reed that I can. I mean Lou Reed has made some bad
records, but I'm sure I've managed to make much worse.”
Mattin plays badly, but he does it completely aware of his failure. He
has no pretensions, no ambitions greater than those of a “boy next
door” or even a boy who no one ever listens to because he can’t play.”
His singing is even worse. All the songs have been recorded to a
computer’s internal mic and published with no subsequent processing.
That’s why it sounds somewhat remote, overloaded with low frequencies,
and produces a hardly-heard peep. At some moments it sounds as if music
comes from an adjacent room. Some songs feature a sort of pump organ
instead of guitar.
This is a parody of songwriters’ pop music, of their juggling with
moods under the masks of lyricism, pathos, or driving heroism. Mattin
puts on the masks one by one: at one moment he recklessly strikes the
strings, at another, where so provided for in the pop song’s score, he
whole-heartedly pulls them. Is he mocking at us? No. He’s mocking at
our passion for pop, in which an artist’s articulation can make any
bullshit, either musical, or poetic, sound like a revelation. He’s
mocking at our passion for bullshit.
Roman Pishchalov
N.B. Yegor Lyetov is a Russian punk rocker who has a cult following in
the former USSR.
Signal to Noise, n42, 2006, U.S.A.
Jon Dale
Mattin´s solo Song Book is a different matter entirely: twenty two
rough hewn, strident songs for acoustic guitar and occasional
harmonium. Mattin´s voice can be hard to take at times, and these are
no particularly great songs, but they do attest to a questing nature
ad a desire to avoid complacency. Song Book could support the argument
that improvisers dont´t make great pop musicians, but I don´t think
that´s what Mattin is trying to do anyway: the existance of this disc
strikes more as a polemical gesture. At the very least, it is just as
unpolished and febrile as Mattin´s solo laptop recordings, hinting at
a consistency beyond the surface of genre"
============
VITAL WEEKLY
============
number 506
---------------------
week 52
---------------------
An even more curious release is 'Song Book'
by Mattin. In general
a song book indicate classical songs from the particular country
or region, in this case of course the Basque country. None of
these classics mean much to me however of course. Mattin plays
acoustic guitar (and on very few occasions organ) and sings them,
recording them through the sound input of his computer. Twenty-two
of these classic songs, which I think is a bit too much. If this
was a 3" of twenty minutes, it would be fine enough, but
now three times as long, is a long bit too much of an overdose.
Mattin doesn't have a voice that particularly sounds good or exciting
and his guitar playing is alright. Well, for twenty minutes that
is. (FdW)
Address: http://www.mattin.org/
Address: http://www.hibarimusic.com/
"Singularly awful" Dan Warburton
discography
w.m.o/record label
desetxea net label
www.mattin.org
