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

Sound Projector (January 2008)

« Every breath ends up as data », « We will bankrupt your citadel », « Death is better than work »... Ces phrases sont trois des 500 slogans qui ont rythmé la performance « Moving Forest » du 1er/02 (que Poptronics annonçait dès mardi comme un des temps forts du festival), performance de 12 heures conçue par les artistes Shu Lea Cheang et Martin Howse, entourés du collectif international AKA The Castle (une trentaine de performers venus d’Europe, des Etats-Unis et d’Australie). Ces slogans écrits pour l’occasion par Matthew Fuller, artiste et théoricien des médias, ont constitué le livret de cet opéra en six actes.

La forêt mouvante du titre, elle vient de la fin du film culte d’Akira Kurosawa « Le Château de l’Araignée », une transposition du « Macbeth » de Shakespeare dans le Japon médiéval, et dont on voyait pendant la performance une version « mangée par le code » réalisée par l’artiste Graham Harwood du collectif Mongrel. Les flèches du film se retrouvaient également dans le travail de Linda Dement, deux écrans se faisaient face, avec des flèches d’un côté et de l’autre du sang.

De cette séquence vient donc la trame de la trahison et de l’insurrection qui nourrit la narration de « Moving Forest » en phase avec la thématique de cette Transmediale, « Conspire ». Les musiciens Mattin, Leif Elggren, Kaffe Matthews, et Joachim Montessuis, la plupart accompagnés de chanteurs interprétant les slogans, ont occupé chacun à leur tour différents lieux de la Haus der Kulturen der Welt, avant que la performance ne prenne corps à l’extérieur pour l’acte « Insurrection ». Ont marché sur le lieu du festival, transformé pour l’occasion en château à prendre d’assaut, différents groupes, dont un portant les fusils-radios en bois de l’artiste Ricardo Miranda Zuniga. Phill Niblock, après la prise du « Château » par les ondes et les marcheurs, fermait la performance.

Autre interprétation des slogans, de façon sonore mais non vocale cette fois, celle des quatre membres du collectif goto10 (Marloes de Valk, Chun Lee, Aymeric Mansoux et Valentina Vuksik) qui ont constitué un « dictionnaire » de traitement sonore lors de leur session de « live-coding », triturant le son et interagissant avec les streams.

Malgré les changements de dernière minute et petits ratés inhérents à une manifestation si tentaculaire, « Moving Forest » était une belle et riche performance, tricotant sons, textes, images et codes, offrant plusieurs points d’entrée : narration, conspiration, technologie (logiciels codés en temps réel, circuits imprimés faits maison et radioFM), activisme (une manifestation était menée simultanément par un petit groupe à la prison berlinoise de Moabit), slogans déclamés tout au long des actes...

anne laforet

El trío de rock extremo Billy Bao presenta tres nuevos vinilos

Billy Bao live at Jazz Festival Mulhouse



DNA Mulhouse















IMPROJAZZ

7, La Centrale Bordeaux
8 + Aida Torres (ex-Lisabo), Maite Arroitajauregi, Xabier Erkiza, Inigo Telletxea, Sala Mogambo Azkuene, 17 - Trintxerpe, Donostia

MRB | AMM

Interesante concierto (aunque accidentado) el que bajo el nombre ??? jaialdia pudimos presenciar en el Mogambo de Trintxerpe. Aunque el cuarteto bera-eibartarra que en principio abría cartel no pudo estrenarse por problemas de última hora, los allí asistentes pudimos escuchar a ANTOINE CHESSEX y JOSETXO GRIETA en dos abrumadores sets. Y cuando digo “escuchar” y “abrumadores”, se debe de entender literalmente, hasta podría añadir “forzosamente” porque ambas actuaciones fueron de gran intensidad y volumen. Hasta demasiado, por ejemplo con Josetxo Grieta que abrieron noche en esa meca del grind llamada mogambo, que, hay que decirlo, sigue manteniendo el mismo espiritu que hace diez años, detalle que hay que agradecer a sus gestores. Volviendo al concierto, como decía, Josetxo Grieta hicieron un interesante concierto (nos tienen bien acostumbrados) equilibrado entre composición a tiempo real e improvisación, entre canción y flujo surrealista, siempre aderezado con la curiosa performatividad que los caracteriza. Un estar sobre (y debajo) de escenario que mezcla por una parte esa parte casi teatral pero siempre tan polémica como confusa (totalmente intencionada) de mattin, con la tensión de Josetxo Anitua, que muchas veces parece intentar controlarse a sí mismo para no explotar antes o más de la cuenta. Sin embargo esa intensidad contenida del escenario pasó factura a la actuación que en un alarde de frecuencias extremadamente agudas (cortesía de mattin) venció a la capacidad del equipo de sonido (tampoco es la primera vez que somos testigos de una situación similar, por desgracia…), ofreciendo como resultado un espectáculo de humo proveniente de las trompetas de agudos que obviamente supuso el repentino fin del concierto de los de bizkaia.
Xabier Erkizia

9  + URA, OVO, BAPATEKO doinuen eguaztena NOISE-ROCK FEST, Cafe Antzokia  Bilbao

11 Oporto

http://amplificasom.blogspot.com/

Josetxo Grieta foram apresentados como uma banda basca que viriam tocar covers dos Velvet Underground. Começaram por colocar cadeiras alinhadas no meio da sala, pediram às pessoas para se sentarem nessas mesmas cadeiras e… tudo o que sei dizer é que os 11 minutos de concerto foram mais intensos que uma hora e um quarto dos Sunn 0))). Foi como estar no meio de um furacão, até meteu medo. Caótico.

12 ZDB, LIsbon
13 + Manuel Mota / Okkyung Lee, Mercado Negro, Aveiro
14 Sala Nasti, Madrid
15 + Dave Phillips, FESTIVAL CAP SEMBRAT, Sala Bahia C/ Olzinelles, 31 L1 Plaça de Sants i  Barcelona
16 l embobineuse Marseille

Yo pensaba que no me podría sorprender con las actuaciones al haber ido ya a unas cuantas, pero lo de ayer fue la monda. Confirmo totalmente lo de la confrontación con la audiencia. Los primeros minutos se dedicó a provocar al público con una pose a lo Hristo, como alguien le recordó. Los víctimas fueron sobre todo los que habían ido allí sin saber de que iba aquello, así que cuando utilizando un micrófono empezó generar acoples y frecuencias rozando lo molesto, algunos decidieron irse.
Una vez conseguido su objetivo de incomodar a los reunidos allí puso en marcha su portátil del que salió una andanada de ruido brutal que fue filtrando y variando de ecualización.
Y cuando pensábamos que había terminado y dedicamos unos tímidos aplausos él siguió plantado encima del escenario mirando al público. Este silencio duró bastante tiempo hasta que decidió cerrar el portátil y recoger sus bártulos.
Fin del mal trago. Prueba superada.

Antoine Chessex Blog (7th February 2007)

Basque´s Proletarian of noise Mattin was next. Having the chance to catch him many times live before and being very much into his work, i was a little afraid to see what he prepared to make the audience react.Impassive, a microphone in the hand, sun glasses and a laptop computer running only free software (Gnu/Linux). Silence. Not a single move for long minutes. I was expecting a sudden brutal noise tornado coming out of the computer but it didn´t happen. People in the audience started to talk louder when Mattin simply press a key of his laptop making me realized that he was recording the sound of the room during the silent part. The audience had to relisten to the last past minutes of nearly silence and contemplation: quite a weird feeling. He repeated the same process twice, and the performance was over. Allthough it could seem very conceptual, the picture of the guy motionless, provocating the audience with his unused microphone and playing the very sound of the room was an enjoyable experience. No copyright suckers!

Mangenerated (February 2006)

Paris Transatlantic (Paris Jan. 2007)

...he's deconstructed rock and roll with Billy Bao and La Grieta, deconstructed the rulebook of free improvisation by popping up with playing partners as wildly different in orientation as Radu Malfatti and Tim Goldie, deconstructed his own record label by making everything he does available as a free download, and arguably deconstructed himself – put it this way, if you booked Mattin for a gig, would you know what to expect? Nah, neither would I.

:: Mattin: Sonic Auslander ::

by Derek Holzer

November 2006

Seems like the Basque "proletarian of noise" Mattin is getting press
like mad these days. Is it because he's lived in all the right hotspots
(London, Berlin...)? Or because he's played with all the right people
(Campbell Kneale, Junko, Rosy Parlane, Tony Conrad, Axel Doerner, AMqM's
Eddie Prevost, Radu Malfetti, Taku Unami...)? Or is it something else,
something to do with persona and delivery?

To be blunt, musically there's usually only three "Mattin-modes":
silence, feedback and noise. Or maybe some different combinations of
these things in rapid or not so rapid succession. Still, every time I've
seen him here in Berlin I've been stunned, and usually by the
presentation rather than the sounds themselves. Although in person he's
a perfectly charming and warm young man, on stage with his mirrored
sunglasses and rigid poses, he comes accross arrogant and removed,
perhaps something like a younger, cooler Philip Best (of Whitehouse). Or
a noise-scene caricature of Sisters of Mercy frontman Andrew Eldritch
(remember them???).

His recent "Body and Linux action" appearance at Ausland was no
exception. Setting up camp in the middle of the room, Mattin stoically
stood his ground, silent as a statue, with one hand on the laptop and
the other holding a microphone to his unmoving lips for exactly ten
minutes. Knowing what to expect, I pushed plugs deep into my ears while
the rest of the audience waited patiently, whispered nervously, popped
the tops of their beer bottles or even played solitaire on the "handy"
during the strained pause. At the ten minute marker, a massive tone
exploded in the room and again Mattin waited patiently (his microphone
arm must have been throbbing at this point) the next ten minutes while
the sound faded away.

To understand how dangerous and confrontational this strategy can be,
consider a London show a week later. Londoners can be several thousand
shades less considerate than Berlin audiences, and Mattin's "stand and
not deliver" tactics were met with jeers, taunts, shouts, offers for a
chair to sit down in and even spit. At the end of this ten minutes,
however, Mattin played back the protests of the audience which had been
recorded through the microphone in his (trembling?) hand. The whole
scene changed, with the hecklers frozen in their tracks. "Thanks for
making me look like a dickhead!" one "polite" Londoner shouted back at
the end. 'Nuff said...

Paris Transatlanctic (Paris, Nov. 2006)

In Concert

Erstquake 3
Tonic, New York City
26th September – 2nd October 2006

Saturday opened with what was for me the set of the festival. The last time I saw trombonist Radu Malfatti live was with Polwechsel in 1994. Mattin, of course, I'd seen much more recently, but this partially composed set sounded like neither of those events. Sitting opposite his collaborator in the centre of the room, Malfatti followed a score that cued the beginning and ending of his long, dry low notes, a small clock at his side timing the lengthy silences between them. Mattin sat silently for the first few minutes, appearing to do nothing, though he was in fact recording the noise of the room, complete with shuffling chairs, the creaking wood of the Tonic bar (and the occasional guilty cough). He then set about playing the recording back into the room via the PA system, sometimes alone, sometimes following Malfatti's cue. The combination of the trombone lines and the Mattin's eerie sounds created an intense atmosphere as the audience sat, unsure of what exactly it was they were listening to. It struck a perfect balance between musicianship and listener input. As Malfatti's trombone was also recorded by Mattin, there were occasions when it could be heard though he wasn't playing, adding a playfulness to the set probably only noticed by half of the room. This was music of immense beauty performed with admirable precision.

One man renowned for cooking up a storm is Basque laptopper Mattin, who began his appearance with electronics/percussionist Tim Barnes by placing a huge guitar amp somewhat precariously on a wobbly table in front of the stage, causing myself and others to scatter to the rear of the hall to what appeared to be relative safety. Barnes began to build a beautiful stream of cold metallic sound by rubbing a cymbal slowly (photo, right) and passing the sound through simple effects, and Mattin started prowling around the back of the room, circling those of us that had sought safety there with his laptop held at head height, a high pitched screech stretching the computer's internal speaker. As Barnes' playing grew in intensity, Mattin began (as he does) shouting anti-consumerist expletives as he prowled around the room. Fighting the temptation to either laugh or trip him up, I watched as he approached the amp, stabbing the output lead in and out of the laptop, filling the room with tearing bursts of white noise and feedback interspersed with his barely comprehensible screams. The set ended with a jolt soon after. Mattin has always sought to provoke a reaction (instead of worrying about making good music), and his antics became the talk of the festival. For those of us that had seen him do similar things before though, it amounted to little more than mildly diverting, yet boringly predictable theatre, albeit with a rather good backing track. RP

jon abbey
a few words about the Mattin set last night at the Tank:

Mattin was in rare form, with a focus I've maybe never seen from him before. he had less of a physical presence than usual, but his spirit permeated the premises. I'd like to see more of this kind of performance from him in the future.

PICK OF THE WEEK IN TIME OUT NEW YORK (Radio section)
Tuesday 3th of October 2006
Brian Turner's Show WFMU-FM
Billy Bao channels his rage into throat-shredding, amp-destroying punk rock and homemade
electronic music. The NIgerian-born rocker, who emigrated to Bilbao, Spain (one wanders how he got his name)
will play live with guitarist and label owner Mattin, and New York percussionist Tim Barnes.

Comments on Erstquake 3 (28sept-2Oct 2006 NYC)

http://olewnick.blogspot.com/

Posted by Brian Olewnick on September 29, 2006 08:35 AM

Nah, no problem Derek. I just view it as a place for more personal, mutable musings.

Barry, I hate to tell ya, but you missed the set of the evening, imho, though I think the audience opinion was decidedly split. (for the benefit of others, this was Mattin/Tim Barnes at ErstQuake)

Tim was on stage with a large sock cymbal that, I think, was hooked up to his electronics set-up. Mattin was carrying a laptop, holding it open alongside his head, walking a circle around the rear of the space, the computer emitting a high, intense whine. Just by using that space, it immediately opened the place up--you sort of didnt' realize how hermetic things had gotten. After several minutes of this (Barnes creating a strong, cymbal-drone up front), he began pacing back and forth up the center aisle, shouting (very loudly) a series of phrases that I'm guessing were English ("fucking" was one of the few intelligible words). It was getting rather scary. There was an amp on a wobbly table just in front of the stage and he began to utilize the feedback potentialities offered between it and his computer which were, not surprisingly, pretty severe. This chaos was embellished by him repeated yelling a phrase directly into the laptop mic-hole. Despite iterating it several dozen times, decipherings post-concert were varied. My stab was, "Computers are fucking with you". I'm probably wrong. Barnes, all the while was fantastic, creating a super-rich roar behind all this. I was waiting for Mattin to smash his laptop on either the amp or the unlucky heads of the front row denizens, but this didn't occur (fair warning, though, to future attendees).

I thought it was a real strong set in and of itself, but also served as a welcome, er, tonic to the relatively tepid nature of the preceding sets (though I like Los Glissandinos a lot too).

That'll learn ya to leave early.

shiflet most beautiful thing in the world Joined: 10 Dec 2003 Posts: 1363 Location: hyogo

Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2006 2:14 pm    Post subject: TOP 20: 01. Sachiko M/ Sean Meehan 02. Phil Niblock/Jason Lescalleet 03. Lasse Marhaug/Aaron Dilloway 04. Ami Yoshida/Christof Kurzmann 05. Michael R. Bernstein/Mike Shiflet 06. Cosmos 07. Schnee 08. Scenic Railroads 09. Aaron Dilloway 10. Jazkamer 11. English/Sachiko M 12. Los Glissandinos 13. English 14. Tim Barnes/Sean Meehan/Jeph Jerman 15. GOD 16. Jeph Jerman/Greg Davis 17. Barry Weisbalt/Bryan Eubanks 18. Kai Fagaschinski/Burkhard Stangl 19. Mattin/Tim Barnes 20. Radu Malfatti/Mattin and i thought the quality level was extremely high. everything except for #20 i enjoyed more than i didn't, mostly just nitpicky things with in my personal tastes that kept me from fully connecting with some. i talked with mattin and got some clarification on his and malfatti's set which helped me connect with it a little more but didn't up the enjoyment level. favorite moment of the festival: seeing the gentleman who two years ago walked out of the lescalleet/greg kelley performance thoroughly enjoying himself during aaron and lasse's set. least favorite aspect of the fest: too many drawn out 'should we/shouldn't we?' improv endings

http://netnewmusic.net/reblog/

The roaring silence.

Just in from the third night of ErstQuake 3, a four-night festival of electroacoustic improvisation mounted by two of the genre's most noteworthy labels, Erstwhile and Quakebasket, at Tonic. It's a sign of the changes in my professional life that I didn't clear the calendar in order to attend every night of this series, as I'd done for last year's festival. But perhaps it's also a function of a change that's crept over the event, a little bit last year and quite a lot this year: a slight merging of the EAI genre, which I've followed closely for some years now, with the Noise scene, to which I haven't devoted a great deal of attention. (That's not a critique, simply a fact.)

An irony, if you want to view it that way, arises when you dig a bit into the formative inspirations of the EAI and Noise scenes. Both can validly trace their roots to 20th-century developments in classical music. But EAI, seen largely as a European and Japanese innovation, is commonly linked to the early work of John Cage and David Tudor, Earle Brown and Morton Feldman, via avant-garde jazz and European free improvisation. On the other hand, Noise, a global phenomenon that has recently exploded in America, traces its roots to Italian futurist Luigi Russolo, handed down via Japanese artists such as Masami Akita (Merzbow) and England's Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound) as much as American figures such as Boyd Rice, Ron Caswell and, perhaps, Lou Reed. Naturally this calculus is a gross oversimplification, but it does point up the way in which influence mutates in its travels.

Far more ironic, it seems to me, is that tonight's opening set was neither EAI nor Noise. Decades ago, Austrian trombonist Radu Malfatti was a major figure in the European free-improvisation scene, and could be found blowing frenetically alongside the likes of Derek Bailey, Evan Parker and Misha Mengelberg. Lately, however, Malfatti has turned to a severe form of reductionism promulgated by the Wandelweiser Group, an international cabal of composers for whom Cage's 4'33'' is a manifesto demanding consideration of silence as a potent compositional tool. Seated in the middle of the audience, Malfatti performed with Basque laptop computer musician Mattin, who in other settings has proved to be a particularly wild and unpredictable improviser. (I once saw him drive a number of audience members out of the Issue Project Room with the excruciating volume and violence he brought to bear in a duo performance with Tim Barnes.)

On a music stand facing Malfatti was an electronic stopwatch and a sheet of paper covered with columns of numbers. The duo's performance began with two minutes of complete silence, after which the trombonist blew a single, muted bass tone of fixed duration, roughly 20 seconds. Mattin accompanied him with ambient noise sampled from the room. After a 30 second interval, the duo repeated the note. The intervals between notes gradually grew slightly shorter; after three-and-a-half minutes, the musicians fell silent for another two minutes. The pattern repeated with a lower trombone note, followed by two minutes of silence, then a still-lower note. A cell phone that rang during one of the silent intervals was repeated in Mattin's contribution during the next segment of active performance.

By this point, the audience had grown fidgety, less able to control its own sounds -- squeaking chairs, shuffling feet, the occasional departure. Malfatti reversed course with the next iteration, playing a slightly higher note; Mattin's computer reflected the noisier ambience immediately prior. The audience, perhaps mindful of its own contribution, was notably quieter during the following silent interval. Malfatti's pitch continued to climb by tiny increments; after slightly less than 36 minutes, the performance ended.

RFKorp

Mattin/Tim Barnes - There was this really charged ritual energy in the air through the whole performance that really made it. That was the type of set that cannot exist on recording. Mattin performing from the back and then the center aisle and Barnes' determination at the cymbals throughout Mattin's attack on our ears and our consumerist instinces just made for some real EAI theater.

sevenarts

mattin/barnes: i was pleasantly surprised to find that i wasn't quite alone in liking this one. if there's anything you can expect from mattin, even in a well-established duo with a fairly predictable sound, it's to do the unexpected, and this was it. comparisons to lo-budget power electronics abound, and were probably appropriate. just really fun, i thought. the tension of the build-up, and the inevitable explosion that was delayed to well beyond when i thought it'd happen.

np-rayr
mattin + malfatti: ruled. simple, almost obnoxiously so, but gathered weight and surprising beauty through force of repetition. reminded me of an audio equivalent to michael snow's wavelength, if that makes any sense (i doubt it). my personal favorite of the eve.

sevenarts

Malfatti/Mattin: I thought this was really lovely, and definitely lived up to their taut, patient recordings. The tension of it, the suspense between "notes" and the ambiguous relationship between the room sounds and Mattin's contributions... Just a really nice, remarkable set

mattin/barnes.

i liked this one too. for simple laptop mic feedback on mattin's part, there was a lot to listen too. haha, nothing to add i guess, it was fun, though i liked the mantra before i knew what he was actually saying. makes ya think

malfatti/mattin

i liked this. don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but i'm pretty sure this was a composition, i saw radu's scoresheet w/ queues and timer. i loved how mattin's crowd noise sampling was never 'in time,' although practically i guess doing otherwise would make it hard to avoid feedback. i liked how it worked in tandem w/ malfatti's unwavering, cool, low, tones which felt like solid anchors for minimally varying reflective surfaces to be mounted on. hearing 'us' and seeing 'us' in various audio/visual formations along with radu's timer out of the corner of my eye had lots of cool/interesting implications i think. had the strongest conceptual element of anything at the fest.

-

----------

Miércoles, 26/04/2006 Bilbao hace ruido

La revista británica The Wire viene a ser la biblia de las músicas más aventuradas. Esta categoría tan abierta incluye cosas muy interesantes (lo más convencional serían grupos de rock como The Fall, Earth o los Boredoms, además del jazz, que era el asunto original de la publicación), pero también muchos pestiños pretenciosos que necesitan justificación extramusical: ya saben, 'he grabado cincuenta minutos de mi abuelo roncando para reflejar la imposibilidad de que lo orgánico se repita exactamente a sí mismo' o 'esta composición de tres horas para gong solo, repartida en dos cedés, es una trasposición imaginaria del libro perdido de Confucio sobre la música'. Aun con estos excesos, o defectos, The Wire suele ser una lectura iluminadora de la que, desde luego, los críticos del Rock de Lux obtienen gran aprovechamiento. Pues bien, en su número de mayo, la revista dedica una página enterita a un bilbaíno, que supongo yo que es un hecho sin precedentes. Se trata de Mattin, un improvisador que ha explorado los ásperos territorios del ruido extremo, ha colaborado con unas cuantas luminarias de los sonidos vanguardistas (entre ellos, Dios mío, un componente de los bárbaros japoneses Hijokaidan, famosos por orinar en el escenario) y ha formado el grupo de rock Billy Bao, también más estruendoso que otra cosa. A mí el noise me divierte y me produce una paradójica calma mental, sobre todo en directo, pero me suele dar pereza que le busquen sustento teórico. Y tengo la impresión de que Mattin se debate de forma un poco esquizofrénica entre el mero disfrute y la intelectualización: en esta entrevista que le hicieron desde Ucrania, se refiere al 'Funhouse' de los Stooges como su disco favorito –¡coincidimos!–, pero a la vez no duda en citar a figurones de la talla de Deleuze o Debord. Yo que ustedes, me olvidaría de las alforjas académicas y echaría un vistazo a su página, donde pueden descargarse toneladas de material –eso sí, en formato ogg– para destrozarse los tímpanos a gusto.

Escrito por Carlos Benito a las 04:32 pm  Ver/Hacer comentario (6)

Paris Transatlanctic
Editorial

There's been a lot of discussion lately over at Bagatellen about the pros and cons of mp3 downloads and filesharing, and I'm grateful to Jeff Gburek for pointing me in the direction of Audacity, a cool piece of software you can download in a jiffy and convert just about everything to everything else with. To put it to the test I downloaded the seven or eight remaining items in Mattin's discography that I didn't have, whacked the Ogg Vorbis files into Audacity, converted them to .wav files and burned up a packet of discs in less than an hour. OK OK I know, hi fi purists will cringe, and I'm the first person to recognise that the sound quality is clearly inferior to a "real" disc, but in order to appreciate exactly what the difference is you have to be listening on a good system in optimum conditions. Optimum conditions meaning quiet – no ventilation units from a nearby restaurant humming, no washing machine upstairs in spin cycle mode, and certainly no workmen smashing the fuck out of the inner courtyard of the building and inadvertently leaving a ten inch hole in the toilet wall. The temperature in the smallest room on Saturday was a crisp -5°C. You could literally freeze your balls off. The only way to fight back, apart from a volley of angry phone calls to the company who employs these fearful pick-wielding brutes, is to slip the CDR of Mattin's Tinnitus into the old hi fi and give 'em hell. Which is what I did. Anyway, if you've missed out on Mattin's music so far, go Google him and you'll soon find it there waiting for you. I'm not going to get drawn into a discussion of the ethics of it all – there are pieces up for grabs there as free downloads which are still available as "real" records, and I'm not sure that I'd be all that happy to see them there if I'd put up the money to pay for the release myself, but that's something for Mattin to sort out – but I'm certainly enjoying the music. Real records are cool as well, though, and here's hoping that the reviews of the 48 discs below (I'm counting double CDs as two, btw) will whet your appetite. Bonne lecture – et bonne écoute!-DW

Monday, February 13, 2006

The Wire (272, October 2006)

Like binary code, Mattin's music is either off or on. Mostly it's on. But sometimes he lingers in the off position
, keeping his audience waiting and guessing for an inordinate length of time. That's what happens on Wrong Commodity ,
a 28 minute recording of a live performance, available from the Seven Things Website (www.seventhings.co.uk). Their expectations
disrupted, the audience grows increasingly restless as the seconds tick by until, a full five minutes into the piece, Mattin's laptop deluges them with ear-scouring noise at maximum volume, Nine minutes later, the noise ends abruptly, collapsing into its own echo to reveal a law volume hiss, which may be an entirely new sound or a lesser constituent of the original one. That, in turn, gives way in the final minute or so to a howling feedback and several screamed exclamations, heavily chopped and distorted. It's a bravura ending, received with startled laughter and applause. If performative values woul seem to rank higuer than musical values in Wrong Commodity, on -/.: the opposite is true. The key players on this hour-long concert recording are French saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet and Bertrand Denzler, who play soft, long tones, that gently fluctuate with the player's breath, and they employ a wide range of percussive attacks. Mattin offers well-judged silences, low level hums and often brief but frequently violent burst of distorted sound.  To produce his arbitrarily created but pleasingly percussive array of rattles, clicks and soft clanks, Tku Unami flips his speakers onto their backs, places small resonant objects on the speakers cones and activates the cones with computer generated sounds that often lie outside the range of human audibility. Between them, the players make a music that intrigues and engages throughout. The three pieces on Axel Dorner and Mattin's Berlin are less easy to fathom. The CD comes with a liner note consisting of the first tow verses of the tilte song from Lou Reed's Berlin, and the sleeve and on-body artwork are a degraded, monochrome version of Reed's album sleeve. Whatever significance this my have, it doesnt' seem to be reflected in the music. Amidst the electroacoustic clamour, a ringtone comprising a phrase from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony keeps popping up in the first tracks infrequently quiet moments. Dorner's trumpet, which eirther he or Mattin seems to have subjected to digital treatments and edits in post-production, can be heard throughout all three tracks and provides a strong dialogue with Mattin's computer feedback. The pieces consist of snippets of material butted together to provide jumpcut contrasts and unexpected continuities, and as such they work well, constantly surprisingly the listener, thought some of the surprises are more pleasant than others. 
Brian Marley

Absurd (by Nicolas)
antoine chessex/evil moisture/mattin/hotogisu @ stralau 68 21/04/06

since the pal w/ whom we travelled to berlin last april & myself booked our tickets, started seeking live sets that we'll be able to catch up w/ while we were there. luckily we had the chance to see the super set of fantomas/melvins big band on saturday the 22nd. and gotta admit that friday the 21st was also stellar! having missed the previous day the uk noise fest in ausland or the y-ton-g set in globusbar, as we decided to hang around w/ sascha of i:wound instead, we were anxious to see the stralau thing the day after. arriving in stralau found andy, daniel & mattin hanging around so was a cool chance to say a word and finally meet in person w/ some of the pals we've been in contact via mail for a god knows how many years... and must say that the sets that followed were giving more the feeling of a family (re)union, rather than a standard live crap... antoine's set was really blowing, sax via effects & electronics that turned it to a real blaster! imagine borbetomagus as an one man show... well don't wanna make comparisons but just to give the idea... after this great set, we had mattin doing the what i told him a 'whitehouse parody'... a sine wave from his laptop, while wearing his suit and sunglasses and starting an interaction w/ the audience, wondering if we are so stupid listening to his pathetic noise sounds or not... or what we like of his set (i admit that the sunglasses was the top of it!).
by the end of this cute performance can't say i wasn't anxious to see andy doing the evil moisture set. been a fan of his work must admit that i liked his crazy noisy games a lot. me speaking, considered it as the night's best set....sadly ended soon thanks to burned gear but was super! a real noise set as i fancy it being... to hotogisu... i hadn't heard any of their works before i saw them playing live. can't say i felt the need also to get any either earlier from mailorders, or so. don't know why, perhaps because i had friends who had purchased their stuff and didn't fancy that much or so.. was pretty funny though to see the set starting w/ mathew as a black metal freak playing his tunes out of his guitar and marcia playing the violin via effects & electronics on the other... a contradiction that i found fascinating enough. in their 2nd set we had both on their guitars doing the noisy thing as well. can't say it was their set(s) i enjoyed but the whole atmosphere in stralau during them. super!

http://9cdr.blogia.com/

“Mattin, lasai, nadie es profeta en su tierra...”, por Jaime Forrestal.

27. september 2004 Napaka v sistemu Touring Inferno

Mattin in Unami si svetita foto: Miha Fras

Kva, smo na pravi lokaciji, je hrzala konjenica. Iz zatemnjenega kluba SOT 24,5 na Metelkovi, kjer domuje Društvo za teorijo in kulturo hendikepa in v katerem je tokrat gostoval cikel Defonije iz Gromke, se namreč skozi odprta okna ni slišalo prav ničesar. A je bilo, čim se je oko privadilo na temo v izbi in je moglo ločiti nasproti sedeči, le z računalniškimi brlivkami osvetljeni figuri, kazno, da je šlo pri umanjkanju slike in tona le za uvodne procedure Mattina in Takuja Unamija, ki ta čas s svojim Touring Infernom križarita širom Evrope. Bask in Japonec resda uporabljata računalnike, a vendar je njun produkcijski način v očitnem nesoglasju s programe prekladajočo laptop srenjo, saj namesto spolirane in definirane zvočne slike iščeta popačenja in motnje in jih tudi najdeta brez rešpekta do tehnološkega napredka, zlorabljajoč mašinerijo. Računalnik je tako, do meje, ko ne more sešteti vsek enk in ničel, le generator Mattinove mikrofonije in distorzije ali pa njegove neslišne frekvence spravljajo v drget zvočnike, na katere Unami polaga aluminjasto folijo in zvočila, v živo pa se njun prispevek k zaobrnitvi prevladujoče optike ter najedanju fetišev sliši kot prijetno kratek nojzerski ekskurz, kateremu za razliko od prenekaterih od včeraj nojzerjev ni zameriti odsotnosti dinamike in suspenza ali domišljene strukture. Od komaj slišnega škrebljanja in obrednih zvonov do rezkega, nehumano sinusoidnega šundra prebijajočih elektronov, da greš lahkega srca k zobarju. Mimogrede: kolikor smo bili v redakciji Rodea začudeni, ko smo v obvestilih Defonije opazili številke 21.00 in grožnjo “Koncert se začne točno ob napovedani uri!” nas je šele presunila obrazložitev intendanta Zadnikarja, da so prihodnje defonične matineje uslišanje želja nekaterih džezerjev, ki da imajo zjutraj službo. Mar tudi ob sobotah? Pritožite se delodajalcem.

高円寺の貸しCD屋 さん、small musicに納品しました。視聴しながら試し読みもできます。その後、junko＆マッティン／杉本拓＆宇 波拓＆マッティンのライブを見に千駄ヶ谷の ループラインへ。満員でし た。すばらしかった。この言語化しにくいすばらしさを、体験し ないのは、すごく勿体ないと思います。それと同時に、無理矢理にでもこれらの提案を言語化する必要性も感じます。ここら へんの話は、まとまらなそうなのでやめておきますが……。（写真は昨日のGIGの模様）

ontonsonのブログに、昨日納品したときに撮ってもらった写真がアップされていました。昨日 アップしたペンの写真もあります！http://blog.ontonson.com/

京都のガケ書房で、取り扱いがはじまりました！http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~gakegake/index.htm

『nu』vol.1の通販分が残り5冊となりました。お早 めにどうぞ！

Eureka Magazine (Japan) Feb. 2005

Mattin destroyed the concept of the so called "Computer Music".
Taku Unami

Improvisations Festival
Adelaide FringeHUB
February 22-24

db magazine ( Australia)

http://www.dbmagazine.com.au/325/f-rv-Improvisations.shtml

Basque Country laptop commandeer Mattin gave perhaps the most compelling performance of the festival. Sitting in the dark, wide-eyed behind his apparatus, he began with a low hum, which turned into a creaking rumble. Then, out of nowhere he stunned the transfixed audience with a gigantic blast of static-drenched noise. The complexities of the blast became more discernable as it moved forward, only to drop out unexpectedly, giving way to silence. We sat there in the dark for almost ten minutes, with nothing but the green LED on Mattin's laptop winking. Lifting the screen again, the powerful noise resumed, arcing into a high-pitched squeal, which dropped in volume again and again until but a whisper remained.

Ambarchi and Mattin returned for a marvelous duo performance. Echoing each of their sets from the night before, the guitarist and laptopper forged blistering structures that melted into one symphony of noise. Mattin's raspy thrusts of electronics and Ambarchi's assorted bleeps, clangs and wheezes tangled, bursting and colliding, bouncing and floating.

Time Out (New York). Nov. 22. 2003

Mattin+Margarida Garcia and Barry Weisblat
Anthology Film Archives;Sun16
Issue;Nov22
On the basis of recorded evidence, the field of electroacustic improvisation
might be viewed as being largely concentrated in capitals like Berlin, Tokyo
and London.Naturally, the world is a bigger, more tightly wired place than that:Two
impressive upstarters, Basque laptopper Mattin and Portuguese bassist Margarida Garcia,willoffer distinctive spins on the genre in a spate of appearances during the weeks ahead.Practically unknwon 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.

Mondo Sonoro (Barcelona). Nov. 2003

LEM Festival 2003
Lugar: Barrio de Gracia (Barcelona) Fecha: Octubre 2003 Estilo: experimental Público: cada vez más Promotor: Gracia Territori Sonor

Remarcable también fue..la desconcertante radicalidad de Mattin (cuyo silencio durante casi toda su estancia en el escenario fue una muestra de su actitud punk en un acto provocativo como pocos)