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

February 2015

Aftermath from Bologna reactions to

No No Nono No NO!

Venerdi 30 gennaio 2015 Xing e Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Bologna presentano l’evento unico No No Nono No NO! al Teatro Manzoni (Via De’ Monari 1/2 - Bologna) in apertura della serata della stagione sinfonica 2015.

No No Nono No NO! è il titolo della nuova composizione del musicista e compositore basco Mattin, commissionata da Xing in occasione del progetto RESISTENZA ILLUMINATA. Omaggio a Luigi Nono nel Settantesimo anniversario della Resistenza e della guerra di Liberazione 1945 – 2015. Cinque persone di diversa età ed estrazione prestano la propria voce per un'azione lanciata dalla platea del Teatro Manzoni, come preludio al programma della serata. L'opera di Luigi Nono, il suo impegno estetico e politico, forniscono lo spunto per questa nuova composizione di Mattin, un polemos corale che assembla frammenti testuali a discorsivi, brevi asserzioni e statements, che hanno caratterizzato la cultura del novecento nel dibattito tra realismo e formalismo, infuriando negli anni '30 nella discussione tra Ernst Block, Georg Lukàcs, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin e Theodor Adorno. Buona parte dell'esplorazione sonora di Mattin è radicata nel contrasto sonoro (rumore/silenzio) e contestuale (attenzione/distrazione), e trova in questa evocazione proattiva un impiego ambiguo delle nozioni di alienazione/straniamento, polarismo che ha contraddistinto quel dibattito lasciando una lunga scia problematica che, anche attraverso l'opera di Nono, si prolunga mal dissimulata fino ai nostri giorni.

con Gianluca Albertazzi, Isabella Mongelli, Filippo Pagotto, Andrea Ruggeri, Davide Tidoni
una commissione di Xing

all'interno di RESISTENZA ILLUMINATA. Omaggio a Luigi Nono nel Settantesimo anniversario della Resistenza e della guerra di Liberazione 1945 – 2015

Xing info: 051.331099  info@xing.it

Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Bologna biglietteria + info: 051.529019  boxoffice@comunalebologna.it

Biglietti:
presentando alla biglietteria una stampa del voucher scaricabile da qui si riceverà gratuitamente la card annuale “Resistenza Illuminata” valida per un ingresso ridotto alla serata di 10 euro, e sconti per gli altri appuntamenti del cartellone dedicato a Nono.

On 30th January, Xing and Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Bologna present the event No No Nono No NO! at Teatro Manzoni in Bologna.

No No Nono No NO!  is the title of the new composition of the basque musician and composer Mattin, commissioned by Xing on the occasion of the project RESISTENZA ILLUMINATA - A tribute to Luigi Nono on the 70th anniversary of the Resistance and Liberation war 1945 - 2015, a one-year long program coordinated by Bologna's Opera House, involving many organizations in town. Five people of different ages and backgrounds give their voices for an action launched among the audience of the Teatro Manzoni, as a prelude to the evening's program. The work of the italian composer Luigi Nono, his aesthetic and political commitment, provide the inspiration for this new composition by Mattin, a choral ‘polemos' that assembles fragments of textual discourse and short statements that characterized the culture of the twentieth century in the debate between realism and formalism. Specifically Mattin will be looking at the notion of alienation/strangement in the work of Nono.

Spain is Pain (playground magazine)

Como tercer vértice de ese triángulo de ejemplaridades de la repercusión que algunos de nuestros músicos experimentales vienen teniendo por ahí fuera podríamos citar al vasco nómada Mattin, agente discordante interesado en el software libre, el anti-copyright, la improvisación y el ruido (o el contraste silencio/ruido) como vías de experiencia y reflexión a menudo dirigidas a cuestionar las convenciones que vienen rigiendo la práctica de la improvisación como género, y a explorar los límites de la resistencia (física y psíquica) de su público a través de prácticas que podríamos tachar de confrontacionales y alienantes. Nada mejor que el artículo central que le dedicaba hace dos meses la revista The Wire para entrar en contacto con el curioso mundo de este punk airado y leído.

Seguirle la pista a la muy irregular discografía de Mattin cuesta, así que el que se crea interesado en las cosas de este hombre que acuda directamente al inventario que él mismo mantiene al día en su web. Para que te hagas una idea, durante el año pasado Mattin estuvo involucrado en más de una docena de lanzamientos, un par como colaborador del desaparecido Josetxo Anitua en Josetxo Grieta, hasta tres otras referencias como parte de Billy Bao (publicadas en Afterburn, Parts Unknown y Drone Errant, todos sellos extranjeros), otras dos como mitad -junto a Tim Goldie- de Deflag Haemorrhage/Haien Kontra (dos álbumes para Tochnit Aleph), y más como mano derecha de Philip Best en Consumer Electronics, o en colaboración con gentes como Eddie Prevost, Bruce Russell, Alan Courtis, Malatesta... El pasado febrero, el sello berlinés Rumpsti Pumsti (también tienda de discos consagrada al mundo más experimental) publicaba su último trabajo hasta la fecha, “Distributing Vulnerability To The Affective Classes”, disco que documenta la performance a-musical que Mattin y el japonés Taku Umani ofrecían a mediados del pasado diciembre en la sala Rigoletto de París.

Además de esas grabaciones, en el currículo más o menos reciente de Mattin destaca su papel como coeditor -junto a Anthony Iles- del libro “Noise & Capitalism”, recopilación de ensayos breves -de Eddie Prevost, Ben Watson, Ray Brassier, Nina Power o el propio Mattin- que exploran el rol de las músicas experimentales en relación al contexto socioeconómico en el que esas músicas se vienen produciendo, poniendo un especial interés en investigar los momentos de emancipación (emancipación de las pautas de conducta determinadas por un capitalismo que afecta a cada parcela de nuestras vidas) que pueden derivarse de prácticas como la improvisación y el ruido.

El libro, publicado en formato físico por Arteleku Audiolab, puede descargarse en formato PDF haciendo un click aquí. Merece la pena leérselo. Y si un día descubres que Mattin toca cerca de tu casa, acude. Servidor le ha visto algo así como una decena de veces, y el vasco siempre ha ofrecido un “concierto” distinto. Eso sí, avisamos de que en sus performances a menudo se le otorga más valor a la idea, al concepto que se explora, que a la propia música.

From Closer to Near Blog

Cuba Nuestra

Carlos Manuel Estefanía.
Noche de Ruidos en el Cervantes de Estocolmo

11 de Enero de 2010.Instituto Cervantes de Estocolmo, Charla-Concierto: "Ruido y Capitalismo". Foto: Germán Díaz Guerra

Comentando el coloquio-concierto Ruido y Capitalismo

Llegue in tanto temprano al Cervantes, con la idea de “hacer tiempo en su biblioteca” eran las 17: horas y 45 minutos, el concierto charla comenzaría oficialmente a las 18:30. Desafortunadamente la biblioteca ya estaba cerrada, por reparaciones, con una ciudad congelada no era cosa de volver a salir, así que me acomodé en el vestíbulo a leer y releer los libros que quería devolver ese día., a dar uso de la páginas que por poco interés o premura me habría saltado.

Fue la oportunidad de fijarme en el publico asistente al evento, conformado entre otros personajes por dos tres maestros, dos chilenas, una de las cuales conocía de antaño y un colombiano. Este último charlaba sobre la aplicación que hace entre sus alumnos y sin la complacencia de sus colegas suecos de la pedagogía de la liberación, de Paulo Freire, comunicándome sin quererlo su orientación hacia esa izquierda que siempre que solo aplica la liberación en un sentido, nunca contra el poder que ejerce sobre sus miembros en nombre del anticapitalismo el partido.

Por fin se inició el evento: sobre el estrado Alan Courtis, junto a otro “artista” de apellido sueco hacía su parte en la obra, un ruido ensordecedor.

Alan Courtis, derecha. Foto: Germá Díaz Guerra

mientras que Mattin con un micrófono, daba vueltas por el salón improvisando un discurso en el que alternaba una especie de descripción del estado de los espectadores, con gritos desgarradores, que no vendrían al caso.

Mattin. Foto: Germán Díaz Guerra

No pasaron muchos minutos sin que mis colegas chilenas se retiraran, no sin antes preguntarme una de ellas, la que ya conocía, si me quedaría para escuchar aquel “bodrio”.

Sin duda alguna los “músicos” habían logrado el primer objetivo de todo artista de vanguardia que se precie, provocar a sus, o a alguno de sus, espectadores.

Terminada esa sección la directora del Cervantes, Zoe Alameda presentó la actividad como la apertura del ciclo “Intensidades”, del que participaran artistas e intelectuales. Por cierto en la página del Cervantes se anuncia el ciclo con una palabra no precisamente española: Intensities, lo cual me parece una conseción innecesaria a la lengua inglesa, algo cada vez más común en los programas culturales, sobretodo televisivos,  que se generan en nuestra “Madre Patria”.

Irene Zoe Alameda, Directora del Cervantes presenta el ciclo que se inicia con la actividad de esta noche. Foto: Germán Díaz Guerra

A continuación se inició un dialogo entre Courtis y Mattin, sobre la relación entre el arte y el capitalismo, sobre la posibilidad de superar el capitalismo con los medios del arte. Un diálogo en el que se le daba participación al publico, oportunidad que aprovechó el profesor colombiano para exponer su rechazo inicial al evento y su curiosidad por la manera en que el capitalismo sería enfrentado por los artistas.

Courtis y Mattin debaten sobre creación artística y capitalismo. Foto. Germán Díaz Guerra

Courtis y Mattin comenzaron a responderle el hombre se levantó y se fue, por lo visto disgustado con un enfoque que se apartaba del típico manual leninista, perdiéndose el final, bastante ortodoxo que daba Mattin, el de que sería por una acción colectiva.

Continuó la charla, por momentos incoherente y casi una polémica entre Courtis y Mattin, cuando el primero aceptaba la existencia de una dimensión humana de la creación que no se sometía al capitalismo, mientras que el otro aseguraba, o daba la impresión de asegurarlo, seguramente corregirá esta impresión, de que el sistema lo perneaba todo, señalando como ejemplo que ellos recibía dinero por lo que estaban haciendo y que los asistentes, para poder estar presentes y disponer de ese tiempo también deberían haber creado previamente valores, bajo la normativa del dinero..

Por un momento la indefinición del capitalismo pareció centrarse en el uso del dinero, y en este sentido me pareció muy acertada la intervención de la directora como una asistente más , explicando, además de la tendencia que todos tenemos a maximizar nuestras ganancias, la importante del dinero como instrumento, como una símbolo o convención que ayuda en el proceso del intercambio de valores, y por supuesto un estadío superior al trueque, indicando que el mal no está en el dinero en si, sino en su conversión en un fin.

Por mi parte con el concierto charla se reavivaba en mi la preocupación que despiertan estos artistas que en busca de rupturas hacen lo mismo, que he visto hacer en Cuba, con todo y el totalitarismo imperante hace décadas, que a su vez era lo mismo que hacían las primeras vanguardias, al fines del siglo XIX y principios del XX.

Así se los hice notar a los creadores, cuestionando ruido que hacían, no tanto ruido físico , como ruido en el sistema capitalista, concretamente en sus códigos de creación cultural, aludiendo como ejemplo a las viejísimas grabaciones de Juan Blanco, el introductor de la música electroacústica en Cuba que, yo, que era mas joven que ellos, hoy les doblaría la edad, había escuchado en un país de la periferia como era mi isla, subrayando que lo que estaba presenciando no iba mas allá de los que se hacía a mediados del siglo pasado y talvez antes.

Juan Blanco (1919-2008) introductor en Cuba de la música electroacústica.

Alan Courtis se defendió diciendo que ellos no hacían música electroacústica, ni tampoco habían dicho que estuvieran haciendo algo nuevo, que ese tipo de música se hacía desde 1910.

Por su parte Mattin criticó a quienes sin haber leído, Noise & Capitalism, su libro , por cierto publicado en la lengua que algunos llaman del imperialismo,  lo criticaban.

Mattin, derecha, "haciendo ruido". Foto: Germán Díaz

No quise alargar mas el evento con una polémica personal con los artistas, aunque declaro en mi defensa que nunca declaré que ellos dijeran que lo que hacían era nuevo, ni tampoco me refería a su libro, sino concretamente a un espectáculo, no exento de carga ideológica, en esta caso anticapitalista, que paradójicamente a quienes había espantado era, presumiblemente, a los más anticapitalistas de los asistentes, los dos tres maestros sudamericanos.

Debo concederles que no se trataba de música electroacústica, si por ella se entiende obras compuestas por sonidos pregrabados o sintetizados, quizás en propiedad habría que hablar, dado el uso de computadoras al margen de los instrumentos rústicos que se empleaban, desde un arco hasta tiras de pegar, de música electrónica en su genero experimental, que de alguna manera sigue la huella del creador de la música concreta Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer, sólo que si aquel grababa previamente musicales y ruidos concretos, en este caso la producción del sonido, se hacía e improvisaba en vivo, ante el espectador. Incorporándose a ello desde el dialogo entre los artistas hasta la voz de la propia traductora que vertía sus palabras al sueco.

Alan Courtis. Foto: Germán Díaz Guerra

No se le puede negar merito a estos creadores, no importa lo incompresible, grotesco u ofensivo que resulte para muchos espectadores lo que hacen, es verdad que no son gestores de un género, sin embargo, me dan la impresión de que con mucha seriedad intentan reordenar los elementos de lo que hace hasta darle el sello personal que todo artista busca.

Otra cosa sería pretender subvertir el capitalismo con este medio, subtexto de lo que vimos este día en el Cervantes.

Sin lugar a dudas entre arte y capitalismo se da una relación muy parecida a la que existen entre; “rex cogitans” y “rex extensa” la pensamiento y materia, desde la percepción cartesiana, apenas se encuentran. Aunque cuando lo hacen es para beneficio de la segunda , en este caso del mercado que sabe como sacarle un máximo partido al arte auténtico y aunque también a lo que no lo es.

De ahí que el artista, que realmente lo es no pueda con su obra subvertir nada, mientras que el mercado sabrá sacarle partido al mismo con arte e instrumentalización política, lo que ocurre entre nosotros y la muerte, según Epicuro, que no nos concierne pues, “mientras existimos , la muerte no está presente”, en esto le doy la razón a mi colega Germán Díaz, presente en el evento, quien a la salida me comentaba que cuando el arte se mete a hacer política deja de ser arte.

Por lo demás no dejo de felicitar a la dirección del Cervantes por haber revitalizado la fría y oscura noche de Estocolmo con el ruido de unos artistas vocación creativa y provocadora, merece nuestro aplauso.

………………………

Pinche a continuación para escuchar  una entrevista hecha a Mattin  con motivo de la publicación del libro “Ruido y capitalismo”: Ars Sonora – 02 enero 2010

Instituto Cervantes de Estocolmo: Coloquio-concierto "Ruido y Capitalismo". Foto Germán Díaz Guerra

MATTIN / TAKU UNAMI - PARIS - 14/12/2009

I hate music

by Julien Skrobek

There are two wooden chairs on the stage, each of them bathed in the pool of light of a white spot. Mattin and Taku sit down and quietly look at the audience. As always with those two, no one knows what is coming. Their position resembles the one evoked on the Attention record, a favorite of mine. However, Taku is not holding a guitar, and as a matter of fact, there are no instruments on the stage. I think of what Mattin told me earlier about making 'simple things.' I must admit what they did tonight may be simple in its means, but it's surely quite complex in its implications.

After a while, they start sobbing. It is not clear at first if they are crying or laughing, so the audience sort of takes the easy way out and assumes they must be laughing. They take it lightly and some people are laughing too. However, the sobbing gets more intense, and thay start making the most heart-wrenching crying. I remember thinking they must be reminiscing over sad memories until the tears come to their eyes. The audience starts to feels uneasy. You can really feel it. All the laughing stops. You wouldn't laugh at someone crying in front of you, would you ? What would you do ? To come on stage and comfort them or ask them what is wrong would probaly interrupt the performance. How would they take it ? We will never know, because nobody dared to ask them anything. After all, this is a performance that we are watching. Two men are focusing on their inner darkness enough to make themselves cry in front of an audience, and this audience is paying for it.

The performance works on many levels. Sonically, the voices are no different from instruments. Mattin and Taku's voices are quite different, so I am reminded of two reed players with different tones. Mattin cries like a baby, slowly rising waves, while Taku's body is completely shaken by sobbing, making a more percussive sound in a way. It took me a while to realize that this actually worked as music. My neighbor told me this was better than Phil Minton as far as abstract vocal performance was concerned. Now I don't know about Phil Minton (I sure hate that Toot record though) but this allowed me to take this in as music and realize it was some kind of free music after all. I have read and heard so many people about how Ayler or Coltrane could make their saxophones cry, I guess I was ready to hear some music in this crying tonight.

The effort of concentration is visible upon their faces, until another peal of crying can be brought up. You can't escape the fact that those men are focusing on crying, and this puts the whole idea of sadness at the forefront in the venue.

Mattin has tears in his eyes, but I think this is mostly because of the white spot directed at him. Maybe the absence of real abundant tears shows the artificiality of the performance to some extent, but it doesn't undermine the fact that the sound comes from the feelings they can bring up and arouse within the audience. To some extent, the sound of crying is severed from the act. I'm sure they are not so sad, or at least not for the same reasons and not to the point of crying so much, but the sounds they produce communicates a feeling even though it is decontextualized. I am very impressed by the amount of ideas they brought up with, well, nothing but ideas.

This lasts for an hour. Some people have left, others seem devastated by sadness. There is even one guy who is crying himself. At the back of the venue, a couple of girls are giggling nervously, and I can't help but think that they are trying to get rid of this strange feeling they got.

What would you do if you saw somebody crying in the metro ? Either you'd comfort them, or you'd ignore them. Here this is an impossible alternative. No one will walk on stage, and everybody paid to see this, making for a very uncomfortable but questioning situation.

After an hour, I start clapping (as Mattin and Taku had instructed me to do) soon followed by the rest of the audience. The end. Later on at the bar I can hear Mattin explaining to someone that he had asked me to clap after an hour, because the guy thought it was so rude of me to interrupt this crying !
Very very strong performance.

Billy Bao - Paris - 06/17/09

I hate music

by Julien Skrobek

Billy Bao is playing at a venue called Les Instants Chavirés in the Montreuil, in the suburbs of Paris.

In the absence of Xabier Erkizia, Billy Bao is playing as duo tonight, between Mattin (alectric guitar and computer) and Alberto Lopez (drums).

The venue is in complete darkness. The only sources of light are Mattin's laptop's screen and the leds from amplifiers.

The players are not on stage but in the room itself, on ground level with the audience. However, most people unconsciously decide to stand on the stairs or around the bar, which are all elevated places. As a result, the band is lower than the audience and most people are watching from above...

Most people are wearing earplugs because they believe Billy Bao is going to play very loud. Some are hiding behind the pillars of the room because they have read some reviews of previous performances by Mattin and don't want to be asked to take part (riding a bike, asking questions, being thrown objects at...)

The music begins with cymbal crashes and guitar explosions. There are variable amounts of silences between those explosions which forbids me to construct them as a rock'n'roll start, although I clearly recognize the elements.

Those crashes are followed by a longer silence. After a while, Mattin crouches to reach his computer on the floor and starts working on a sound. Slowly, frequencies emerge from the amplifier. I think the guitar is fed through the computer into the amps and the computer serves to filter the sound, but I'm not sure.

This part is quite beautiful, reminiscent of what can be heard on White Noise with Radu Malfatti from the part of Mattin. Very high and very low frequencies emerge from the silence, never becoming clearly perceptible without a time of adaptation.

After a new burst of sound from the guitar and the drums, the stage lights up and Philémon, musician and crew member of the venue, appears holding a piece of paper. Mattin switches off the amplifier and starts playing a very basic rock'n'roll riff while Alberto provides a minimal drum accompaniment with short rolling toms and snare hits.

The text read on stage is Billy Bao's artist contract. What, Who, Why, Where, How much, we get to hear every detail of the financial transaction between the contractors. The contrast between the music being played, quite straight although hushed rock'n'roll, and the words works fine, because the music, in a mostly traditional form, is clearly an accompaniment to the contract, and not the other way round. So does it mean that this kind of playing has become over the years an accessory to contracts and consumation ?

When Philémon has finished reading the contract, Mattin and Ernesto immediately launch a long noise improvisation.

Ernesto is playing very fast, it is exhausting just to watch him ! At the moment I tell myself he is a drummer with much energy and focus. Mattin is playing the guitar and it is definetly filtered throught he computer as his sound is incredible. The strumming is completely unperceptible and all the sounds bleed into each other to form a mass of noise. What is striking is that the sound is never harsh nor agressive, just a loud beautiful noise. Dense fabric, rich texture, whatever: it's good noise. This part lasts longer than the others so it tends to form a piece of its own, with Ernesto varying his approach ont he drums, never setting into a fully rythmic mode, and Mattin slowly altering the texture of the mass of sound he has generated.

Many people in the audience quit the earplugs, realizing it's not really that loud. It's noise music but it doesn't attack you or your ears, it just works better loud. Mattin moves around a lot, changes the position of the amps, listens to the sound coming out of them, works on the equalization: all technical decisions that keep the music moving. The music ends when the two have reached a peak in fulfilling the sound spectrum. Then they start packing. It is not clear for a moment if it's over, but it is when someone shouts « lights ».

The audience moves to the bar or outside for a smoke. Not much political or conceptual discussions, what I seem to be hearing the most is that it was fucking good noise.

Comment at Troniks Noise Forum on Mattin at No Fun 2009

Also of note I think Mattin really ruled, as he did with his intense show with Wiese here in NYC a last year. Apart from the performative presence of the musician's body, the other thing totally lost in new noise is true Confrontation a la early Whitehouse, Intrinsic Action, and most recently and intensely the terrorizing of Slogun - all artists who implicate both the crowd and themselves(in quite different ways obviously) in the lyrical aggressing which was the essence of true punk, dada, etc. - and I see Mattin working all alone(at least from what I know in the US right now) very much in this tradition successfully in an entirely opposite, new way. He had that entire room of wastoid noise freeks under his thumb silenced 100% for 15-20 mins. - you could hear every whisper and can't hesitate comparing his turnin the lights on to no-nonsense TG live as happened here last month with their return tour. Also really felt his sideways positioning in relationship to/and addressing where he performed at his laptop just seconds before, and thus suggesting confusedly either an analyst(or perhaps himself-as-analyst or 'consciousness-itself' at work in his own head in the moment) OR the crowd's 'thought' takin the piss outa his OWN set was a really interesting and a very intelligent gesture, and sure a lot of you dudes admit it or not felt many of the criticisms he had but have never had the balls to spit it out...whether its John Slogun or Mattin, a little 'Fuck-You' is definitely a healthy killer thing, Bravo!

from NeverTellMeTheOdds.org messageboard regarding Mattin show in Pittsburgh:


stabbedintheface posted this on Feb 14th, 2009 at 11:40:07 pm
SERIOUSLY BEST SHOW. THIS IS IN THE TOP 10 SHOWS ALREADY. Anyone who
didnt come fucking missed out. Ovens says "better than monster trucks"

I dont even want to write down everything that happened yet, but this
was a breath of fresh air and fucking true FUN AND POWER

Wildcat! posted this on Feb 14th, 2009 at 11:58:15 pm
Mattin's set was unreal. i didn't know even know what was happening
most of the time. scream therapy + choose your own adventure = noise
orgy.

stabbedintheface posted this on Feb 14th, 2009 at 11:59:54 pm
PILES OF FUCKING SHIT BEING CONSTRUCTED

stabbedintheface posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 12:00:34 am
SEGWAY OFFICER MATTIN COLLABORATION

scratch that

MATTIN/EVERYONE COLLABORATION

esoteric posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 03:48:34 am
this was fucking amazing. who was taping it? that better get uploaded
to something.

chuckleberry posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 04:17:35 am
So weird. So awesome. So confusing.

Best MJ set I've seen in awhile.

Good job Ed.

PUNKNEVERDIE!!! posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 06:56:11 am
the set by the food truck outside was pretty tight

Ken Kaminski posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 07:05:02 am
I bought a fudgsicle.

stabbedintheface posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 10:40:50 am
i went to a noise show and since all of the musical boundaries had
been broken, i assumed all social boundaries disappeared too so i
murdered someone and everyone cheered

hapahaole posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 11:00:41 am
great show! imprax!

ZOMBIEw0lfG0D posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 01:26:21 pm
so fucking good
Johnsen and Tusk killed it

Mattin's "colab" was the most insane thing i have seen since i saw
dressed in full half truth gear

jmadd... posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 01:39:29 pm
so how was this?

jmadd... posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 01:39:45 pm
did mattin do his screamo act?

adam_macgregor posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 01:48:26 pm
This was fantastic, indeed. Ups to Reeves for his tag-team performance.

I recorded some of the show - assuming the performers are cool with
it, I would share.

Mattin is a real nice guy too.

Vin posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 02:17:04 pm
Bummed I missed this to go see the Slicks instead, but sounds pretty
interesting and fun.

Ryan Emmett posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 02:47:15 pm
Segway Officer got to applause.

Easily one of my top 20 shows of all time. What I felt at first could
be forced, predictable and maybe even pretentious soon turned into the
exact opposite of those things. Putting my cell phone on the tower and
not really knowing if it was going to be safe or not felt awesome.
Although... in the end I gathered it back up. I'm a slave to the man
:-(

stabbedintheface posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 02:53:38 pm
while you so called "punks" were sitting on your dicks you missed the
punkest thing that has happened or will happen in all of 2009.

carrier posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 02:55:12 pm
straight up ruled

stabbedintheface posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 03:27:54 pm
Highlights:

-Mattin saying that the set up was too conventional and wanted to
bring the speakers downstairs. Chuckleberry and I immediately grabbed
the speakers, unplugged them and brought them into the basement.
Mattin asked we bring them back (which at first we said no) so we
could bring it down while the noise was still going.

-bringing the whole soundsystem, laptop and connected cables, while
still blaring noise, down into the basement

-Mattin screaming into his laptop, the mixer, garbage cans, etc

-Mattin puts the laptop in Reeves hands and they both are screaming
into the laptop together (in the basment)

-Chuckleberry and others holding the speakers and swinging them around
so the sound was constantly changing

-covering everything in a tarp, stacking tables, chairs, ladders, cups
and garbage cans into giant garbage pyramids, while Reeves/Segway
officer continued to hold the laptop (in the basement)

-Speakers in garbage cans

-putting garbage cans on top of speakers upside down, and then putting
cups, change, keys, and finally beer on the garbage cans so it all
vibrated on top of it.

-Mattin still screaming

-Slow clap for Reeves performance at the end. Everyone chillin in the basement

-Hugging Mattin

This is exactly what I want in a noise show.

intense_andy posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 03:34:55 pm
stabbedintheface posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 02:53:38 pm
while you so called "punks" were sitting on your dicks you missed the
punkest thing that has happened or will happen in all of 2009.

LOL. has anyone pierced their ear before?

stabbedintheface posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 03:37:11 pm
that will be the second punkest theng

dan letson posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 04:30:26 pm
damn. this sounds cock-esp level. missin' u ~.

chuckleberry posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 05:02:10 pm
another thing that should be mentioned is that whatever program mattin
had running on his computer was called "almost whitehouse"

ZOMBIEw0lfG0D posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 06:34:06 pm
hahahahahahahaaaa

carrier posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 06:41:21 pm
it was supercollider, right?

MongeziFezza posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 07:17:42 pm
yo carrier, i would like u to have one of my silk-screen prints if u
would like one...in appreciation for playing the show.

MongeziFezza posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 07:18:59 pm
oh and thanks to everyone for coming. this was a blast.

stabbedintheface posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 07:24:31 pm
thanks ed!

chuckleberry posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 07:28:01 pm
it could have been supercollider. it just looked like C to me, ted
might know. or reeves.

carrier posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 07:32:06 pm
thanks, ed. i'd love that.

i'm pretty sure i saw the words supercollider at the top of the screen.

chuckleberry posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 07:36:19 pm
a google search for "mattin supercollider" brings up him posting on an
SC forum, so i guess that settles it.

Ken Kaminski posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 08:01:18 pm
Almost Whitehouse? I don't remember the subject of rape coming up even
once. What's the Spanish word for rape?

strangenotes posted this on Feb 15th, 2009 at 10:11:12 pm
yeah, this was so fucking great.

Karin Schneider & Mattin's performance at Transmission Gallery (Glasgow)
at Melanie Gilligan's show.
26th April 2008

As a participant it struck me as a lot like being on ketamine at a free rave, but with the difference that at a free rave nobody asks you to vocalise into a microphone your impression of taking a painful shit. as a whole it was like a free improv version of tino sehgal, with a dantean crowd of strangers and acquaintances circling or vegetating in the empty white space of the gallery while performing reichian 'loops' of activity; some transient and free/doomed to observe while orbiting (like me) others slumped at the side of the gallery gazing into mirrors and mouthing 'i am so wonderful' to themselves, and a host of variations on futility including counting to 600, climbing up and down a ladder and laughing unnervingly at other participants/victims of this incrementally developing system as they passed by. each participant was let into the gallery one at a time from the street, with no foreknowledge of what would ensue (hence the feeling of having been slipped an unknown drug) and, after wandering disoriented through the developing human flora and fauna for a few terrifying/fascinating moments, being lead into a curtained backroom where Karin and Mattin would tersely assign them a task to perform.

once released back into the tank, the visitor/participant became actor/voyeur, some immobilised flat on their backs, others, like myself, having to perform more obviously to the rest of the zoo. Someone was shouting out at regular intervals 'Stop talking!' though it was unclear if this was a response to any particular act of communication, while a woman at a microphone was making odd 'huh'-ing noises (I found out later that she was supposed to be evoking some kind of erotic moan or groan, perhaps a counterpoint to my anguished - and over-played - pantomime of excretion.) The feeling was one of confinement and also of ethical ambivalence - should one play along or refuse, talk to the other participants or get on with one’s task? Acquaintances and friends seemed estranged by their roles and hard to approach, the strangers oddly more intimate and easier to address than moments before outside on the street. Like a continually evolving Milgram Experiment, one not only was confronted with one's willingness to obey commands, and forced to examine the basis for this, but also, again depending on the role assigned to one, to overcome embarrassment or scruples about participation and articulation in such a confined and uncanny space.

Inevitably, as well as reflections on the paranoia/possibility inherent in this situation, one considered possibilities of solidarity and exchange with other prisoners/players; thinking of Melanie's works but also of my own adventures in late capitalist 'fun' houses such as raves and clubs one couldn't help the almost de rigeur feeling of being in a microcosm of post-fordist immanence, a continuum of watching and acting in which critical distance and escape are impossible, solidarity hard to imagine, and the confines of the system radically indeterminate - ie - what part of the human 'events' unfurling around one as if from a computer code were scripted, and what part improvised or simply diversions? Was the girl who had been drifting round in narrow circles in the far left hand corner now chatting on the phone pretending to be talking to someone or was this her 'real life' imposing itself onto the queasily magical space? Was Lisa still 'on script' as she started to rove around the gallery posing questions and, later, clapping us into clapping the show over, or was she wildcatting? And, more uncanny, had they allotted us roles on the basis of their knowedge of our personalities, or had our roles been arbitrarily assigned, acting instead as a rorschach-like prop prompting us to confront the habitual attitudes and behaviours which constituted our identitities?

I was struck by how much I maintained my interest in - and hence obedience to - the game by analysing it, my passivity while orbiting and 'taking in' the event (of which I was of course one component, like a moon in an orrery) making continued repetition of the assigned role endurable. Critique as the highest form of integration.

The proximity of 'normal' behaviour and assigned 'routines' was one immediate revelation, intensifying the performance's power as a discloser of convention and role play. Having determined that there were no more new players coming onto the 'stage' of the gallery through the curtain from the street outside, I was discussing with a friend whether we should make a break for it and if indeed the performance’s architects would ever call a halt to it. (It had been unfolding for an hour and a half at this point and I was, having been inside for 40 minutes, starting to feel weary of my Dantean circulation). Ambiguity was so deep that when one of the former door persons called out 'enough' or words to that effect I felt that this too should be treated as a scripted speech and subject to assessment. It was simultaneously scripted and sincere, yet another moment in the game and a statement which, if followed, would at once confirm the hold of and dissolve the game. Did one want to stop on these terms? And would it be right, given the contract between performers and scripters, to call it off or make an escape? A friend of mine had already run out screaming 'I can't take anymore' but it seemed stagey to me.

I reckoned I knew Mattin and Karin well enough that they wouldn't script in a determinate ending, and I later found out that the performer who called 'enough' had been left absolute discretion as to when to do so. As it transpired we were all spared a long night in an abstracted, sensory deprivation version of the Big Brother cells, but it would have been intriguing to see how we guinea pigs would have responded to an even more drawn out incarceration.

As the performance collapsed into applause, a little predictable and yet appropriately stagey in its own right, I remembered the closing scene of David Fincher's The Game, as we stood around discussing with strangers and (other) acquaintances our roles and complementing each other on our performances ('you were supposed to be taking a shit? i would never have guessed!'; 'you were brilliant at “stop talking”, a real natural, etc). Throughout the piece, or at least for some time before I entered the room, the artist who commissioned it, Melanie, sat in the centre of the room typing into a laptop. Looking at the screen one discovered it was not covered in rows and rows of 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy', like the type written screeds of Nicholson's frustrated writer in The Shining, but rather contained a detailed real time transcription of all the events transpiring in the room - and, contra to my impression/projection during the performance (another rorschach moment of self-revelation through misrecognition) Melanie had not known her role in advance anymore than the other players. This had been her assigned task, and she had carried it out, apparently, quite sedulously.

I haven't read it over yet but all participants were given printed out copies of her screed on completion of the piece and perhaps are now finding out how, from a central - panoptic? – point, the madhouse/playroom/prison appeared to its passive architect.

The other devisers of the piece never saw any of it, remaining behind the black curtains at the back of the gallery, and the whole event was undocumented but for Melanie's report and the testimony of participants such as this one.

Kafka's ‘In the Penal Colony’ came to mind often during the performance, and the only once broken paragraph of Melanie's report resembled not only The Shining's scroll but the flesh of the harrowed convict in that story. But of course here the machine was activated by its subjects/objects and their movements were at once page and writing. Like Agambenian sonderkommando, the victims were victimisers, perpetuating the game. This thought, naturally, was hard to shake off as one navigated the city-wide 'art safari' which the GI festival was pleased to bill itself as - one more bourgeois bohemian circulating in the enchanted game of art appreciation/production/criticism on which this city (like thousands of others) has floated its now seriously stymied chances for survival.

As the tramps stumble scabrous along Sauchiehall street and the hordes of girls (un)dressed as policemen disgorge from stretched limos onto the teeming beaches of saturday night, the looping implications of the performance unroll in my head, up to and including the recognition, as the closing night party hosts thank the corporate sponsors for their generosity, that this game accurately reflects the sense of passivity and complicity which already structures 'artistic' production in the wider open prison.

Not news, but something made news by this piece - one criterion for a valid or at least half critical art work in the age of compulsory participation?

CODA

This and Melanie's various other performances taken together made my weekend a bit like going to Gilliganworld, a themepark/forest of symbols where commodity forms corresponded (with each other, and with the weird spires and gothic towers and about-to-be-destroyed privatised ex-council blocks of the surrounding skyline) via the ventriloquism of actors embedded among doctored Piranesi prints in Transmission's 4th floor gallery. All the way home on the train a Volosinovian Scottsman gave vent to his exteriorised interior monologue (including the phrase or judgement 'ass juice') and the conductress hurried by declaring aloud to all in the buffet car 'that's the last time I wear these knickers!'

All around the performance is breaking down into a self-burlesquing corporate crisis, while performance-relatedly the failed performance carries on being performed, working by breaking (like a Virgin railway), while over and over again nothing happens. Now, however, as the workers strike in Graingemouth for the first time in 50 years, and the North is hit by a Rock, one can't but wonder how long this particular form of metastable crisis has to last.

Mattin / Taku Unami / Jean-Luc Guionnet Dínamo

Festival de música exploratoria - Barcelos

Dínamo - Festival de música exploratoria - Barcelos

Sábado 26 de Julio.

Biblioteca Municipal

Mattin / Taku Unami / Jean-Luc Guionnet

En la segunda noche del festival Dinamo y tras la actuación de Anette Krebs, la organización del festival nos manda desalojar el auditorio. Pasados unos minutos nos comunican que se podrá ir entrando en la sala de “uno en uno” dejando un intervalo de tiempo entre cada. Yo entro el segundo, la sala está casi a oscuras, solo ilumina sobre el escenario una pequeña jardinera roja a los pies de Taku Unami. Mattin (que espera tras la puerta) me dice ” Para participar de este concierto, tienes que caminar en círculos alrededor de Taku”.

Bajo las escaleras y veo un cuerpo estático sentado en la derecha del escenario. Comienzo a realizar mi orden y al poco va entrando más público: Una chica comienza a tararear una canción en el fondo del escenario, otra desde las escaleras ríe intermitentemente, alguien aplaude, veo un brazo extendido con una mano cornuda. Taku con el brazo escayolado por completo comienza a tocar la guitarra de manera muy rápida, como un intérprete de heavy metal, en los momentos en los que descansa una chica tiene la orden de darle un masaje, alguien comienza a dar unos fuertes golpes contra una puerta al tiempo se escucha un vómito fingido desde el anfiteatro. Jean Luc Gionett empieza a tocar desde el backstage algunas notas con el saxofón y es reclamado a gritos por un hombre, un puño alzado desde el escenario, alguien sacando fotos desde la silla que debería de ocupar Mattin, donde se encuentra su ordenador que es amplificado y desamplificado. Tras un rato de cumplimiento circular de estas ordenes se escucha “What are you doing?” no hay réplica. Mas tarde la pregunta fue de nuevo formulada y tuvo respuesta “Music!!!”

Pasado un rato algunos que descuidaban sus ordenes, se sentaban en las butacas y observaban el espectáculo. El organizador el evento se coloca de espaldas al escenario y en bucle repite esta frase “This concert will only finish when everyone agrees, otherwise it will go on” yo me siento satisfecho del concierto y dejo el escenario, veo como Mattin lo observa desde el centro del palco. Tras un tiempo la gente que continua participando decide manifestarse diciendo “i agree”. Cuando fue de forma unánime el concierto se consideró por terminado.

De que habíamos formado parte en aquel espacio de tiempo?
Fue rota una rutina, un ritual construido, mediante el uso de uno nuevo creado para la ocasión. Mientras que el primero forma ya parte de los arquetipos sociales que nos ha tocado vivir: esperando todos a que el concierto comience, permaneciendo atentos a lo que ocurre o interaccionando con el contexto adecuado para ese espacio y cuando nos toca, aplaudimos a los intérpretes. El segundo se configura como revulsivo, observamos que hay una orden, un mandato que podemos o no acatar, pero solo si lo aceptamos formaremos parte del espectáculo. Fue curioso observar como en gran medida cumplíamos nuestro objetivo de la manera mas precisa que conocíamos, es posible que quisiésemos formar parte de aquello, al fin y al cabo era divertido e interesante, la gente parecía disfrutar. Formábamos parte de una idea diferente de cultura y espectáculo. Una reinterpretación de W.Benjamin por parte de Mattin “Una cultura desnuda de aplicaciones prácticas y destructora de derecho. Una cultura que no se pueda definir en términos de la propiedad intelectual, porque es intrínsecamente colectiva. Una cultura que constantemente esta destrozando cualquier noción individualista. Una cultura trituradora de egos, unos egos que nunca pueden recomponerse para volver a estar solos”. Y de hecho creo que es interesante pensar acerca de nuestra noción individualista en aquellos momentos. Hay una identidad (en este caso Mattin) que nos da unas instrucciones, este mandato podemos entenderlo como “dictatorial”, porque no hemos podido decidir nuestra acción….. al cabo de un rato podemos pensar en nuestras libertades individuales mientras que realizamos nuestra función, nuestras libertades a la hora de improvisar sobre esta función… es posible que aquí exista una analogía con las libertades de un improvisador. ¿ que margen de acción libre y directa tienen los improvisadores? En la actualidad ciertas corrientes dentro de la improvisación han tenido tiempo para crear una ortodoxia, una serie de ataduras formales, que no separan mucho el papel del espectador girando en círculos, del músico que pierde ese gran campo de acción en pro de la caricatura de estilo.

No pretendo entender este espectáculo como definitivo como “arte total”, al contrario (citando a Mattin de nuevo) lo quier entender como una “Praxis sin construir”. Creo que los límites de las instrucciones de Mattin no eran absolutas no estaban del todo definidas, mas bien ciertas reglas internas eran las que nos obligaron a ser cuidadosos con nuestra función. la reflexión de lo allí sucedido hace frágil nuestra comprensión, tiende al debate y a la duda, eso es para mí lo maravilloso. El “estar de acuerdo” unánime, conserva la libertad que nos permite acabar con el juego cuando nosotros deseamos.

“La industria cultural tiene la tendencia a transformarse en un conjunto de protocolos y justamente por ello en irrefutable profeta de lo existente. Entre los escollos de la falsa noticia individualizable y de la verdad manifiesta la industria cultural se mueve con habilidad repitiendo el fenómeno tal cual, oponiendo su opacidad al conocimiento y erigiendo como ideal el fenómeno mismo en su continuidad omnipresente”

Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno
Dialéctica del Iluminismo

Miguel Prado

Septiembre 08

Anti-Copyright

English:

Dínamo - Festival de música exploratoria - Barcelos

Saturday the 26th, July.

Municipal Library.

Mattin / Taku Unami / Jean-Luc Guionnet

At Dinamo festival's second night and after a performance by Anette Krebs, the festival organisation ask us to leave the auditorium. After some minutes they tell us that we can enter the room "one at a time" leaving an interval between each. I enter second, the auditorium is almost dark, only illuminated by a little lamp on the stage right at Taku Unami's feet. Mattin (who waits after the door) tells me "to participate in this concert, you have to walk in cirles around Taku".

I go down stairs and I see a static body sitting on the right side of the stage. I begun to realize my part and after little time more audience is entering: a girl begins to sing a song at the back of the stage, another one laughs intermittently from the stairs, somebody clap his hands, I see an extended arm with a hand making the sign of the horns. Taku, with his right arm on a sling begins to play his guitar very fast, like a heavy metal guitarist. When he's resting, a girl has to give him a massage on the back, somebody begins to knock on a door while a fake vomit sound is heard from the amphitheater. Jean-Luc Guionnet begins to play from the backstage with his saxophone and somebody calls him shouting, a man on stage with his fist raised, someone is taking pictures of the chair that Mattin should be occupying; there his laptop is amplified and quietened. After a while of circular adherence to this orders we hear somebody saying "What are you doing?" without reply. Later on the question was asked again and it was answered: "Music!!!".

After a while some people neglected their orders, they sat down on the stools and observed the spectacle. The event organizer says, turning his back to the stage, "This concert will only finish when everyone agrees, otherwise it will go on". I feel satisfied with the concert and left the stage, I see Mattin observing from the center of the stall seats. After some time the people that continues to participate decides to manifest saying "I agree". When it was unanimous the concert was considered ended.

What was it that we participated on that period of time?
A routine was broken, a ritual constructed through the use of a new one created for the occasion. While the first is part of the social archetypes that we have to live: everyone waiting for the concert to begin, remaining attentive to what is happening or interacting with the adequate context to that space and when it's our turn, clapping our hands to the interpreters. The second is configured as a revulsive, we observe that there is an order, a command that we can obey or not, but only accepting it we become part of the show. I was curious to see that, mostly, we fulfilled our objective in the most precise manner that we knew; it's possible that we wanted to become part of it, after all it was funny and interesting; the people seem to enjoy themselves. We were part of a different idea of culture and spectacle. A reinterpretation of W. Benjamin by Mattin: "A culture naked from practical utilization and destroyer of law. A culture that can't be defined in terms of intellectual property, because it's intrinsically collective. A culture that is constantly tearing apart any individualistic notion. A culture that tears egos apart, egos that can never recompose themselves to be alone again"(1). And I think that it's interesting to think about our individualistic notion in that moments. There's an identity (in this case Mattin) that gives us some instructions, that command we can understand as "dictatorial", because we couldn't decide our action... After a while we can think in our individual freedoms while we realize our function, our freedoms at the time of improvising over that function... It's possible that an analogy with the freedoms of an improviser exists here. What degree of freedom and directness have the action of the improvisers? Today, certain currents among improvisation had had time to to create an orthodoxy, a series of formal constraints, that don't separate much the role of the spectator walking in circles from the music that loses that great field of action on the caricature of style.

I don't pretend to understand this spectacle as definitive "total art", quite the contrary (quoting Mattin again) I want to understand it as a "unconstituted praxis". I think that the limits of the instructions that Mattin gave us weren't absolute and totally defined, moreover certain internal rules were the ones that compelled us to be careful with our function. The reflection of what happened there makes our comprehension fragile, tends to debate and doubt; that's the wonderful thing for me. The unanimous "agree", keeps the freedom that allows us to finish the game when we want to.

"The cultural industry has the tendency to transform itself in a set of protocols and because of that in irrefutable prophet of what exists. Among the reefs of the fake individualizing news and the manifest truth the cultural industry moves aptly repeating the phenomenon as is, opposing its opacity to knowledge and erecting as an ideal the own phenomenon in its omnipresent continuity"

Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno
Dialectic of Enlightenment

Miguel Prado

September 08

Anti-Copyright

(1) Mattin - Anti-CCopyright: hacia una cultura desnuda (http://www.mattin.org/essays/Anti-CCopyright.html, in spanish)

Thanks to Roberto Mallo for the traslation

IMPROJAZZ (FRANCE)

Jean-Luc Guionnet / Seijiro Murayama / Ray Brassier/Mattin : live at NPAI Festival, Niort 2 August 2008

Si je devais désigner le plus grand concert du festival, et au-delà, ce serait celui-ci sans aucun doute parce qu’il ont su créer de l’incompréhensible. On pourrait parler de minimalisme : Seijiro Murayama avec une caisse claire amplifiée et un tom basse ; Jean Luc Guionnet devant un  maigre dispositif electroacoustique, Mattin debout, silencieux, le visage dans son laptop ouvert, RB guitare à plat sur les genoux égrène les cordes au médiator avec une lourdeur de frappe qui fait de chaque son une rencontre, sans retour, un choc tragique qui revient sans cesse égal à lui-même. Le concert, je l’apprendrai ensuite, est organisé en quatre parties égales, et chaque musicien joue pendant deux des quatre sans que les autres sachent quand. Jean Luc Guionnet reste dans des grésillements qui répondent aux coups de Brassier. Seijiro Murayama va de grattements de la peau de sa caisse claire avec un sur fil d’acier à des coups soudains à pleine puissance, et Mattin pousse trois ou quatre de ces hurlements sonorisés par son ordinateur dont il a le secret. Le dernier, long  comme un cauchemar, impose sa marque au concert. Ray Brassier, qui n’est pas du tout guitariste mais philosophe, a choisi de ne pas profiter du micro voix devant lui. La concentration des protagonistes était totale, à la limite de la tétanie pour Brassier. C’était de l’inouï, du pas-formulé, de l’ouverture sans tricherie sur ce qui ne s’ouvre pas. Au delà on ne va pas, il y ont touché et on a senti le temps bouger.         

Vota

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En el Villa de Bilbao dieron fuego al escenario y les multaron con 150 euros. / MAR SECO

NUEVO ALBUM

'Dialectics Of Shit'

Parts Unknown Records

Este grupo atiende como Billy Bao porque así se llama su líder, quien informa: «Nos juntamos en Bilbao a finales de 2003. Bilbao cada vez da mas asco y es mejor hacer algo creativo con tanta frustración. Bilbao se está muriendo y alguien tiene que decirlo». No se queda ahí la cosa. Al ser inquirido sobre si pretenden molestar al oyente, replica el portavoz: «Hacemos lo que hacemos y si a molestar le llamas tratar de romper con estereotipos, pues tú, como crítico de música, demuestras ser otro ejemplo de la conservadora multitud que hay en Bilbao». ¡Glups!

Se rumorea que Billy Bao es popular en Japón, pero no. «Tenemos repercusión sobre todo en USA. Allí hemos sacado el EP en S-S Records y el LP en Parts Unknown porque los sellos lo pidieron. Y sí, allí estamos arrasando en la escena. Aquí no nos conoce ni Dios. No nos importa. Creemos en lo que hacemos y sabemos que estamos haciendo Historia». Y publicando prolíficos como conejos. «Mientras nos sigan pidiendo discos seguiremos sacándolos», sentencia Billy Bao. «Hemos acabado otro LP: 'MAY 08'. Aún más oscuro y bestia. Puro veneno».

«Asqueroso Getxo sound»

Estos miembros laboran. «Uno da clases en el conservatorio, otro es repartidor, otro trabaja puliendo metales y otro en la prostitución». Han pasado por combos tipo Josetxo Grieta (noise rock), La Grieta («asqueroso Getxo sound», Billy Bao dixit), Ornitorrinkus (poesía), Los Tupendos (rockabilly), La Secta (garaje)... Entre sus influencias enumeran a Eskorbuto, Vulpess, Whitehouse, Stooges, Brainbombs, Fushitsusha, The Flying Luttenbachers o Loty Negarti, y ante la duda hemos comprobado su existencia, ¿eh?

En tiempos recientes han lanzado tres referencias de rock ruidoso menos vanguardista de lo que barruntábamos. El portavoz las disecciona. El LP 'Dialectics Of Shit' es un «trabajo concebido especialmente para el formato LP. Todos los temas duran la perfecta duración rocanrolera de 3 minutos y muestran a un Billy Bao tan salido como cabreado. Riffs clásicos stoogianos se repiten desesperadamente hasta convertirse en puto ruido no sin pasar por los Brainbombs. ¡Tu tocadiscos se ha roto!, te dice constantemente Billy Bao, y si no se ha roto, ¡te lo voy a joder yo! Después de media hora exacta del punk más bestia, primitivo y conceptual te encontrarás con la sensación de que tu vida es una mierda».

Nos mola el maxi de 'Fuck Separation'. «En el contexto vasco, el título puede parecer provocador. Y sí, es verdad que a Billy Bao, como a otros muchos punkis, le da asco el concepto de nación con fronteras que delimitan y deciden quién está dentro y quién fuera. Pero el punk también tiene sus fronteras y limitaciones. 'Fuck Separation' trata de romper el concepto de canción punk como unidad con principio y final. Billy Bao se adapta al formato EP con 2 temas de 10 minutos que se rompen a sí mismos: el que empieza en la cara A acaba en la cara B, y viceversa».

Y en el curioso 'Accumulation' «otra vez nos encontramos a Billy Bao adaptándose al formato, en este caso al single. 10 temas de un minuto cada uno comprenden esta acumulación de intensidad y mala hostia. Empezando por la minimalista en plan art-punk '1' (una nota, una palabra, un elemento de batería, un minuto) y acabando en la free-grindcoriana '10', donde Billy Bao ya no sabe contar y la cosa se desmadra totalmente. Vamos, que al final de este single lo único que quieres es quemarte vivo frente a las autoridades, igual que el rumano Marian Mirita».

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

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)