Mattin
Songbook vol.4
azul discografica
azd02
"Mattin once described his
approach to music-making
as a matter of 'trying to contradict the preconceptions that people
might have, to put a different perspective on what can be done in a
performance situation.' And so it was that in 2005, the Basque laptop
artist best known (depending on who you ask) for his exquisitely
restrained laptop improvisations with Radu Malfatti, Eddie
Prevost, and
Axel Doerner; his palate-cleansing duet with Tim Barnes at
ErstQuake 3;
or the deformed, impossibly strange 'rock & roll' he makes in Billy
Bao and Josetxo Grieta. This fourth volume is far and away the best and
quite possibly the strangest in the 'Songbook' series. Whereas earlier
volumes found Mattin ripping away at an acoustic guitar and doing his
cheapest, most grating Lou Reed imitation, Vol. 4,
recorded live in Tokyo, is a concise electric ensemble set featuring
Anthony Guerra on second guitar, Tomoya Izumi shouting as Jean-Luc
Guionnet plays sax 'in the toilet,' and Taku Unami punctuates Mattin's
anguished vocals with popping bass licks and brief piano phrases.
Somehow, the resulting 'songs' suggest a particularly fucked-up,
drummerless outing by Fushitsusha. In point of fact, Songbook Vol. 4's
closest
relatives in the rock & roll canon are Suicide's famously
confrontational live shows of the mid-'70s, the Electric Eels at the
point of disintegration, or the between-song 'banter' on Reed's Take
No Prisoners
reimagined as a score for five very exciting young improvisers. It is,
in other words, one of the greatest live records ever made."
Alberto Cabrera (3 de septiembre 2008)
Una broma navajera
Foxy Digitalis
Mattin "Songbook Vol.
4"
‘Til
this point I’ve frankly not had lot of luck finding much that Basque
avant–garde–trickster slash prankster– “muso” slash performance–artist
Mattin has had a hand in to be a particularly pleasant and/or rewarding
listening experience. To recap, that would include his “exquisitely
restrained” laptop improvisations with Radu Malfatti, Eddie
Prévost,
and Alex Dörner; his “palate–cleansing” duet with Tim Barnes at
Erstquake 3; or the “deformed, impossibly strange ‘rock & roll” he
makes in Billy Bao and Josetxo Grieta. Not that I’ve heard all of it,
to be sure. But onward.
The Mattin Songbooks – of which this is the fourth instalment – defy
glib explanation, and “Songbook Vol. 4” is easily my pick of and the
most successful in the series. Uh... wait... define success. Ok. Rather
than being an excruciatingly long solo set of Mattin abusing a guitar
and unsuccessfully mimicking/parodying Lou Reed, “Vol. 4” was recorded
in a live setting in Tokyo (Enban, 5th July 2006) and features a
full(–ish) band: Anthony Guerra (second guitar), Taku Unami (bass and
piano) – and from the toilet, Tomoya Izumi (shouting) and Jean-Luc
Guionnet (saxophone). It’s also quite tolerably concise – 22 minutes –
and most importantly, if you’re me you’ll not only enjoy listening to
this but you’ll come back again and again for more.
Mattin helpfully offers the following manifesto as a guide to one’s
appreciation of his “Songbooks”:
1. Make up songs on the spot
2. The songs must have a beginning, a chorus, and an end
3. Record the songs directly into the internal microphone of a laptop
computer
4. Use improvisation as a way or exposing structural and
improvisational clichés in pop/rock music
5. Use song structures to demystify the so-called spontaneity and
freedom of improvisation
6. Release the recordings on different labels and laugh at different
peoples reactions
... and to that you may as well add the following, gleaned from the
declamatory liner notes:
7. Mastering, “clean(s)ing”, post-production of any sort is to be
forgone
So right away you’re probably thinking, “Oh yeah, like those Company
Week albums, or Lars Von Trier’s film–making Dogma”. And if you’re
thinking that then you’re probably also recalling the somewhat marked
variances in listen–slash–watchability. And possibly also how they are
always breaking their own rules. Or possibly not. But either way don’t
stop reading now, cos I haven’t yet had the chance to tell you that
this is one of the most exciting “out–”rock records I’ve heard for some
time – somehow the five players conjure up something incredible and
vital that resembles – but at the same time surpasses – an ideal
collision of a drummerless Fushitsusha and the most abstract
outré
extremities of Reynols – all ending up at a loft-gig in NYC 1977 on the
same bill as DNA and the Theoretical Girls.
This one is the goods. Now the songs – for we must grant them that
respect – despite their spontaneous conceptions there’re beginnings,
choruses and endings (2) – arc with the true curve of accomplished
compositions. This time the electric guitars chime and ring and shine
with the sheen of suppressed feedback fury, while Mattin’s vocals veer
between unaffected falsetto and bellows of tormented angst. Taku
Unami’s implausibly funky bass pops ands lopes all over the constructs
that the band has conjured – then he puts down the bass and weaves
delicate piano lines all through “You Cannot Survive Any Of My
Desires”. It’s no mean feat but Mattin and his pick-up band actually
*cough* break my heart on the set–closer “Apologies”; when he pleads
“I’m sorry.. I’m sorry.. it is not my intention to offend you” in his
quivering murmur, my ears forgive him for all those irritations.
At some point someone will need to point out to Mattin that several of
the articles of his dogma are flawed: (4) and (5) specifically –
whatever; it’s old news; for god’s sake has the man not heard of
progressive rock and jazz fusion? – and article (6) is frankly asinine
and the kind of defensive manoeuvre that anybody with anything less
that shit–fer–brains can see straight through. But notwithstanding –
and despite (3) and (7) – that “Songbook Vol. 4” is both form– and
content–wise perfectly acceptable stands as a testament to something –
god knows what – most probably the kinda weird magic that was in the
air that Tokyo evening. These guys oughtta play together more often.
File under 'No Wave'. No, really.
(also file under 'Free'; the album–cover comes adorned with Mattin’s
“anti–copyright” logo so presumably it is/will be available somewhere
as a download.) 8/10 --
Stephen Clover (6 February, 2007)
Squid
Ear (USA)
Despite what the company he sometimes keeps might suggest, Mattin is
one of the biggest things going in punk. He is, when he wants to be,
loud, brutal, lo-fi and strident. His songbook series is some of his
most overtly rock stuff, improvised songs (verse and chorus) recorded
into the internal mike on a laptop. And true to punk form, Volume 4
(two of the previous three are available for free download on his
website, http://mattin.org)
rushes by, six songs in 22 minutes. Recorded live in Tokyo in 2006
with four other musicians (two of them in the club’s toilet), it’s
loose and ugly. The band (Taku Unami on bass and piano, Anthony Guerra
on guitar, Jean-Luc Guionnet on sax and Tomoya Izumi providing
additional shouting) includes some other typically quiet musicians,
and they retain a sense of sparseness despite the overdrive. The
improvised song forms, played without drums, make the album sound
something like a Suicide quintet. It’s cool, it’s raw - your parents
wouldn’t like it, and your kids probably won’t either.
Kurt Gottschalk 2008-05-07
The
Wire (London, March 2007)
Outer Limits
Keith Hollings
Mattin could probably write a very nice song if he chose to, but it's
probably better for everyone that he doesn't. Instead he makes up stuff
and records it straight into his Thinkpad T42 laptop, using its
constricted internal microphone to pick up his singing, along
with some guitars and a couple of people down the hall shouting and
playing sax together in the toilet. Mattin really makes you not want to
care. He takes things serisously so you don't have to. " I
know you cannot survive any of my desires,"
he intones at one particularly intense moment in the session, which
took place somewhere in Tokyo last summer. He doesn't have to tell you
twice.
Ruta 66
(Barcelona)
Mattin
SONGBOOK
VOL.4
Azul Discografica
It's
a shame Jacques Derrida definitively deconstructed himself and left the
planet a couple of years ago, as this might have made an ideal
Christmas present for him. Mattin has, after all, made as much of a
career out of deconstruction as the dear departed maître
penseur; for a start, 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. This is the
fourth volume of his Songbook series, in which he totally
deconstructs the idea of the pop song (though he's hardly the first to
do so – pop and rock have been unravelling slowly for the past quarter
of a century in case you hadn't noticed), improvising the whole gritty
mess direct to disc, or rather, straight into the mono input of his
Thinkpad. He's joined on these six "songs" (I suppose we should use the
inverted commas) by Taku Unami on bass and piano, Anthony Guerra on
guitar and, in the toilet (it says here) Jean-Luc Guionnet on sax and
Tomoya Izumi on "shouting". God knows what was going on in the toilet..
next time I see Jean-Luc I'll try to find out. Meanwhile, this disc –
only 22 minutes long but nicely produced with good liner notes by
Toné Gorgoron, whoever s/he is – comes with a mission statement
outlining the, um, ethos of the Songbook project. It ends
with the line "Release the recordings on different labels and laugh at
different people's reactions." Including, presumably, mine. So I'd
better shut up. Suffice it to say I might keep this one a bit longer
than Volume 1.–DW
Bagatellen
(USA)
Ah, OK, what can we make of this? I'm apparently one of the few earthly
denizens who enjoyed Mattin's first volume in the "Songbook" series on
Hibari, a raucous, snarled set of improvised rock songs sounding (if
this is possible) like a less
studied version of DNA. I've missed the interim entries, vols. 2 &
3, though I somehow doubt there's any discernable "career arc"
happening. This is a live set, a very recent one (July 5,2006),
recorded in Tokyo by a rather all-star quintet: Mattin (vocals,
guitar), Taku Unami (bass, piano), the excellent Anthony Guerra
(guitar) and, from down the hall in the toilet, Jean-Luc Guionnet (sax)
and Tomoya Izumi (shouting).
It's a brief disc, the six "songs"
presented in a single 22-minute track. Supremely lo-fi and unbalanced,
Mattin maybe singing into his computer mic (I say, "singing" but of
course other words would serve better: growling, shrieking, sobbing,
howling, gurgling, etc.), Guerra alternating between harsh clusters and
relatively delicate plucking. Unami's bass playing, given his
prediliction for computer-animated toys, is surprisingly funky. Cracks
me up when, after a given eructative song, Mattin demurely says to the
audience, "Thank you very much, thank you." In addition to DNA, the
clear precedent for this approach seems to be Zorn's "Locus Solus"
project from the early 80s. For my money, this works better, here
largely due to Guerra's playing which, as usual, I find very
compelling. That said, "Songbook vol 4" is at best going to be an
acquired taste for most listeners. Dealing with Mattin's personality,
as out front as it is here, ain't no easy thing. The final track,
"Apologies", finds him bawling his head off. If he's faking it, it's a
disturbingly convincing fraud. I don't know. That's also the section in
which one can discern Guionnet and Izumi contributing from, apparently,
a toilet far off mic.
It'd be tough to out and out recommend this one, but I'm kinda glad to
have it.
Kraak
Het
liedjesboek van would-be enfant ter-
rible
Mattin
is totaal andere koek. Het is
zijn
vierde al, maar het concept blijft het-
zelfde:
verzin ter plaatse liedjes met een
traditionele
structuur, neem ze op met de
laptop,
gebruik improvisatie om rock- en
popclichés
te ontmaskeren en hanteer
traditionele
structuren om de mythe van
de
vrijheid en spontaniteit van improvi-
satie
te doorprikken; breng ten slotte de
opnames
uit op verschillende labels en
lach
met de mensen hun reactie. Terwijl
hij
voor zijn vorige songbooks door-
gaans
als een soort improbard solo met
de
gitaar instantkampvuurliedjes bracht,
is
hij nu aan de slag gegaan met een
paar
maten. Taku Unami bast, Anthony
Guerra
gitaart en in het toilet zitten een
saxofonist
en een roeper. Wat geeft dat?
Vrij
ingehouden impronoiserock met
veel
gepraat en gezing eroverheen van
Mattin.
Men amuseert zich, Mattin
lijkt
schik
te hebben in zijn rol van rocker en
het
is eigenlijk allemaal wel een beetje
grappig.
Maar of dat de bedoeling is?
Waarschijnlijk
toch wel. Niettemin is
dit
niet echt de gepaste introductie tot
‘s
mans snel groeiende oeuvre, dat in
het hedendaagse improvisatiewezen
een
heel eigen plaats inneemt. Uitchec-
ken
die boel! Op www.mattin.org
vindt
u
tonnen illustratief materiaal. –MP
ZGUN
#3 (Sacramento, February 2009)
Disclosure" I "brokered" the transaction
whereby this disc was released. All profits have disappeared and no
books were kept. A cornerstone of the terriblist school of rock &
roll, this final entry in the Songbook series finds Mattin "bridging"
the "gap" between "improv" and "songwriting" with an all-star Japanese
band. To qoute a good friend, this record is beyond good and evil; but
mostly it's evil. Not in your wildest dreams. Acapulco Rodriguez
kfjc
(California, February 2018)
Mattin is no stranger to the KFJC airwaves. In our library you’ll find a
ton of his work, under his own
name, with the projects Billy Bao, Regler, Josetxo Grieta, and
Consumer Electronics, and in collaboration with many artists… even Junko!
This CD is the fourth volume of his Songbook
series of improvised works recorded in 2006 in Tokyo. It lists six tracks,
though my CD player reads only one long 22 minute track that contains the
entire performance. Mattin is on vocals and guitar and is joined by a full
band: another guitar, bass, piano, and – from over in the toilet –
saxophone and Tomoya Izumi’s screaming. Dissonant guitar violence, driving
rhythms propelled not by drums but by bass thump, piano keys stumbling
around and clashing with guitar strings.
It all surrounds Mattin’s distorted, disturbed vocals that he claims are
inspired by Lou Reed, but I hear more Damo Suzuki, Alan Vega, or someone
more deranged. His performance is at once a parody of and a tribute to the
underground rock show: the avant garde artist defying conventions with
raucous noise and screamed lyrics, his back to the audience (or is he just
a talentless asshole?) and the adventurous audience members engaged and
rapt (or are they just pretentious snobs?). Mattin begs his audience for
forgiveness (“I wanted to please apologize for my lack of talent”)
or confronts them directly (“your expectations are the worst nightmare
any human being could have”). It’s all pretty uncomfortable, and
you can hear the tension in the stunned applause from the four or five
people that showed up to the gig. Strange, vicious, and hilarious. WHY DO
WE LET HIM DO THIS?
FCC at ~6:00 “this is another fucking lie”
Reviewed by lexi glass on March 13, 2018 at 7:56 pm
discography
w.m.o/record
label
desetxea
net label
www.mattin.org
