MATTIN: Broken Subject

1. .

   MRB/AMM por Miguel A. Garcia

   “Broken Subject” debe estar referido a una frase en la que el sujeto sean los altavoces. Y es que tengo la impresión de que si no voy con mucho cuidado a la hora de reproducir este disco, algo muy malo les va a pasar. Frecuencias extremas y feedback con una sensación de bits reducidos, cortes abruptos tras inquietantes momentos de silencio, leves modulaciones bastante desquiciantes y otras experimentaciones bastante directas, nada rebuscadas, son los elementos en la paleta del autor. Su puesta en escena se realiza con la precisión y delicadeza propias de un cirujano-hipnotizador de tendencias psicopáticas. Lo poderoso: y es que por muy fríos e incómodos que parezcan los sonidos, son también finos y elegantes, y están dispuestos con una absoluta exactitud para que te enganchen, y absorban. Puedo percibir como hacen daño a mis oídos, como pequeños bisturís que rasgan mis tímpanos, pero no por ello puedo parar de escucharlos. Tengo que imponerme el “stop” antes de que el daño sea irreversible. Así que es esta mi obra favorita del autor, por su binomio brutalidad-delicadeza, por su extremada riqueza, clara, directa, por la amplitud de lecturas que provoca una abstracción tan minimalista, y porque simplemente, y mas que nunca, me “engancha” sin remisión. Por su crueldad exquisita hay momentos en los que vienen a mi memoria los primeros Whitehouse, en una era (casi redefinida con este disco) post-digital, música que empieza a crearse cuando el laptop esta tan roto como pronto lo estarán tus altavoces.
2. .

   VITAL WEEKLY by Frans de Waard

   Two new releases in Mattin’s new ‘Free Software Series’ ‘for the promotion of works realized using free software’ and Mattin himself adds one to the series too. His work is about noise, no doubt about that (even when he ventured
   into singing/songwriting before) and usually I turn the volume a bit down, but for this new release the volume is better a bit up. In the ten pieces (’created with PC, PD, Jamin’) Mattin delivers blocks of heavy computer treated
   sounds, which he cleverly mixes with blocks of silence. Maybe something he picked up some ’silence is a noise too’ when collaborating with various Japanese musicians, but it works well. The loud bits are loud, but good. I have no
   idea whether he treats acoustic recordings, or let the software feedback internally with the computer, but the result is a must hear. Mattin actually starts composing with his sounds, rather than let them freely play around to
   create full ear damage. It’s by far the best solo Mattin release I heard.
3. .

   BAGATELLEN by Richard Pinnell

   Since I first heard his music almost a decade ago now the Basque laptop improviser Mattin has intrigued, excited, annoyed, confused, irritated, delighted, inspired, stunned, challenged and bored me in roughly equal amounts. One thing I can say for sure about the man and his music however is that he always grabs my attention.
   The Free Software Series label has been set up by Mattin to promote the free distribution of music creation freeware and to showcase music created with it. Broken Subject is the fourth in the series, and the only one of the four releases so far to feature Mattin. If his music over the past few years may have seemed to focus as much on the conceptual as the inherently musical, Broken Subject feels like a move back in the other direction, however temporary. The ten tracks on this CDR bristle with a muscular vitality and directness that feels like the work of a musician engaging tightly, almost physically with the music, like a potter behind his wheel wrestling with his creation.
   Whilst retaining this sense of energy throughout, the assorted tracks here range from the relatively loud and violent through to the barely audible, utilising quite a range of dynamics, from the forceful blasts that open the album to the fine slithers elsewhere. Each of the tracks seems to focus on a small set of sounds, always digital in nature, but somehow sounding different to the usual squawks and drones of the solo laptopper. Perhaps the absence of Max/MSP filters makes all the difference, but those throttled, glitchy sounds that sounded so fresh in the early days of Mego Records but now feel so dated are not present here. If anything the sounds Mattin produces on Broken Subject seem closer to the stark rigour of the new Korean improvisers documented of late by the Manual and Balloon and Needle labels and with whom Mattin has played and recorded. The album has a feel of malfunctioning technology to it, the sound of modern digital media tripping over itself, a wild uncertainty as if to a degree the sounds shaped by Mattin are pulled from the software by chance. The one element of the album that hints at some level of predetermination is the length of the tracks, as all of them last exactly three minutes. Its not clear if Broken Subject is composed to any degree, whether the exact time limits are the result of editing after the fact or if limitations were set on the recording of the pieces. The way that the tracks each focus one area of sound for their brief duration works very nicely though, allowing the distinct dynamics of each of the separate pieces to offset one another. This provides the album with an overall sense of symmetrical construction that would suggest that the track order was carefully chosen if nothing else. So no pithy conversations with the listener, no dreadful singing, nothing that is likely to offend, but instead Broken Subject is a challenging, abrasive album that seems to capture raw energy and place it into a precise framework. An intriguing and somewhat original work that goes some way further than merely promoting the potential of music freeware.
4. .

   NOISEBLOG

   This CDr, limited to 50 copies but freely downloadable on the label’s site (actually from archive.org to which the site is linking), is part of a series of releases to promote experimental works using free software (hence the name Free Software Series) - More info (and full album downloads) can be found on the site dedicated to this series. This one is part 4, and is by Mattin [website], who is probably also the person behind this initiative - The CDr’s title “Broken Subject” covers the material that’s on it pretty well: this is a crunchy release, by times sounding like a radio slowly being crushed to smitters accompanied by sparkling, yet minimal transistornoise and - towards the end - whirling alarms. 30 minutes in length, chopped into slices of 3 minutes for random pleasure, a couple deceiving silences included. Also see my review of Abjektor [over here], by [Sic] Tim Goldie, also released by Mattin (on Hibarimusic).
5. .

   BAD ALCHEMY # 57 Rigobert Dittmann

   Neben dem obligatorischen Aufdruck Anti-Copyright gibt es nur noch die Information Performance: SC, PD, Jamin Editing & Mastering: Ardour Distribution: Debian Realised in Berlin July 2007. Zum Auftakt dieser 10 x 3:00 ertönt ein Großes Bratzeln und silbriges Bitzeln, das aber im zweiten 10tel gleich noch giftigere Blasen blubbert und knarzt, gleichzeitig Schwefelquelle und Starkstromkabeldefekt. Mattin dosiert den Krach so, dass stille Passagen - das ganze dritte und weitgehend das neunte 10tel - den Wiedereinbruch des Infernalischen erneut schockhaft wirken lassen. Das vierte 10tel operiert gnadenlos mit diesem Wackelkontakt, stabilisiert sich als Dauergrummeln und beginnt wieder extrem zu bratzen. Jetzt ein rieselndes Zischen, plastisch wie ein Strom von Sandkörnern, stechend gepitscht und wummernd überwölbt. Der Raum scheint aufgeraut, nicht mehr leere ‚Luft‘, vielmehr durch den Einbruch der vierten Dimension von Drähten durchsponnen, von Kristallen durchsplittert, von Molekülen durchbrodelt. Man schneidet und stößt sich an dieser ‚Luft‘. Teil 7 ist ein durchgehendes Sieden, das von brodelnder Gewalt erfasst und demoliert wird, Teil 8 ein brausender Wasserfall, der donnernd noch anschwillt, abreißt, in ein schrilles Trillern überwechselt. Das letzte 10tel erfüllt heulender Sirenenalarm, flattrig loopend - Schnitt!! und Stille, die diesmal nur noch von Misstrauen und brennenden Ohrwascheln erfüllt wird. It’s by far the best solo Mattin release I heard, kommentiert FdW/Vital. Und der hat wirklich Vieles gehört.
6. .

   NEURAL Aurelio Cianciotta

   The releases which make up this seminal series are all dedicated to promoting experimental sounds created using free software. It’s a simple and very direct way to show how different the approaches to making electronic music can be these days, not necessarily constrained by the latest expensive softwares or by the (equally expensive) hype imposed by the release of more and more advanced laptops, controllers and digital consoles. No one better than Mattin, a revolutionary and spartan activist and advocate of new models of conceptualism in music, could have underlined the effect of the new era made possible by the immaterial abstraction of data. The concatenations of no-copyright sounds are made with tenuous and disillusioned sound structures. Delicate computer sounds, minimal yet brutal sequences which shy away from any compromise between opposite tensions. Here, radicalism is everything and there is no middle ground.

   Le pubblicazioni inserite in questa seminale serie sono dedicate tutte alla promozione di sonorità sperimentali ottenute utilizzando free software. Una maniera semplice ed assai diretta che dimostra quanto oggi per realizzare musica, molteplici possano essere gli approcci in campo elettronico , non necessariamente costretti dagli ultimissimi costosi software o dall’hype (altrettanto dispendioso) dettato dal velocissimo succedersi di sempre più avanzati laptop, controller e consolle digitali. Chi meglio di Mattin, allora, rivoluzionario e spartano attivista, divulgatore di nuovi modelli di concettualismo in musica, per ribadire l’effetto della svolta epocale dettata dall’astrazione immateriale di dati. Conseguenti le concatenazioni applicate ai suoni no-copyright, tramite strutture sonore labili, disilluse. Delicati rumori da computer, sequenze minimali ma brutali che aleggiano sospese e rotte a qualsiasi conciliazione d’opposte tensioni. La radicalità qui è tutto e non sono ammesse mezze misure.
7. .

   THE WIRE #289 by David Stubbs

   The Basque electroacoustic improvisor Mattin offers another sound missive to add to the pile - ten piercing stubs of computer generated noise/silence, all precisely three minutes long. Weather Mattin deliberately sets out to try the patience of even the most adventurous consumers of modern music is a moot point - you do suspect there is a strain of listeners who considers it a test of their hardness to endure Mattin. So, here’s a taste of what you get. Track three: silence. Track four: a sustained burst of what sounds like a disgustingly prolonged flatulence, put through a processor. Track five: a dentist’s drill. Track six: flatlining spurts of static. Track eight: the sound of the suction device you spit the pink water into after submitting to the dentist’s drill. Track nice: more silence. This sounds like philistine derision, but without any explanation or context, or attempt to forge all this sonic matter into any particular shape, one fells a bit goaded. Mattin runs a very full and discursive website, and this music is free of copyright and available for anyone to make of it what they wish - but isn’t that the artist’s job in the first place?
8. .

   TOUCHING EXTREMES By Massimo Ricci

   Eliciting controversy is the name of the game for Mattin, and I myself am not really convinced by some of his numerous projects (the “Songbooks”, for example). But when it comes to using a laptop the man knows what he’s doing, and the presentations that he pretty regularly churns out are thought-provoking, psychologically impacting and often noisily beautiful - a raw beauty, that is. “Broken subject” contains all of the above mentioned features, its functional mixture of muteness and extremely gritty sonic gravel at the basis of a 30-minute performance recorded in Berlin. The album works well both by listening to the tracks’ original succession and in “random” mode; the result is the same, a modernist brand of computer music that takes no prisoners. At the beginning of the first track one almost believes that what’s heard is not so hurtful, but nothing could be more wrong, as we’re soon incinerated by furious winds of harsh, skin-ripping sibilance scarred by granular instability. We get used to that after a while, and it feels nice - so, take these three minutes of hush on the chin to spoil the party. No problem: that, too, is great. Then, what does Mattin do? He restarts the process, adding a measure of oscillation (there are fragments that sound like wavering sirens processed by a distortion pedal for midgets). Bits and pieces of this composite are meshed, alternated and erased at once. Then, silence again. Half an hour has gone, it seemed much shorter; good sign, I’m instantly replaying this thing. Very solid outing - among the author’s best in my book.
9. .

   The Sound Projector #17(UK)

   Mattin and Broken Subject (FREE SS 04) is ten tracks of noise music edited into bite-sized snippets that are precisely three minutes long. Except for the last one which is 2:59, for some cryptic reason. Apparently this has been performed by three people (two of them identified by their initials), unless SC and PD are some new form of noise-generating software with which I’m unfamiliar. Ardour, which is a virtual mixing desk, was used to edit and master the disk. The noise here is nowhere near as virulent and hostile as the last batch of screeching feedback I’ve endured from Mattin, but it is still very hard to listen to. This is mainly due to the severe fragmentation of the work, resulting in a stuttering effect that interrupts any listening pleasure; hence `broken subject’ I suppose. Composed from a variety of grisly rumblings, high-pitched screeches, shapeless electronic bursts and what-not, the effect is like so much digital junk being rolled inexorably across your vulnerable hard drive. A monotonous and frustrating listen. Mattin’s personal approach to the software-music interface is almost the exact opposite of Brian Eno and his `generative music’ software. Where Eno is about setting up endless possibilities, Mattin is all about wholesale destruction and permanent damage, and it’s hard to see what benefits mankind will derive from this artistic cul-de-sac into which he’s driving at top speed. We are, however, being urged to use the software and create for ourselves, rather than remaining passive consumers.

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