KAFFE MATTHEWS
CD EB + FLO
ANNETTE WORKS AWcd0005-6 2XCD
BY CLIVE BELL
(written for Annette Works website)
If earlier Kaffe Matthews albums have occasionally felt like a guided tour of a dense, possibly life-threatening tropical forest, eb + flo is more like watching someone paint with light. A cunning lighting designer can mould a space on stage, then heat it up, open it out, and radically alter its emotional density. In a similar way Matthews’s gleaming, unpredictable electronic sounds seem to define a space around the listener. The stereo placing is carefully crafted, and the sounds themselves, generated from theremins and feedback, often have a pure, jewel-like quality. At times they
lie almost static, winking like opals on velvet. Elsewhere they swoon or gurgle, leap from wall to wall like a game of Pong, or gallop off into a sweating riff, only to suddenly revert to more sunbathing.
eb + flo is a gentler, easier listen than previous outings – even when the going gets granulated and the flo starts to fizz, it’s never an onslaught. Matthews has stripped back her sounds to a simpler, cleaner palette, and her imagination has hit its stride with this excellent double set.
Clive Bell. London, UK. September 2003.