Month: November 2003

kaffe matthews / cd eb + flo
[annette works/metamkine]

Collaboratrice de Fennesz ou d’Andy Moor (guitariste de The Ex), la londonienne Kaffe Matthews s’intéresse au son et à la façon dont il est perçu selon son dispositif de transmission et selon l’architecture du lieu d’écoute. Lors de ses concerts, sa musique est diffusée par huit haut-parleurs. Kaffe Matthews s’est notamment lancée, en compagnie de Zeena Parkins et de Mandy Mcintosh (!), dans le projet Weightless Animals, concept multiple (et complexe) qui tourne autour de la perception de l’environnement sonore dans l’espace et s’aide en cela de données recueillies par des scientifiques-spationautes, et qui devrait donner naissance à un dvd contenant les données d’un voyage intersidéral ! Ce cinquième témoignage de performances données par Kaffe Matthews prend la
forme d’un beau double cd (comme les précédents, chez Annette Works). Dans différentes villes (Vienne, Québec, Londres…), l’artiste a joué à l’aide d’un petit Theremin, un instrument qui se présente comme un boîtier électronique, muni de 2 antennes sensibles à la variation du champ électrique produit par le musicien. Avec la main droite, on fait varier un oscillateur commandant la fréquence et, avec la main gauche, on fait varier l’intensité sonore. Matthews a enregistré le theremin et, forcément en même temps, la réponse de la salle au signal émis, puis elle a tout retraité à la maison. Cd Eb + Flo présente ce travail sur une durée de 106 minutes. L’écoute en fait une expérience électro-acoustique qui dévoile le potentiel incroyable d’un instrument peu courant, mais aussi l’influence de la réponse acoustique d’une salle. A maintes reprises, les sons sont proprement hallucinants.

stéphane

Artist Kaffe Matthews
Album Title Cd Eb + Flo
Date of Release 2003

AMG REVIEW: Previous albums on Kaffe Matthews’ Annette Works imprint have chronicled her metamorphosis from violinist to sound artist in incremental stages, a climb toward a new sound. In comparison, cd eb + flo is a fully-rounded statement, a panoramic look from the plateau she has reached. All of the music presented on this double album has been reconstructed in the studio using recordings of performances where Matthews sampled and processed “a theremin, the room and its feedback.” The resulting music shares the purity of lines of the sonic architectures of Carl Michael von
Hausswolff and Richard Chartier. It also shows strong similarities with contemporary feedback artists like Toshimaru Nakamura and Sachiko M, but Matthews’ work constantly remains richer, more sensuous, and more playful than either of them. Plastic beauty doesn’t translate to asceticism on this album and that’s why it is so endearing. Disc one presents a carefully orchestrated sonic journey. It starts with very pure sine waves, builds up from track to track toward the central piece “Get Out More,” significantly noisier, and from there on drifts toward beat-anchored material. Disc two is more fanciful, taking the listener through quicker changes in moods and textures. The anticlimactic “Boy with Dog” is a marvel of flexible restraint, while “Dashes Five” shows what Merzbow could sound like if he’d clean up his act a bit. These pieces are so taking, the actual origin of the sounds rarely crosses your mind.

One of 2003’s best offerings in electronic sound art. — François Couture

KAFFE MATTHEWS

cd eb+flo (Awcd0005-6)

2xCD, Annette Works

Warning: art ! Kaffe Matthews is more of a performing artist than a musician, and the sounds she produces and which are documented on this double-CD are only a means to the end of opening the minds of the audience to a new sense of higher understanding of their senses, their experiences and their surroundings. If you want to file this CD as a minimalist, static ambient-CD, go ahead and do so, you’ll see for yourself, where you’ll end up with.

Don’t be misjudged by the title of these CDs – there is only minimal ebb and flow on these discs. Actually, most of the time this is music as static as it can get. Kaffe Matthews uses a theremin and the surroundings and implements available to her in live settings to produce a sound world that is filled with high-frequency walls, noises, interferences, some harsh rumblings and absolutely no beats or rhythms (unless you count the molecular holes in a sine-wave which our senses – trained on finding differences to work on – will interpret into some kind of variations). The titles “eb” and
“flo” mark the fifth and sixth CD in a series documenting her work in an alphanumerical fashion (starting with “Ann”, “Bea”, “cécilie” and “dd”). She has literally taken that world around the globe, playing in every kind of venue imaginable and dedicating her life and artistic work to the exploration of sounds.

The main outstanding feature about her minimalist soundscapes is an almost organic grace that fills every space that her work is filled with. She confronts her audience in with new experiences regarding their sense of hearing, also extending her pressure to the tactile and sensory abilities of the body of the listener, either by volume or by frequency. Yes, Kaffe Matthews is more of a building artist than a musician, and the theoretical framework – though not much or really put into words – is just as important to her releases than the sounds themselves. She has constructed sonic
furniture, extended her work into the area of visual arts. She is also a teacher for performance technology on one of the leading arts colleges in the UK.

Of course, it is possible, to reduce “eb+flo” to the purely auditive side. This will leave you with a record unlike every other record just the same. Frequency-manipulation, crackling hysteria, the sounds of thoughts and electrons, but within all the futuristic assemblage of consequent sound-production, Matthews still finds some place for humour, if not love. E.g. the track “For mama”, which features the chirping and chatting of birds, and what sound is there done by nature that is more friendly and peaceful than the sound of birds in front of the window? Or introducing sounds like water flowing – which has been used in audio-psychology a lot (and in new-age-music!) Matthews lets herself be driven by her surroundings very much. Having used the arbitrariness and randomness of the weather for sound-production, she has taken some more of the production into her own hands. Still, a lot of influencing factors are still outside of her responsibility and power – and shall remain so. The difference between playing a gallery, a warehouse, a boat or a tea-room, for instance. The fabric of the walls and the dynamics of the air, influencing the sound of the theremin.

I’d like to add at the end of this review, that it is not easy listening to this record. Some tracks are almost like a collection of sine-waves that start and stop at random, giving that little digital ping every time, with complete silence between them, which after some time becomes really nerve-wrecking. I can imagine, people getting sick and tired during shows, but also the opposite. Because at times she presents the most interesting sounds I have ever heard. Hard stuff, at the most progressive frontier of the avantgarde, this will make you listen to Aphex Twin as a relaxation.

www.annetteworks.com

11/2003

CRACKED (AT)

Kaffe Matthews, “cd eb + flo” AWcd0005-6
Annette Works

CD Eb + Flo marks a number of departures in the work of one of today’s most interesting sound artists. The double-disc is Matthews’ first solo release using theremin as primary sound source, following her retiring of the violin which had formed the core of her excellent first three discs (recently reissued as a trio). The artist’s method remains somewhat constant on Eb + Flo, involving the live sampling and laptop manipulation of sounds created with the theremin and projected via quadraphonic soundsystem throughout a particular room. Matthews sets up a system of microphones in each performance space (five in total for these discs), enabling the pure tones of her instrument to feed back in a manner unique to the architecture of the room. Environment plays the biggest role in the artist’s music and has never been as much of a factor as it is on this release. As with previous recordings, Matthews has placed additional microphones around the room to gather specific pockets of sound, influenced by audience movement, noise from outside etc. However, where on her debut, CD Ann, the artist credited these “hidden” mics with only “the essential wild card,” Eb + Flo is more sympathetic, the blank purity of the sine tones allowing for uncluttered, even languid compositions that seem to evolve with an ear trained, more than ever before, on the details and happenings of a particular space. The release’s double-length is perhaps indicative of new patience and openness in Matthews’ work. The sine tones could not be further from the frayed, “comfortable” strains of her violin, and the individual pieces on Eb + Flo are drastically minimal compared to the warm, droning pile-ups that fill earlier releases. But while these pieces are more demanding, they also maintain a grasp on the ingenuous nature and simple luxury that separates Matthews’ work from many similar-minded artists, such as fellow sine-stress Sachiko M. Several tracks take on a playful air, such as the two pieces that open cd eb, “Long Line Starting” and “Clean Tone Falling,” whose titles seem to poke fun at the solitary pure tones jetting across both in comical animation. Others bearing titles like “Hallo Vera” and “For Mama” echo Matthews’ commitment to keeping personality, and a level of immediacy, in her increasingly abstract style; the latter with its mournful drones and captured bird-songs (via open window?) is particularly subtle and rich with sentiment. Played at a volume high enough to register the intricacies and unique spatial referents of each sound, Eb + Flo manages a unique and fulfilling sound environment, full of movement and mesmerizing activity, and it is an expertly restrained effort as well, allowing the most intimate picture to date, of the artist’s process, her degree of involvement and particular response to what a space might offer, or give back.

Andrew Culler