Reviews

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

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.

Kaffe Matthews ‘cd eb + flo’
(Annette Works 2003)

La dolce Kaffe prosegue il deflusso alfabetico, e dopo la ‘a’ di “cd Ann”, la ‘b’ di “cd Bea”, la ‘c’ di “cd Cécile” e la ‘d’ di “cd dd”, liquida in un sol colpo la ‘e’ e la ‘f’ con questo doppio “cd eb + flo”. Le registrazioni risalgono all’anno 2002 e, come al solito, sono state estrapolate da vari concerti per finire assemblate in un unicum che non lascia affatto trapelare fratture spazio-temporali. Il cambiamento evolutivo è quanto di meglio potersi aspettare da un musicista e “cd eb + flo”, visto sotto questo aspetto, rappresenta una bellissima sorpresa, se pure disorienta dal momento che tale cambiamento emerge, a tratti, fin troppo brusco, ma mai di tipo involutivo, nel qual caso il disorientamento si tingerebbe di perplessità. È, quindi, una Matthews diversa quella che ascoltiamo in questi dischetti, una Matthews che appare influenzata, molto, dai musicisti con cui ha collaborato in tempi recenti, in particolare da Sachiko M (il piacevole “In Case Of Fire Take The Stairs”, inciso in trio con la pianista Andrea Neumann, era stato registrato il 17 Marzo 2002). Direi che a tratti, soprattutto in alcuni passaggi del primo CD, l’influenza della giapponese è troppo opprimente e finisce per soffocare la poetica della Matthews, sono questi i momenti meno convincenti, eppure indispensabili, un pegno da pagare per giungere alla splendida catarsi da cui sorgono, come affreschi sotto i colpi del pennello, i più riusciti episodi del secondo CD. Qual è la differenza principale con i dischi precedenti? Direi che è nello studio del particolare e nella sua messa a fuoco, dove prima l’arrovello principale era quello di provocare l’impatto attraverso orchestrazioni che oggi sembrano appartenere al passato. Quella compattezza arcigna, quell’intemperanza direi, si scioglie in uno stile spiritoso, fatto di brevi sequenze macchiate da reticoli post-moderni, dove trova giustificazione anche la copertina molto Liberty disegnata per l’occasione. Oh sì, la copertina trova davvero una giustificazione in tale vivacità… e anche nei grilli canterini, nelle flebili melodie, negli sporadici impulsi ritmici, nelle continue invenzioni, in quello che è un miracolo di perfetto equilibrio. Sia chiaro che neppure “cd flo” è un capolavoro (che parolona!!?!), casomai è un disco di transizione, ma la volontà, e la capacità, dimostrate dalla Matthews nel mettersi in discussione, e nel mettere in discussione la sua musica, le aspettative del suo pubblico e le logiche della conservazione, ce la fanno apprezzare molto più di quanto avremmo fatto davanti al suo marquee moon. Il cosiddetto disco definitivo, in realtà, rappresenta la morte ultima e Kaffe è ben viva e decisa a sorprenderci nuovamente. La curiosità che la spinge, e che l’ha portata a suonare con Andy Moore, Giuseppe Ielasi, Marina Rosenfeld, Zeena Parkins… e numerose altre situazioni così dissimili fra loro, è un toccasana per il presente e una garanzia per il futuro. (no ©)

Aggiunto: August 3rd 2003
Recensore: Etero Genio
Voto: 3.5 stars
Link Correlati: Annette Works
Hits: 24
Lingua: italian

#18 with Lesser, Zai Kuning – Tetsu Saïtoh – Michel Doneda, Heiner Goebbels – Heiner Müller, Hoppy Kamiyama, Natsat and a lots of cd reviews…

KAFFE MATTHEWS
cd dd (Annette Works / Metamkine)

Fidèle toujours au même principe de travailler la matière sonore in situ, dans le contexte précis d¹un lieu et d¹un moment précis, pour son quatrième album (quatrième état des lieux dans son projet d¹explorer un maximum de possibilités offertes par le dispositif LiSa), Kaffe Matthews a sélectionné les enregistrements de trois performances (Bruxelles, Bologne, Glasgow). On ne pourrait certainement pas dire que la musicienne a perdu la main : sa manière de bâtir des paysages sonores imaginaires semble intacte, cependant, le discours s¹y fait de plus en plus discontinu, dérangé, éclaté. ” The Last Of The Violins ” est un peu son ” adieu aux armes ” : ou plutôt, adieu aux vieux amis – le violon, son premier instrument (d¹avant la découverte de l¹électronique) est désormais mis en veilleuse. Le travail, nuancé, sur la texture, une approche attentive de la matière brute à sculpter, s¹élaborant par tâtonnements, ” heureux accidents ” et une maîtrise indéniable de la panoplie électronique fascinent toujours mais le résultat me laisse plus perplexe que subjugué : la formule semble s¹éprouver, tourner en rond. ” The Pool In The Basement “, le dernier titre du disque marque, peut-être ( ?) un nouveau départ, c¹est en tout cas, la partie la plus gratifiante de l¹album : Commençant comme un morceau de techno minimale (ou presque), elle évolue vers des boucles de drones, hypnotiques, denses, irrésistiblement efficaces. (Derek Z.).

KAFFE MATTHEWS
cd dd (Annette Works / Metamkine)

Ever faithful to her method of working sound recorded on location, for her 4th album (4th state of play in her project of exploring the numerous possibilties made possible by LISA) Kaffe Matthews has chosen recordings of three perfromances (Brussells, Bologna, Glasgow) The artist has certainly not lost her touch. Her way of building imaginary soundscapes remains unchanged, but seems more disjointed, disturbed, more explosive. ‘The Last of the Violins’ is almost a ‘Farewell to Arms’ , or moreover, ‘ Farewell Old Friends, the violin, since further discovering electronics, has been put to rest. Her work is highly textured, a tentative approach to sculpting with raw sound , elaborate ‘ trials and errors’, and ‘ happy accidents’ . Her control/understanding of all the paraphenalia that goes with electronic music is amazing, but the result is more perplexing than enthralling, the formula possibly testing itself, going round in circles. The last track , however, ‘ Pool in the basement’ is the most gratifying part of the album, and signals a new phase in her music: beginning with a piece which is near minimal techno that turns into hypnotic dense loops that are irresistibally effective. (Derek Z.).

Moor, Andy/Matthews, Kaffe
Locks 2002

Kaffe Matthews is well known for her numerous avant-garde projects as a keyboardist and sampler artist. If the name of guitarist Andy Moor fails to ring a bell, it’s only because he usually performs under his pseudonym Andy Ex (in the Ex, of course). Locks is this duo’s first offering, an unusual and impressive album. The two artists improvise, the lady using a “live converter” to sample the gent’s guitar and add noises and glitches. She tweaks and loops, creating strange repetitive tunes over which the guitar occasionally roars (“Delta”). There is rhythm, there are riffs, and some punk energy blows through the laptop. The album has been pieced together from studio tracks recorded at STEIM (Amsterdam) and Annette Works (London), plus three cuts from a concert at Instants Chavirés (Paris). The pieces have been carefully arranged in suites and the whole thing flows nicely, despite the fact that parts of a particular suite can come from different sources. The five-part “Here Is Your Coat” (the longest at 17 minutes) stands out because of its wide range of dynamics and clever multi-layered guitar loops that give the impression of a thoroughly written composition. “AK-47 MH” surprises with its gentle, twinkling first section — really not the kind of music you’d expect with a title like that. In the age of glitch electronica and laptop-based experimental music, the guitar tended to become less and less incorporated and more and more ambient (Fennesz, Oren Ambarchi). Andy Moor shows you can import its more delinquent edges into the genre. Recommended. —

François Couture
All-Music Guide

STEIM
May 10th, 2001

Text sent from audience member after kaffe’s solo concert at STEIM, may 10th 2001

considering i have not been exposed to large quantities of live electronic music, my perception is necessarily limited by experience. regardless of my experiential self-deprecative, i perceived your sound-gift as immensely powerful and impressive, the use of density and sparseness to create a moving structure which flowed effortlessly through time and my body. the saturation points reached incredible levels, without the unbearable loudness intensity i have heard before used as an effect in itself. the simplicity of your sound source rapidly dispersing into a complex world of inter-relations, increasing layers of trajectory after trajectory, a delicate beauty held together with the subtle strength of timbral cohesion. and of the technical structure of the sonic – loops and phases in and out of synchronicity – actual physical sound events creating their own solid environment within which i was submerged, reflecting. somewhere i drowned in rising tides and depths, which dropped brutally leaving my body to melt in fluidic plateaus of frequency shifts. the place where time slows, to the pace where the mind can perceive all that has, is and may occur in that world – a sensual multi-dimensional bodyencapsulated within the immersive sound body. and at its close, _my body was saturated.

British composer and improvisor Kaffe Matthews finally bids farewell to the violin with this set of live processing work, drawn from a series of European perfornances. Matthews’ obsessively intricate tinkering with violin squeals and long droning notes has been replaced with a new concern for low-level urban ambience – distant looping radio waves, audio interference, eerie nocturnal pulsing – and at points it bears close relation to Robin Rimbaudís city soundings.

Also included here is the final violin performance from Italy in 1999, but it’s the newer stuff that’s the most interesting, with the minimally rippling ‘pool in the basement’ pointing the way to some startling new areas.

David Keenan, The Wire, April 2001

In the mid-60s John Cage placed microphones in and around the concert hall, deploying them in the formation of a graphic score from a previous piece, to create the “environmental collage” Variations IV. In so doing he opened up the world for both Robin Rimbaud and Kaffe Matthews. But whereas his concern was with synchronicity and the “spatial aggregates” of recognisable sounds, the ensuing years have given rise to technology that enables Kaffe Matthews to instantaneously process her sounds sampled in and around the venue rendering them unrecognisable. And whereas his approach was compositional she uses a laptop to improvise with her material. Creating her music live gives it a sense of a deadline, she has only a certain amount of time to make this work – a sense that informs all improvised pieces – but the pace is unhurried and she deploys her resources sparingly, looping and unfolding sounds with a gentle sensuality that belies the grittiness of her glitch-laden textures.

Over the years the violin has moved from its role as central sound source to become redundant. Thus the central piece ‘The Last Of The Violins’ (1999) is bookended by more recent work in which she is free to concentrate on moulding her material with greater focus and integrity to produce another beautiful album.

Gus Garside